History Headscratchers / SwordArtOnline

** GGO has a pro scene. In fact it seems the pro-scene is more front-center than the casual scene. Both hardware and software company pay large sums for tournaments of e-sports IRL like SC2, ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'', CoD, so it's not at all weird. The International 2014 had a starting prize pool of 1.6m USD (the final ended up close to 11m USD). In fact 200k to 300k Yen a month, which is 2k to 3k USD, would be incredibly low for top gamers of popular games to be making IRL. SAO happened due to the vulnerability of [=NerveGear=]. ALO's incident caused no fatalities and importantly also only effected people using [=NerveGear=]. The situation given is that: a) Both dead players are Japanese. The jurisdiction would fall under the Japanese government. Meanwhile the gaming company is American. Without more concrete proof, the government is going to protect its citizens' privacy and protect the coperations (and individuals) from libel first, which leads to b) Amusphere is supposed to be 100% save. It doesn't have the power to damage the user's body. Both the Japanese government agent and Kirito admit the chance of it being an actual murder is 1% and are only looking into the case because of "a bad feeling". Saying the US government, or any government, would work on this case in its current form would make as much sense as saying they'd investigate a case of someone accusing you of blowing up a building in India with a hack (not a bomb or that you're part of an organization) but can not identify the program. Or taking to the police as evidence of kidnapping a blurry screenshot of someone that looks like a missing person in an MMORPG with customizable avatars, tens of thousands of players, and countless [=NPCs=]. It'd get laughed out.

** Because committing suicide during BoB doesn't free you from that constraint. I don't recall if the anime makes that clear, but the novel does. That's why everyone killed normally during BoB lies there with a funny little "DEAD" flag instead of de-rezzing and respawning. The player is basically stuck sitting there until it ends. Besides, there absolutely is an Alt-F4 equivalent, too. Several of them, in fact. To the point where Sinon almost ''accidentally'' logs out before Kirito calms her down. The no-logout rule isn't what keeps them from logging out, it's that they figure out the murderer is literally sitting next to Sinon in the real world that does. They're afraid that if she sees the culprit, she'll be killed regardless of whether Death Gun gets her or not. Thus they have to defeat Death Gun and hope the murderer leaves. Which he does.

* So, the light novel gives the prize money for winning the Bullet of Bullets tournament as 3 mega-credits and conveniently mentions that equates to 30,000 yen. Which seems to come down to something like - 300 dollars? Or you get sent a toy gun depending on your placement and if you chose so. Just for comparison, when somebody sees Kirito's avatar when logging in they offer him more money than that, and pay-to-play gamers buy items at many times that amount. Playing competitively seems to be able to earn a frugal lifestyle - but winning the BoB seems in comparison to have mostly a reputation reward. Bragging rights on MMO Tomorrow and a small sum - seems like it doesn't match up with the popularity of eSports, though I know the novel has been written quite a while ago. It seems to be in no correlation to the amount of money people have in-game or are willing to spend on it.

** Also, there's a general trust issue in there as well. A lot of players probably are (somewhat understandably) wary of teaming with anyone else, especially at the BoB level. They all have expensive, rare, desirable gear, and they might be afraid that an ally would either study them and use it against them later, or simply turn on them and take their stuff.

** This point is heavily elaborated on in the "SAO Progressive" series of light novels, and in a way that I find is extremely typical of Reki Kawahara, with a subtle retcon.(The enormous amount of retcons are not necessarily apparent to anime viewers as that version already includes many of the retcons.) During SAOP fantastic real-life food is available to players who seek it out, even though it's "cooked" by NPCs. The twist is that the food is typically themed after the level it is on and is often non-Asian, or specifically European cuisine. For example, only Asuna can identify the food on 7th floor as Greek as she was born into a rich family and had traveled to Europe before, name-dropping several places. In fact, the series is so chockful of {{food porn}} it puts the main series to shame in comparison, probably as a way to bring the Aincrad experience to life. (Besides, it's a character trait of Kirito's to be permanently hungry.) It is also mentioned that while the food is actually really good, Kirito actually would gladly trade it for food that reminds him of fast food staples he considers comfort food, or for some traditionally prepared fish. Consider the level designers - why put something in that anyone could have just by logging out (and compare to their work) when they can both increase immersion and base their choices on something real so they don't have to start from scratch? IIRC, this contradicts Kawahara's earlier writings on the topic, something he unashamedly does and then pretends in future writings it has always been this way. (Like SAOP plot points have been incorporated into side stories and the mainline even though they contradict earlier mainline novels.)

