Sword Art Online

[Buffalobiian]

Here's my problem. The huge amounts of exposition don't even explain major plot elements like whether or not Kirito is lying about having advanced very far in the game during the beta, which is (as far as I can tell) not intended to be ambiguous. You could assume he was telling the truth about his advanced knowledge and then you have to justify his random, pointless lie about only having advanced to floor eight. If you assume he is lying about his advanced knowledge and skill then it raises a whole bunch of other questions. Either way it makes him out to be a weird, lying asshole.

Kirito advanced to the 8th Floor in the beta like he says. There's no reason to lie about that here. The fact that he only managed to break through the first floor in the real SAO with a party means that the beta was significantly different and perhaps harder. He's been on the forefront ever since. He's not necessarily ahead of absolutely everyone else in terms of clearing floors - but he clears the same floors as the lead group (taking care of zones?) by being solo.. so he does the same shit alone while others do it in groups. He's superior.

@Ryll: Kirito hasn't changed overall too much, but it was about him going through phases of experiencing situations where his involvement helps people vs situations where his involvement was detrimental to people. I'll agree that in the end it was pretty much zero-sum.. though perhaps Kirito got a bit more of a confidence boost since the positive case happened later in time.

[Y]

Kirito advanced to the 8th Floor in the beta like he says. There's no reason to lie about that here. The fact that he only managed to break through the first floor in the real SAO with a party means that the beta was significantly different and perhaps harder. He's been on the forefront ever since. He's not necessarily ahead of absolutely everyone else in terms of clearing floors - but he clears the same floors as the lead group (taking care of zones?) by being solo.. so he does the same shit alone while others do it in groups. He's superior.

Here's the thing. None of that makes a lick of sense. If the beta was so hard why was the first floor more difficult on live? If he only made it to floor eight, why did he say he was the best player in beta? 8 out of 100 sounds like he sucks ass. The subsequent episodes certainly make it seem like he is aware of hazards on levels much higher than that due to having already completed them on the beta, and he says he knew about the boss's nodachi ability due to having fought enemies with that sword on a much higher level. The only way to explain that is if, like you said, he is off raiding with the top level teams entirely offscreen, which is what I would consider the meat of the story here, not him doddering around getting people killed in the newbie zone.

In fact, it really makes no sense for him to be any good at the game. MMORPGs are fundamentally social games. Games like WoW are extremely easy from the perspective of the amount of skill any given individual has to contribute to his role, and difficult in the sense that you must organize and coordinate efforts among many group members appropriately. It's literally impossible to be any good at it as a lone player. This game clearly requires raid combat to defeat even the simplest floor boss if you're appropriately leveled, so what he is actually doing in the initial episodes is power leveling alone and defeating raid bosses WAY below his level. That doesn't make him any good.

@ Dark Dragon: I don't care how this was presented in the book series. If the chronology was actually important to the development of the cast, it should have been preserved. If it wasn't (and it wasn't, being merely an artifact of how the first book was composed) then the changing plot should have accomodated some character growth instead of just assuming we all read the supplemental materials beforehand.

[Buffalobiian]

Kirito advanced to the 8th Floor in the beta like he says. There's no reason to lie about that here. The fact that he only managed to break through the first floor in the real SAO with a party means that the beta was significantly different and perhaps harder.

Here's the thing. None of that makes a lick of sense. If the beta was so hard why was the first floor more difficult on live? .

That's a typo on my part. I meant the beta was easier than the real deal.

[Y]

That's a typo on my part. I meant the beta was easier than the real deal.

The beta was undoubtedly much harder than live, relatively speaking. On live, permadeath means you can never wipe to learn an encounter or understand a boss's ability. If the game was as easy in beta as it was on live, presumably everyone would have had a huge advantage due to the lack of permadeath.

[Buffalobiian]

The beta was undoubtedly much harder than live, relatively speaking. On live, permadeath means you can never wipe to learn an encounter or understand a boss's ability. If the game was as easy in beta as it was on live, presumably everyone would have had a huge advantage due to the lack of permadeath.

The fact that after 1 month no one had cleared Floor 1, and that higher boss abilities trickled down to lower levels compared to the beta clearly suggests that the Live was harder than Beta.

[Y]

The fact that after 1 month no one had cleared Floor 1, and that higher boss abilities trickled down to lower levels compared to the beta clearly suggests that the Live was harder than Beta.

I'm purely talking about encounter difficulty in a design sense. Obviously the reason no one cleared Floor 1 is because they expected to be rescued, were refusing to participate, were playing SUPER cautiously so as not to die, etc, not because it was made harder from a design perspective. The change to the first boss didn't even make it harder, it just made it different from what they were expecting.