The World Within Or Online Multiplayer Games In Depth by Sergey Alekseyev
For most of the 20th century, life used to be rather simple for most people. There was school, college, work, retirement. Along with that you had hobbies like cars, bowling, or gardening. The former was more or a less of a chore, the latter the fun stuff you did in your free time, usually... There are also various options where one can both play with other humans against the computer etc. ... The key concept is that each player chooses a single virtual avatar which is at first rather weak (low-level) and starts in some safe basic area of his choice.