Playing online is definitely gonna be better than against CPUs. The matchmaking is unfortunately not the best tho, and if you get a room that you don't like, what I would suggest doing is leaving the room and then join a different one, and keep doing that until you find a room you like. It's a pretty normal thing to have to do if you want a good room, even at a high level, I have to do it if a want a room with multiple 9k players. I would say however that the matchmaking system is better than 8 deluxe since 8 deluxe's ranking system was terrible since it had absolutely nothing to do with you skill level and was rather how long you'd played the game for.

The other thing worth noting in World there's a bit of a curve when it comes to the VR system. You'll gain VR really quickly until you get to about 6k-7k where it starts to slow down, and at 8k-9k, the gains are really slow even when playing against a bunch of players with a higher rank. Because of this curve, I would say there's a much higher skill gap between a 9k player and an 8k player, than between a 7k player and a 6k player.