I enjoyed Jumpgate back in the day - a space sim MMORPG.

There was quite a funny effect that at a certain level, you tended not to leave the space stations at all. The world was dangerous and losing your ship was a pain in the butt so seasoned players rarely launched and instead socialised and played each other in the training simulation that was inside the game.

I felt the hint of a general principle: if you create a realistic world with risks, chores, costs etc. it has no value. It's not what people seek. People will need to create games within the virtual world to find leisure. The virtual world becomes an irrelevant shell of indirection you need to escape just as you want to escape the real world.