I love your choice of genre- the modern fantasy elements would allow for such a great mash-up of real-world and fantastical, and to have some brilliant plot twists within the various quest elements characters would need to strive through.
Loved the idea in your introduction too... It's almost like the idea in WALL.EE where all the humans are just plugged into their screens 24/7 and don't notice anything at all around them... why would you ever re-enter the real world?! Weird!
E x
I have a draft lying around of the series that inspired me to the genre: Shin Megami Tensei. Atlus really outdid themselves and proved me that this genre has really unlimited potential... In SMT: Persona 2, rumors spread in town would become real once you made a certain pact with a demon, that was cool, so DAMN cool. You actually developed the features of the town by spreading rumors around town and saw as people's reaction changed as you did so...
Yeah, I was thinking more of a Sword Art Online-like gameplay, but yeah, the idea is to have some sort of helmet that processes your brain thought and interprets them as commands... the thing is that you really wouldn't notice anything at all around you, the game itself would need to warn you of the hour, or force disconnection if it detects you really need to go back to real life...
In fact the world of WALL.EE would just be 50 or 60 years after that, lol :D