User blog comment:Arkan421/Character Concept/@comment-24281887-20180525231013/@comment-24260323-20180526022558

I was also considering a few possibilities to work around games being sold out like bootleg/pirated copies in some shady Russian/Yakuza black market, or something similar.

An alternative would be the player deciding to stay at the bottom floors and just quit for a year or so despite their friend continuing on to find a way out.

The story only really begins either when:

A) the player finds out that people are dying in-game and IRL from Day 1, and wants to enter the game to save their friend, and spends the next year to get a ticket into SAO through less than legal means. When they get in, they eventually (through the skin of their teeth and a bit of luck) get past the first few floors to find out their friend is a PKer.

B) player and friend are both in there from Day 1, but the player decides to stay in the lower floors while the friend continues on without them. Eventually, the player hears news that their friend has become a PKer, and this causes him to decide to continue on one year late.