Log Horizon - Episode 18 Discussion / Poll

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Games don't suddenly go from keyboard and mouse to full-blown hyper-realistic VR at the release of an expansion pack. The ludicrously high software upgrade aside, it being VR would demand an entirely different kind of hardware first.

To which part are you referring? The upper part or the theory in the spoilertags?
Because the latter kinda excludes VR.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

To which part are you referring? The upper part or the theory in the spoilertags?
Because the latter kinda excludes VR.

The upper part.

[AC-Phoenix]

Well the focus of that post is more the part about the A.I's than the VR,

What I wanted to say is basically that it is like Shiroe also hinted in the first episode: An expansionpack can change the entire game.
Sometimes it reworks graphic and other times it does changes to A.I. or Engine

Regarding VR, well we don't know from were we can start to speculate.
Personally I guess the best VR the LH Universer currently has is something close to Sony's VR 'helmet' or occulus Rift, thus 2 minimonitors close to your eyes.

So yeah if its really VR the only option for it would be a secret government project, or them suddenly being sucked into Star Trek, as Shiroe's reaction to the smell was pretty much the same as the first time they entered 'the new holodecks' there.

[Ickarium]

I think you're forgetting the point.

These people played the game on /normal computers/. Unless someone somehow developed AI, Holodeck or Cyber-Interface Technology, and Teleporting simultaneously, it just ain't something like that.

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Ickarium

I think you're forgetting the point.

These people played the game on /normal computers/. Unless someone somehow developed AI, Holodeck or Cyber-Interface Technology, and Teleporting simultaneously, it just ain't something like that.

According to Shiroe the last thing he remebered before being trapped was the second day of the expansion pack - so in theory someone could have abducted them all and locked into an interface.
AI is less of a problem tbh, their interactions could easily be pre-programmed according to possible reactions.
In fact they could as well be controlled by humans - It is notable that there is seemingly no GM online at all, or at least not contactable.

In theory you could also look at it like a detective mystery and take no scene outside the detective's observation as granted/real in the first place, but lets not go there its not a detective mystery(At least not until we get a subplot like the one in SAO).

[Sheba]

Someone abducting over tens of thousands of people? I think not even in the Cold War, you'd come up with a convincing cover up story to explain that many disappearances.

[Ickarium]

Pretty much. I think that unless it's something like 'Aliens Did It', we just won't get a VR-esque resolution to the story. At least the author has said in interviews he knows what happened, so hopefully there is resolution there. Eventually.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Sheba

Someone abducting over tens of thousands of people? I think not even in the Cold War, you'd come up with a convincing cover up story to explain that many disappearances.

Tens of thousands in Japan only, god knows how many more worldwide.

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by aohige

Tens of thousands in Japan only, god knows how many more worldwide.

I think the total amount wasn't even that high.

Though someone who can write an AI that is that responsive could probably pull something like that off too.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

I think the total amount wasn't even that high.

Though someone who can write an AI that is that responsive could probably pull something like that off too.

15k in akiba and 30k total in japan.

[SeijiSensei]

At the outset we hear that 30,000 players were on the Japan server when the Apocalypse occurred with tens of thousands of other players on servers in various countries.

The affected players could easily number in the hundreds of thousands.

[AC-Phoenix]

Which isn't much compared to a population of over 7 billion.

[SeijiSensei]

Well it's not like they'd be spread uniformly across the globe. More likely players tend to be concentrated in urban areas with good Internet connectivity. Given the show's conceit about the game's appeal, we might imagine thousands of players in cities like New York, London or Mumbai.

[Sute443]

For the situation to be the result of some massive VR project, there are quite a few conditions the mastermind would have to have fulfilled.

1. They must hire enough people to kidnap several hundred thousand people at the same time (I believe the number of total active subscribers to Elder Tales is supposed to be around 20 million, with 2 million in Japan, so if the ratio holds I'd expect there to be ~300,000 people trapped in total).

