Sword Art Online redefines bad

[Don]

There's a lot of bad or even horrible series I follow in the sense that there surely is a lot of people who watch the NASCAR just to see the crashes. But SAO now is like watching NASCAR for carwrecks and then seeing people actually die on live TV. It's not enough that it starts with a morality code that makes Light in Death Note like Martin Luther King Jr (4000 people died in making the ultimate MMORPG? Totally worth it and endorsed by the main characters). Or that after immediately after the first arc the main character suddenly has a sister-not-related-by-blood (TM) that is suddenly in interested in MMORPGs. The problem is that SAO is still, in theory, about MMORPGs. Without it, it'd probably just be a standard bottom of the barrel harem manga not worthy of attention, which is probably why it takes place in a MMORPG environment. I guess it's sufficient for the Japanese who clearly don't play real MMORPGs but it's ridiculous as a concept for the rest of the MMORPG playing world. If you look at even any forums casually you'll realize the guy-who-gets-all-the-girls type character in MMORPG are always people in high position (usually leader) in uberguilds. You'll never get all the girls for just being an unguilded super leet player. That's not how MMORPGs work. MMORPGs, in some sense, is the antithesis of the 'young hero who somehow does everything and gets all the girl' story, as it is the one environment where pulling something off like this is literally impossible. The 'lone wolf' player won't even be more popular than the guy that tells Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat.

I don't really care it's your usual harem/incest manga with some twisted morality that makes Death Note look normal, but the author shouldn't touch something he obviously doesn't have the slightest clue about in order to make an otherwise forgettable manga more popular. I can surmise it's only popular in Japan (not even China) precisely because every other country besides Japan actually plays modern MMORPGs (i.e. stuff that isn't FF14) to know that such a setting cannot possibly make any sense. The latest world seems to be modeled after Aion (PvP centric world involve people that can fly), and I think the author clearly doesnt know that Aion is known for its grindiness so instead of rescuing his girlfriend(s) who got abducted by the GMs, our hero will probably be grinding some mob for the 10000th time to get his next piece of epic armor. And while some people will say 'that sounds pretty boring' but if you're making a stuff about MMORPG, it should resemble MMORPGs. If the hero is playing a grind-a-thon MMORPG then he should be grinding stuff. I mean after all it's a manga so you can just skip the detail and say like 'after 5 years of grinding the same mobs I finally got my epic armor, now I can go rescue my girlfriend'. You should at least acknowledge which games you're borrowing from.

[Don]

Because one post isn't enough to describe how bad this is, here's more.

There's supposed to be this helmet thingy that you use that hooks you up to virtual reality to play these MMORPGs. Problem is if you try to remove this device it kills you, and if you die in the game it sends like a shockwave to kill you anyway. Now okay maybe the first guys who put it on without realizing they're putting on a death machine didn't notice and by then it was too late, but this machine has a 40% fatality rate (killed 4000 out of the 10000 guys on the server), and obviously while the users are in a coma playing this game people in the real world noticed that this device is what's killing the guys. So after the first game when people finally beat the game and can put the machine off, they can confirm it is indeed this VR helmet that's causing people to die.

And then this device is still being used for all the latest MMORPGs. If the Wiimote killed 40% of its users, Nintendo would cease to exist as a company. I mean people claim playing video games make you violent and kill people, and here you got this device used to play a game that actually kills you. I can see this technology going underground but there's no way a technology with 40% fatality rate can thrive in any non underground market (apparently they come out with a newer version of the helmet that's 'totally safe' that still kills you anyway). In fact, if this is supposed to have a MMORPG slant to it (yeah right), you can then continue the story about how the private server guys consist of freaks that host their own servers and continue to play with these devices that killed 40% of the server the first time it was invented. I can even see some people in real life might be crazy enough to strap on one of these helmets even knowing what it does.

There was this gaming manga I read a long time ago, it's like some 5 man party game and it comes with a note saying if you die in this game you die in real life too and something like if you can't beat the game by X days you die too. So one girl plays it and she died in game, and a few days later she died in real life, so the rest of the people are like "OMG this is real" and ended up channeling their inner gaming pro power to beat the game without dying. After they beat the game they found out it was programmed by the girl who died, and that nothing happens if you die in the game but the girl killed herself because she was terminally ill and want to see if her friends can summon their inner gamer to overcome this super duper hard game she made before would've died. I mean, if people believe the Madden curse, that's at least possible. I can see some legendary version of Ninja Gaiden or whatever being so hard, if you can't beat the game then the game beats you.

Honestly if you want to go the 'hardcore gaming' method, you pretty much always have to start with magic or just abducting the players and hold them at gun point to play this game (if you don't want to use magic). You could have an Illumnati-like organization that kidnaps say everyone on your WoW Server and moved them to a private island and tell them they got 5 years to beat Deathwing in a hardcore mode or everyone gets shot, and obviously everyone who dies in game gets shot in real life too. That's crazy but at least it seems possible, and it'd be interesting to think about how exactly would you approach something like this, even though surely the result ought to be 'no one can come close to beating Deathwing without dying', assuming waiting for the next 3 expansions for 3 level cap increases isn't an option (then again, that might take more than 5 years).