What would you do if life were a video game? Set in the year 2022, Sword Art Online (SAO) is a Mass Multiplayer Virtual Online Roleplaying Game (MMVORG), where you put on a helmet, and the surroundings around you evolve into a video game world. Taylor is a small town girl, quiet and shy, who doesn’t interact with her friends in the real life much. Her only means of escape – is Sword Art Online, where she plays as a boy character as a beta-tester. Why? Boys typically play video games more than girls, and Taylor decided that people wouldn’t play much attention to her if she were a guy. But then, things go too far on the public launch of the game. The game creator not only removes Taylor’s mask as a girl, but he also removes the “logout” option, the player’s only means of escape from the real world. Things are real. To Taylor, SAO is exactly like the real world, and she has to learn to face her fears as she makes new friends. But what she fails to realize in time, the most important thing in the game. If your HP dies in SAO, your character dies in the game, thus, ending your life in the real world. And Taylor has to figure out, just how real that is.

Survival in MMOs is a funny thing. It doesn't matter how badly you want it, or how hard you try, it can't be done alone. Especially when the MMO is Sword Art Online. The virtual reality video game in which if you die in game, you die in real life too. It doesn't help either when the most dangerous band of player killers want you dead. It'll be hard enough to survive, but retaining sanity is another task entirely...