2. They must possess facilities capable of holding and caring for several hundred thousand people.

3. They must possess some incredibly advanced VR technology that was developed without the rest of the world knowing (because if any of the adventurers knew of someone with the kind of necessary VR, I think they would have been mentioned by now).

4. They must also either possess incredibly advanced AI technology (also developed in secret) or enough actors to play the parts of the People of the Land, each of whom is talented and dedicated enough to never slip up or feel guilt.

5. Absolutely none of the people involved in the plan can be willing to come forward and spill the beans. The disappearance of several hundred thousand people (mostly from advanced countries) on the same day would surely get enough attention that surely someone would offer a massive reward for any evidence leading to the discovery of what happened to them, and even one betrayal would be enough to unravel the whole thing.

I personally find each of these conditions implausible enough on their own to go with "Theldessia is real and they were summoned via magic," but to each his own. And of course, what really matters is what the author thinks would be plausible or implausible.

[Tenzen12]

Maybe they build huge space station with Star Trek like teleportation beams

[AC-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Sute443

For the situation to be the result of some massive VR project, there are quite a few conditions the mastermind would have to have fulfilled.

1. They must hire enough people to kidnap several hundred thousand people at the same time (I believe the number of total active subscribers to Elder Tales is supposed to be around 20 million, with 2 million in Japan, so if the ratio holds I'd expect there to be ~300,000 people trapped in total).

2. They must possess facilities capable of holding and caring for several hundred thousand people.

3. They must possess some incredibly advanced VR technology that was developed without the rest of the world knowing (because if any of the adventurers knew of someone with the kind of necessary VR, I think they would have been mentioned by now).

4. They must also either possess incredibly advanced AI technology (also developed in secret) or enough actors to play the parts of the People of the Land, each of whom is talented and dedicated enough to never slip up or feel guilt.

5. Absolutely none of the people involved in the plan can be willing to come forward and spill the beans. The disappearance of several hundred thousand people (mostly from advanced countries) on the same day would surely get enough attention that surely someone would offer a massive reward for any evidence leading to the discovery of what happened to them, and even one betrayal would be enough to unravel the whole thing.

I personally find each of these conditions implausible enough on their own to go with "Theldessia is real and they were summoned via magic," but to each his own. And of course, what really matters is what the author thinks would be plausible or implausible.

The A.I is only a problem if they are actually NPCs, rather than players pretending to be NPCs.
Of course there is also the possibility that...

Spoiler for theory about another possibility:

You become an 'NPC' once you died so often that you no longer remember the real world.

I still think of it as something like

Spoiler for Theory repeat:

Everyone is a programm, including the players, the latter are copies of brainwaves though.

Anyway regarding your 5th, in Episode 1 Naotsugu said that he logged in for the first time in a while Shiroe is very specific that he remembers everything up until the second day they were executing the update.

At least to me this sounds like Naotsugu having literally just logged in on the day everything happened, while Shiroe was added earlier (not saying he was aware of it though).
I might have simply misinterpreted(well moe like overinterpreted) what they said though.

[sinner0]

Well, I have a crack theory of my own. Elder Tales are actually the real world in the distant future and one of game developer are actually a time traveler (possibly the real Sage of Miral Lake) who travel back in time using special magic, A time-class Magic. He cast magic on the game, thus summoning the Adventurer in form of avatar, where player is actually controlling their avatar in the future from their pc. When he accumulated enough mana he cast another magic, which is Novasphere Pioneer, to send the player to their respective avatar in future. That would at least explain why the Lander were surprised that the robotic Adventurer suddenly became life-like in their perspective and vice versa.

As for why there is others races than human, my theory is that there is another World Fraction that occurred before the Golden Age, where the 3 races (Alvs, Dwarves, Elves) appear on Earth.

Like I have stated before, this is just a crack theory. I know that there are some situations that could refute this theory.

[ices]

Just to remind everyone that there exist this thread

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=123748

[aohige]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

Spoiler for Theory repeat:

Everyone is a programm, including the players, the latter are copies of brainwaves though.

Yeah, totally man, we all use brain-wave capturing mouse and monitor.
I mean who doesn't?