Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm

An asteroid is weeks from wiping out most of humanity, and Jack Mitchell decides survival is worth the price: transitioning permanently into Viridian Gate Online, a full-immersion VRMMORPG, and letting his body die so his mind can live on inside it. The digital world he wakes into is no safer than the one he left, full of ruthless players and developers eager to rebuild Earth's old inequalities in virtual form, in the opening novel of the Viridian Gate Archives.