"If you've wondered why most of those interfaces resemble World of Warcraft to some degree, it's less a matter of ripping off Blizzard's UI, and more about the recognition of the utility of the interface."

Oh how short people's memories are. There were plenty of MMOs with a similar interface long before WoW came out. In turn, it appears to have inherited things such as emotes and similar commands from MUDs, frankly.

Beyond that little rant, I absolutely agree with the article. Virtual Worlds try far too hard to be easy, and in doing so make everything but the most simple operations overcomplicated. LSL (Second Life's scripting language) is currently making me want to hunt down Lindens with a blunt spoon, because everything it does well, has been done, and everything interesting is unspeakably overcomplicated in it.