Since the start of last year, Meta has invested $15 billion to develop its Reality Labs metaverse venture, and for that hefty cost and its paltry results, the company has become the butt of many jokes. Recently, Meta received mostly jeers for its announcement that avatars on its platform would soon have…legs. It has reportedly had to force its own reluctant employees to use its VR platform, Horizon Worlds. In late October, Meta’s market value sank to $268 billion, down from more than $1 trillion in September 2021. It would be kind to say that the company’s metaverse development is not going well. But focusing on all of that may be missing the virtual forest for the metaverse trees. The concept of the metaverse came from the world of fiction; more recently, metaverse became a marketing term; and it lives as an idea that means different things to different people. We may see an all-encompassing, agreed-upon metaverse…one day. Meanwhile, aspects of a growing virtual world – avatars, digital currencies, virtual goods, virtual characters and virtual environments – are already here.