Yes, Eric Rice is correct that there will be better and faster FPS MMORPGs appearing that will appeal to a wider audience. It's always the case that there will be more people interested in shooter games and destroying monsters than in the harder job of constructing societies with homes, businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions in an open-ended world like Second Life. There will be other competitors in the virtual world business but it seems unlikely they will achieve very quickly the same complexity and density of capacity and features involved in a 3-D, interactive, persistent, user-generated world with a real economy.

Competition and change for Linden Lab due to the emergence of competitors and their own growth is a good thing as it will compel them to focus more on policies and governance, first of themselves and then of the world.

Prokofy Neva