@Brightamethyst This story seems to be an exception, or at least the author knows more than the guy who wrote SAO. The 10 million players thing was immediately noticable, as that makes its player base similar to WOW in terms of popularity (as opposed to SAO's measley 10k being considered successful).
Also, her going to the 'frontier' seems a lot like going to the high-level raid areas to get away from the low level players that just want free stuff, which is also realistic.
They haven't shown enough about the game to really tell how accurate the mechanics are, yet, but I will say that the character customization/building briefly described would be a dream come true for most MMO players I know. Maybe the author based it on how their ideal game?