Richard De Grandpre, in his essay "The Great Escape," tells of a bleak future where the outside world will decay and the virtual world will expand and prosper. A world where people will spend more time living through their computer monitors than they will outside. Since massive multiplayer online games provide users with a fully graphical, digitized version of the virtual world, it is very easy for the players of these games to get sucked into the virtual world and lose track of time passing in the real world.

While De Grandpre's bleak future may be a possibility due to the highly addictive qualities of massive multiplayer online games such as Everquest, the virtual world offers more than just an escape from reality; It offers a virtual parallel to the physical world in which players learn valuable social skills such as cooperative learning, acceptance of social hierarchy, a personal sense of belonging, people management, and leadership skills, some of which result in real world relationships such as friendship and marriage.