It is certainly a little strange that Raph Koster is equating the appearance of a virtual room to the creation of a new mmo world. Go back a month or two and you'll find the metaplace site introducing ideas on game design (underlining the fact, lest we ever thought any differently, that designing and building a game world is as simply as clicking a button).

That said at a ime when the innovation debate is raging in the game industry, some of the ideas brought about by metaplace are worth testing and realising. Low-fidelity worlds already have an appeal to one area of the market, I'm certain low cost developments also will have, and the use of Flash is (to some degree at least) a smart move and worth pursuing.

I reckon metaplace will be an interesting part of the next iteration of game development, even if it doesn't become the new king.