Sword Art Online

**Sword Art Online** (ソードアート・オンライン, *Sōdo Āto Onrain*) was a VRMMO and the main stage for the first arc of the Abridged Series.

## Description

Sword Art Online (SAO) was a VRMMORPG by Argus, being a launch title for the new system, NerveGear. It was developed by Kayaba Akihiko under Bethesda Softworks. It takes place on a floating castle in the sky with many enemies, including demons and dragons.

## History

Intrigued by the prospect of the NerveGear, Bethesda Softworks approached Argus and asked them to make a Virtual Reality MMORPG for them, which was later named Sword Art Online. The game suffered from a problematic development cycle. Due to the complexity of the game, it had two delays, and even then, the game was not ready. Kayaba Akihiko, the creator of the NerveGear and head programmer of the game, eventually ran out of funding and reached out to numerous advertisers and filled the game's beautiful scenery with their ads in order to keep working on the game. He also implemented necessary DLC extensions, such as AdBlockers, to make sure the game made a big enough profit.

With Bethesda unwilling to give Kayaba another extension, Kayaba proceeded to work for three weeks without sleep in order to get the game released on time. But this resulted in the game having numerous glitches, one of which caused the NerveGear to overheat and, apparently, caused the players' heads to explode when they died in game, killing them in real life.

Due to his lack of sleep, Kayaba thought the best option would be to remove the ability to log out of the game and pretend this was all intentional, as he thought it would result in better reviews than a game which killed players by accident. Thus SAO became a death game with 10,000 participants, with the numbers decreasing rapidly.

At some point, during what was now called the SAO disaster, the game's servers were bought by a company called RECT Progress, in order to keep the players alive, as Argus was on the brink of collapse due to their involvement in the incident. This gave the company a boost in public image and technological superiority over other companies in their industry.

Eventually, two years and one day after the game's launch, the game was cleared prematurely by a player named Kirito when he defeated Kayaba in combat. As a result, the game was deleted from the servers and the players were logged out of the game, leaving the total death count at 3,853 deaths.

## Setting

Sword Art Online was set it a multi-layered castle in the sky called Aincrad. According to the dark elven legends, in the long-distant past, the world was split into the forest elven kingdom Kales'Oh, the dark elven kingdom Lyusula, the human Alliance of the Nine kingdoms, the underground realm of the dwarves, and various other groupings. While there were skirmishes at times, the land was at peace.

But one day, a hundred varied regions from around the world were cut into circles from the earth and summoned up to the sky. The circles were under three kilometres across at the smallest and over ten kilometres at the largest. They were stacked in a conical formation to form a gigantic floating fortress a hundred floors tall.

The castle held its countless towns and villages, mountains, forests and lakes, and never again returned to earth. The magic powers that caused the old civilization to flourish were lost, and with them, the nine kingdoms of man. Most towns reverted to maintaining themselves, and the floors lost contact with one another. A great length of time passed. Legends and tales of the Great Separation still existed among the two elf races, the only people to keep their kingdoms intact from that fateful time.

## Features

* Full in game immersion.
* A Psychiatrist AI that monitors and takes care of any psychological problem players may have or develop.
* A Narrator function that narrates the players' lives.
* 100 Floors to explore.
* Thrilling combat.
* Towns are Safe Zones that prevent players from being killed while they are in them.
* Different minigames, like Bejeweled.
* Numerous stats based on your real life self that you can improve on.
* Uncountable monsters to fight.
* Numerous quests to complete.
* Vast amounts of optional Dungeons.
* Plentiful amounts of items to find and collect.
* Players can form their own Guild.
* Various sub skills that players can learn, including blacksmithing and cooking.
* Players can get married, resulting in a unique ability to share inventory space.
* An awesome rhythm-based crafting system.
* A secret list of requirements that rewards a player with a unique skill.
* Players can have virtual sex with each other.

## Known Glitches, Errors and Problems

* When players die in game, the NerveGear overheats and kills the players in real life.
* NPCs don't have restricted quest zones, allowing players to steal them.
* One of Illfang's sentinels didn't have a roar.
* The option to dissolve a party is misspelled as "disolve".
* The Searching Skill burns people's eyes if it's used too long.
* Floor 59 has a glitch where, if a player teleports while falling, the teleport animation gets switched with the death animation, making it look like the player has died.
* The crafting system is an over-the-top rhythm game, which apparently caused seizures.
* If players eat a rare food item, called the Ragout Rabbit Meat, with the help of a master cook, every other food item will taste horrible in comparison.
* Teleport Crystals don't work half the time, sometimes distorting the players into horrific monstrosities.
* The Skull Reaper dies on its own and fails to trigger the door out of its Boss Room to open upon its death.

## Reference

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Episode 11
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Episode 1
3. ↑ Episode 12