Best MMO Themed Literature

Which MMO based Literature is best?

  • Legendary Moonlight Sculptor

    Votes: 1 33.3%

  • Ready Player One

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Play to Live

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Sword Art Online

    Votes: 2 66.7%
  • Total voters
    3
  • Poll closed .
Kaitzilla

Kaitzilla

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Which one is the best? :king:

The choices are:

1) Legendary Moonlight Sculptor (Korea)
A love letter to all the hardcore Korean gamers who play themselves to death. Huhuhu

2) Ready Player One (USA)
A love letter to 80's pop culture.

3) Play to Live (Russia)
Crazy awesome as only Russians can pull off.

4) Sword Art Online (Japan)
So Japanese that it hurts!
Couldn't find a decent translation, so I linked the anime instead. Click on the "oldest" tab up top to see Season 1 episodes.


Ark (Korea) and .hack//sign (Japan) didn't make the cut, sorry! :cry:
 
I am trying to get my head around seeing MMO and literature in the same sentence. This despite being a writer of game based fiction myself. Character flaw on my own part I suppose.
 
I don't read books.
 
None of the above crap.

Morrison's The Invisibles is a way, way better examination of multiplayer games than any of that crap.
 
I'm glad I managed to quit MMOs. The games tend to be great, but the other players ...

Single player for life.
 
So this is literature with the major theme being that the people in the story play massively multiplayer online games?

Weird, seems very niche. Seems like the books could be about anything as well - sparkly vampires, robots, Fabio style romance, horror, inrigue, mystery, etc. As such it occurs to me that it's better to just call these books "sci-fi" (I'm guessing they all take place in the future) and ignore the MMO moniker altogether. Although I do see how it might make sense from a marketing POV. MMO is IN. My grandma plays MMO bingo.
 
warpus said:
So this is literature with the major theme being that the people in the story play massively multiplayer online games?...
Click to expand...

Yes, that's right.
I forget which book it was in, but one of the characters said "there's nothing more boring than watching someone play an MMO". :lol:

Thankfully, a good author can fit a couple hundred great ideas to make a novel about someone playing an insanely huge/complicated/intricate MMO.

Here's some more if you are looking for them.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/37420.MMORPG
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2075678-mmorpg-books


People can laugh at the 50 billion hours humanity put into World of Warcraft, but imagine a book about an MMO 1000's of times better than WOW?
Somebody will enjoy reading it.
 
Sword Art Online is terrible. I mean I can't speak about the books, but the anime you linked is just dreadful. First episode had amazing potential, but then the subsequent episodes just squander it with a non stop barrage of mediocrity. And then the second arc happened, making me desperately wish for a return to the unoffensive mediocrity of the first arc. Haven't even bothered trying to watch S2 and honestly don't think I ever will, I've wasted enough of my life on this.

For MMO based anime I've heard good things about Log Horizon but I haven't watched it yet myself.
 
Kaitzilla said:
but imagine a book about an MMO 1000's of times better than WOW?
Somebody will enjoy reading it.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's true, but I encounter so many amazing fantastical ideas in the sci-fi I read. So it seems weird to me to wrap an entire genre around just 1 such idea. I mean, I get why - MMOs are huge, they make a lot of money, but it seems really weird to me that such a novel genre would be viable. If you were to ask me, I'd have said that random sci-fi fans might pick up such books - but that they wouldn't stick to that subgenre and would move on.. and that people who play MMOs don't really read. But shows you what I know!
 
Snow Crash...?
 
Otherland
A bit outdated and waaaay too long but still important...
 
Wolfbeckett said:
Sword Art Online is terrible. I mean I can't speak about the books, but the anime you linked is just dreadful. First episode had amazing potential, but then the subsequent episodes just squander it with a non stop barrage of mediocrity. And then the second arc happened, making me desperately wish for a return to the unoffensive mediocrity of the first arc. Haven't even bothered trying to watch S2 and honestly don't think I ever will, I've wasted enough of my life on this.

For MMO based anime I've heard good things about Log Horizon but I haven't watched it yet myself.
Click to expand...

Mind elaborating more? Like, say, is the romance really just more otaku wish fullfillment? Is the hero unlikeable? etc. I heard SAO is a very polarizing series, with folks either saying it's the greatest and deepest anime since [insert anime people usually consider great and deep], or a load of pandering trash. Haven't seen it myself and am not bothering to, but my suspicion has always been the latter is more likely.
 
cybrxkhan said:
Mind elaborating more? Like, say, is the romance really just more otaku wish fullfillment? Is the hero unlikeable? etc. I heard SAO is a very polarizing series, with folks either saying it's the greatest and deepest anime since [insert anime people usually consider great and deep], or a load of pandering trash. Haven't seen it myself and am not bothering to, but my suspicion has always been the latter is more likely.
Click to expand...

