Why 10,000 Players?
I apologise in advance if this is in fact a question answered somewhere that I've not found, but it occurred to me recently. Sword Art Online released to the world on November 6th 2022 to a rather small player size of only ten thousand players. For a brand new MMORPG on a revolutionary console with full dive technology, those seem like very small numbers. Has Reki Kawahara ever given a reason for why he went with that number? It just seems so strange to me.
Because I wasn't sure how fair a question this would be to ask when the book was published in 2009, I looked up MMO player figures for that year and whilst I can't be certain as to the accuracy of such figures, Googling and looking around told me that at the year of SAO's publication, World of Warcraft had around 11.5 million players, with the lower end of things seemingly at around 250,000. Granted though, to my knowledge these games are more global releases and I think SAO was initially released in Japan specifically. I could be wrong on that, though, I haven't double-checked. If I'm right on that, however, is that the reason?
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Either sources elaborating on the reason for this or just headcanons or theories, I'm happy to hear either. I'm really curious if this has stuck its way into anyone else's minds.