Are MMORPG s the new golf?

Liz Lawley has a great post on Many2Many about blurring boundaries between virtual and real worlds. Among other things, she touches on how there are moral implications in avatar choices. (See Ted Castranova's 'The Horde is Evil'.) But the following graf really caught my eye:

When I was playing online on Monday, Joi Ito said that he thought World of Warcraft was becoming the "new golf" for the technology set. I think there’s some truth in that, but it brings with it all kinds of additional social pressures and complexities, of which avatar racial choices are only the beginning. I think there’s some fertile ground for research in that boundary area, the crossover between the real and game worlds, and the extent to which they influence each other.

This otherwise throwaway thought struck me deep; it is certainly true that, as we mutate into a culture where a significant amount of our time is spent in virtual spaces of one kind or another, we are developing social norms and conventions appropriate for those spaces. Most interesting of all is the fact we are only beginning to do so, leading to the inevitable question: What will things look like in another generation after most (not many, most) people have grown up spending part of their lives in similar virtual spaces?

I am imagining a near future where real-world business is conducted on MMORPGs as the participants also kill monsters. Where soap-opera style games are inhabited by the bored and unimaginative. Where some people spend most of their lives online, while others choose the opposite path. Where people are ostracized in a game because they aren't conducting themselves appropriately. Where...

Wait... I'm describing how things are right now, aren't I?

(Edit: Changed MMPORG to MMORPG, because Google returns an order of magnitude more hits for the latter. Hopefully you all know what I mean either way.)