A little late I know, but yes it was. The problem was the hardware didn't really support what VRML could do at the time. I had access to an SGI irix workstation and VRML (and 3d scenes) was still challenging for it back in the early to mid 1990s.

There's some work going on at the Metaverse Standards Forum to progress these ideas with Web of Worlds (https://webofworlds.github.io/). It's scope is a lot broader than VRML, it covers assets, identity, avatars, payments, etc.

There's a link to the presentation at SIGGRAPH - https://youtu.be/N2_lb77gKQ8.