[sinner0]

Originally Posted by Aphrah

Yes, it did. Kirito pointed out that the male : female ratio decreased significantly after being reverted to their true selves.

Oh, right. I forgot about that. But...if that is that case, Kirito's story about player not being able to choose opposite gender is invalid? I don't know if I can post this here but here is the part of chapter 16.5 about gender part.

Warning. Slightly R-rated.

Spoiler for Excerpt from Chapter 16.5:

There is a somewhat interesting story concerning all of this (I apologize for digressing, but)... When SAO was under development, the Argas company had an internal closed alpha test phase during which time they reasoned that since players would have no use for genitals, it would not be necessary to objectify it.

However, in reality they found that most of the male testers would experience a certain amount of severe anxiety. Even so, while there was no problem when playing for several hours. When they conducted consecutive tests over a 48 hour period, they found that most of the male testers who attended this trial period were unable to stand not having their genitals and gave up. So it was from the Beta testing phase that the genital parts were implemented out of a sense of necessity. It seems that this was also part of the reason why SAO players were not allowed to change their characters’ genders.

So, unless I read it wrong, avatar/character gender cannot be opposite of the player is what Kirito trying to say, right?