Instead of eliminating, why not set up rules for their usage.

Question

Rules could be set so that virtual caches could be put in places that can't permit physical caches. National Parks, monuments, military installations, etc.  This way people could learn about these places similar to the way earthcaches are used.

Answer 1

It is sad that there are not more  virtual caches  as they are my fav cache type. With the very limited release of  virtual caches this year I hope I will be able to find more of them.

Answer 2

I believe the official answer is that 'Waymarking' replaced it - which is also run by groundspeak (see  http://www.waymarking.com/), though the website doesn't exactly look like they put much resource into it (no maps for a start from what I can see).

Personally though I would have preferred if they had kept virtuals, or at least extend earth caches to also cover history, biology and other 'educational' type themes. Earth style caches at least mean they can apply rules that it must be an interesting and 'significant' location, with questions that must be answered etc.

Answer 3

This is more for discussion in official Groundspeak forums, than here. But this decision was made many years ago and I believe this option was considered, but was not selected for the sake of geocaching. Many people really like the finding of the box, which can not be substituted by a ghost cache.

Answer 4

Yea, and allow a virtual in North Korea. Please :) :)

Comments

Why the downvote??

---

Perhaps because you're posting answers to old questions that are (1) six months old and (2) have already been answered.  You're not adding any new information, you're just posting.  It gives the appearance that you're just trying to accumulate PGC points.  If you want to leave a comment, feel free -- no one can downvote a comment.  But when you post something as an "answer," it means you are attempting to actually answer the question asked.  

Look at it this way: if the question was already answered in great detail six months ago or more, and then you come along now and say the same thing, how is that helpful to the original poster?  

Or in this case, you're not even answering the question, you're just commenting.

Anyway -- those are some possible reasons.  I didn't downvote you, so I'm just speculating.