* There will be information flowing through the ethernet cable connecting the Nervegear to the internet. Since there is a grace period for being disconnected from the internet, it would be quite possible to connect a computer between the Nervegear and the wall, and have it pass along the signal. Once you can tap into the signal, you can observe it or even change it. This opens up a line of communication. You can have an alert pop up in the player's inbox, and read what the player outputs. You could even create a new account and have a computer pretend to be a Nervegear, while really being driven by a regular game controller. That way, a person can play the game without the disadvantages of the Nervegear,(Leaving the computer logged in), and communicate with players.

* That all ten thousand (or very close to that) trapped players were successfully transported to hospitals raises so, so many questions for me. I can think of explanations for some of those, but here's one I can't figure out: The NerveGear helmets are shown to connect to the internet by cable. How could the players be moved without breaking that connection?

[[folder: Why didn't anyone call a expert to alter the circuits on the NerveGear so the battery can't power the microwave transmitter, thus stopping people's brains from being fried?]]
* Ex-actly what i wrote in the folder title. Nobody, absolutely nobody realized that given enough time, expertise and care, a engineer could alter the circuits and stop the NerveGear battery from activating the transmitter? Seriously? And i'm not just talking about the combined numbers of low hundreds of thousands of parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins...(if we count friends that number could be on the high hundreds of thousands. Heck, counting acquinttaces it could be about a million even. Counting the people who didn't know the victims but were worried and were trying to figure out a way to help them...it's a god damn ninety percent of Japan.)i'm also talking about the fucking Japanese government, which is highly competent, at least IRL. Also, where's the japanese government's supercomputers working to stop the NerveGear's signals? Where are the presumably millions of technofreaks thinking up ways to disable the NerveGear? Where's the own engineers offering their help? Where's the company who created the NerveGear trying to help instead of just shutting down like they did on the actual anime? WHERE's ANYONE WITH HALF A BRAIN?

** Also keep in mind that majority if not all of the SAO players are from Japan and [[WeAllLiveInAmerica Japan's Health Care System is NOT the same the United State's]]. By law, everyone taking up residency in Japan is required to have some sort of health insurance either through Employees' Health Insurance or by the National Health Care Insurance. Kayaba Akihiko probably even made sure that prior to purchasing a Nerve Gear, the patron needed to have proof that they're insured. And thank God could this didn't take place in the United States where the government there has no problem letting 45,000 people die each year because they couldn't afford health insurance.

** Actually, IIRC, Kirito in particular went through two months of rehab... '''for two years of being in a coma'''. Ask someone who studies medicine-- atrophy for two years requires years of rehab just to get back to par. At the absolute very least, it takes more than two months. But, this isn't so much a plot hole as it is CriticalResearchFailure.

* Seriously, here we have one of the largest hostage situations in human history and its based around being stuck in a computer. Hell, even Kirito was able to hack Sword Art Online WHILE INSIDE THE GAME! ALso, the fact that it took 2 YEARS for the people to be free. I understand that it would take time to free the people in SAO, but still, THIS IS THE LARGEST HOSTAGE SITUATION IN HUMAN HISTORY! Governments would be involved. A combination of civilian and governmental hackers and computer experts should have been able to free the people of SAO before Kirito ended the event. Its understandable of the whole "Its a story, so there is suspense of disbelief" but this is a rather large suspense of disbelief.

** You must think SAO's cybersecurity is a joke. First of all, unless the people working on that were a bunch of morons, the NerveGears and the game would most likely be using strong end-to-end encryption. This would make it very difficult to just send messages to the players' inboxes, or tamper in any other way with their connections. And who knows what would happen if people did attempt such tampering? With players' lives at risk, who would try it? As for creating new accounts, if anyone could do that, they could simply join the game as normal, perhaps using NerveGears altered to disable the brain frying capability (as long as any unused units were available, they could safely tamper with those), or Amuspheres once those came out. But Kayaba went to the trouble of keeping the existing players from logging ''out'', so he would of course have disallowed new people logging ''in''.

* So the mirror in SAO is supposed to reformat your avatar's appearance to look exactly like your IRL one, right? We totally see that with Kirito, Klein, Asuna, and just about everybody else... except Liz, who for some reason, is a [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair rose-haired]] in-game, but is a brunette IRL. She has this difference with no real explanation (at least in the series). Does the Light Novel have an explanation for this? Is it that her hair was dyed when she logged in, and just wore off before we see her at school? Is it that she found some in-game hair dye between the first episode and the time we first see her? Is it a production error? If you can get away with red heads like Asuna and Klein, why not Liz? Sort of just bugs me that everybody looks exactly like their mirrored avatars IRL, except for Liz.