So once again I'll start by saying that I haven't watched the second season, everything I'm about to say applies to season 1 only.

The first season is broken into two main arcs.

The first arc is about the players of a new MMO being trapped there, it's a VR type of thing and the creator of the game set it up so that they can't log out, if they die in game the VR headset administers a lethel shock to their brain, and if someone on the outside tries to remove the headgear, again a lethal shock is administered. If anyone beats the final boss of the game, everyone who is still alive at that point is set free. A promising if not exactly original premise for a story.

And then the first 2/3 of the arc is generic girl-of-the-week boredom, where the overpowered with no weaknesses hero saves a different moe blob damsel in distress every week with zero advancement of the main plot. The last third blazes through the main plot in record time, so by the conclusion you're left feeling that it was a rushed hack job.

Then the second arc happens. In the second arc, the one character from the first arc who is actually somewhat interesting (the main romance interest, Asuna), gets demoted to damsel-in-distress status, whereas in the first arc she was a competent, strong character in her own right. The second arc is all about our favorite overpowered hero entering another VR MMO (this one isn't a life or death situation) to save her from the evil bad guy that is holding her captive. Boring all on it's own, but then, to add insult to injury, the second arc introduces by far the whiniest, most annoying character in the entire series. That's right, it's the required-by-all-modern-anime (especially those that are adapted from Light Novels, the cess pits of anime adaptations) brocon little sister character.

Don't watch it, seriously, you'll hate yourself if you do.
 
Wolfbeckett said:
So once again I'll start by saying that I haven't watched the second season, everything I'm about to say applies to season 1 only.

The first season is broken into two main arcs.

The first arc is about the players of a new MMO being trapped there, it's a VR type of thing and the creator of the game set it up so that they can't log out, if they die in game the VR headset administers a lethel shock to their brain, and if someone on the outside tries to remove the headgear, again a lethal shock is administered. If anyone beats the final boss of the game, everyone who is still alive at that point is set free. A promising if not exactly original premise for a story.

And then the first 2/3 of the arc is generic girl-of-the-week boredom, where the overpowered with no weaknesses hero saves a different moe blob damsel in distress every week with zero advancement of the main plot. The last third blazes through the main plot in record time, so by the conclusion you're left feeling that it was a rushed hack job.

Then the second arc happens. In the second arc, the one character from the first arc who is actually somewhat interesting (the main romance interest, Asuna), gets demoted to damsel-in-distress status, whereas in the first arc she was a competent, strong character in her own right. The second arc is all about our favorite overpowered hero entering another VR MMO (this one isn't a life or death situation) to save her from the evil bad guy that is holding her captive. Boring all on it's own, but then, to add insult to injury, the second arc introduces by far the whiniest, most annoying character in the entire series. That's right, it's the required-by-all-modern-anime (especially those that are adapted from Light Novels, the cess pits of anime adaptations) brocon little sister character.

Don't watch it, seriously, you'll hate yourself if you do.
Click to expand...

I'll say this about Sword art Online- I liked the Light Novels. Asuna is interesting and Kirito trying to come to terms with the fact that he lives in a fantasy sim now and coming terms to the fact that there are good things about living in SAO is an interesting plot to read. I like his struggle to readjust to the real world once he's out. And in the VR MMO, Asuna is still in a damsel in distress situation, but she does actively try to break herself out. In fact she is close to succeeding by the time Kirito manages to rescue her. It does decline in quality as the story drags on, but better than the manga, which is a streamlined version removed of much of the flavor. I'm saying that as a fan of the manga, but if it hadn't been my first manga ever, I might not like it as much as I do now. and the anime sounds horrible.
 
Wolfbeckett said:
[... stuff ...]
Click to expand...

Hmm. More or less what I've heard from others who didn't like the show, makes sense. It appears some fans were touting the MC as a subversion of the usual generic boring dude that appears every now and then... except I've gotten the impression that, as you said, the method used to make the MC "interesting" is to make him an invincible proto-Mary Sue-esque thing. I guess it's akin to people trying to subvert sexist depictions of damsels in distress by making superpowered invincible bland amazonian women instead. I've never liked that sort of thing, anyways, felt the same with people who think deconstructions automatically make something good.

As for brocon characters... my tolerance for that is probably better than some, but only if everything else is alright. I think moeblobs can be done well, as much as some might disagree, but rarely does that ever happen and I have a better chance of winning the lottery.
 
I personally liked most of the SAO anime and the manga but once the second arc started I was like "When will this end already please stop."
I finished it mostly because I wanted to see the characters after the whole incident but the ending was poorly written at best.
Currently reading the manga, not bad so far.
 
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