Quote Originally Posted by Buffalobiian View Post
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.