Sword Art Online (Neji)

Sword Art Online (ソードアート・オンライン, Sōdo Āto Onrain, abbreviated as SAO) is the first of a series of Virual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (abbreviated as VRMMORPG), produced by for the  with  heading the development. The setting of SAO is on a floating 100-floor castle known as .

Background
Prior to official launch, «Sword Art Online» Closed Beta was available to 1,000 beta testers for a one month period from August to September 2022. During that period, «Sword Art Online» was lauded as an incredible experience, and it received extremely positive reviews despite the actual difficulty of the game. After the Closed Beta Testing ended, the Beta Testers were given the opportunity to pre-order the game.

Only 10,000 copies were printed in the first batch of the game, and online sales sold out within seconds. Hard-core gamers waited in line for days to purchase the first few hard copies from many stores.

«Sword Art Online» officially started server service at 13:00 on November 6, 2022, and obtained infamy when the creator succeeded in trapping 10,000 people in the game and making it so that death in-game would mean actual death for the player. During the two-year period the game remained active, «Sword Art Online» evolved into an innovative yet complex society of individuals with mixed feelings about the possibility of clearing the game.

Psychologically, many players experienced extreme despair, grief, insanity, and sadness during the course of the death game. Of the total 3,853 deaths, over half occurred in the first month of SAO. Combined with lethal dungeon traps and bosses, Player Killing (PKing), crime, suicides, a slowly dwindling population, and increasing difficulty on the higher floors, the prospects generally looked very bleak. The game was supposed to be prematurely ended after Shiota defeated Heathcliff on the 75th floor but a server-wide glitch occurred that corrupted the system and some sword skills. The 76th floor was opened and the players quickly realized that they would have to clear all the way to the 100th floor as planned. However, with the glitch, a new area which Professor Kayaba was developing was opened. That area is the Hollow Area. With it, Hollow Missions came into being as well as esoteric sword skills, more commonly known as arcane skills.

System
The game operates similarly to most MMORPGs with a level system and eventual skill mastery with some limits placed on it. The entire game is monitored and maintained by the «», which self-corrects any problems.

While the Sword Art Online mainframe is capable of incredible graphical and rendering capacities, it does not actually render the entire environment in full detail unless a certain region is specifically observed by a player. SAO uses a «Digital Focusing System», which brings out the finer details of an object only when a player shows interest and focuses their visual field on it. This reduces the strain on the SAO mainframe processor, which, despite its high-performance power, is incapable of rendering all marginal details of the environment simultaneously. This effectually produces the illusion that the SAO graphical and VR experience is incredibly detailed. However, the SAO mainframe has a difficult time rendering the sensation of water in baths or showers.

Virtual Reality Experience
As a complete virtual reality MMORPG, the SAO system is capable of rendering the entire Aincrad environment with incredible realism. By stimulating nerves in the brain, it is possible to taste food, feel the wind and weather, move one's body, and live in SAO as if it were an alternate reality. However, there are several major differences that set the Sword Art Online environment apart from the real-world experience.

First, no pain is actually felt in any situation. As a result, players can undergo severe injuries and still only feel an uncomfortable tingling sensation. Second, there is no blood; in its place are red virtual gashes that are seen in the place of injuries. Third, Sword Skills allow attacks to be performed with normally impossible speed, dexterity, and power, based on the player's stats. Fourth, there are some everyday actions that simply are not done in the SAO world, such as changing clothes by hand or attempting to wield two items at the same time.

While playing Sword Art Online, players still feel fatigue and hunger, regardless of the state of their actual bodies. As a result it is an absolute necessity for all players to eat and sleep within the game; however, there is never a need to go to the bathroom.

Death or deletion in the game is visualized by fragmentation into thousands of polygon shards. All monsters, items, and players that have their HP or durability reduced to zero, disappear and fragment into polygons in such a fashion.

The SAO system generally censors mature content, such as sexual intercourse, but it is possible for players to disable the sensor if «Moral Code Removal» is selected in the options menu. Selecting this option also temporarily increases the quantity of tactile data, but this effect only manifests itself when all the equipment of a player is removed.

Global Setting
Sword Art Online is set in Aincrad, a floating castle of 100 floors. At its base, it is approximately ten kilometers in diameter, and it is completely rendered in all dimensions. Because of the nature of Aincrad as a floating castle, there are no invisible barriers or no-access regions at the edges of the map. Aincrad's perimeter is merely surrounded by guard rails that can be jumped off of, but any player doing so will be deemed as dead after two minutes of falling.

Each individual floor has its unique climate, geography, fauna, and environment. However, each floors shares the principle of having a Labyrinth Tower that connects to the next floor, as well as the principle that the top of each tower is guarded by a Floor Boss, which has to be defeated before players can advance to the next floor. Some floors are known for being fairly cold, while others are known for flowers and forests. Most floors on Aincrad have a theme.

Physical Environment
In Sword Art Online, physical surroundings such as walls, buildings, monuments, and major features are considered "Immortal Objects". An error beep and a notification will sound if immortal physical objects are struck, even if by accident.

All non-immortal objects have a «durability» value. Durability is an important feature of Sword Art Online, and is a measure of how much an item or object has been used (similar to HP), and how much it will last before it expires and shatters into polygon fragments. Clothes, equipment, weapons, potions, crystals, and food are all subject to gradual loss of durability.

More often than not, players must invest significant resources into repairing and buying equipment. Many characters carry extra back-up weapons into dungeons (Asuna in carries five rapiers in her inventory due to durability concerns in solo dungeon-hunting), others rely on merchants and smiths who regularly repair and upgrade equipment. Food always declines in durability with respect to time, and freshly prepared foods will disappear if not eaten soon enough. Merely dropping food can cause food to lose its durability and fragment into polygons.