b4 SAO, there wasn't a good enough anime that tried to depict a mmo decently, there were all dumb hack.sign ****ty ****s. (now theres log horizon, that **** is pretty much a mmo anime, actually felt like they were playing everquest, it was amazing)
for the genre it's tops, for character development it could have been better, while kirito does a decent job of going through the paces, they really just said F- character development, and just up his skill to 11.
this anime also has the most side, sided characters around, anyone remember klein? nope he gets intro'd in eps 1 then shoe-horned in 10 eps later, if this is for story purposes (characters are not constant and might not be, b/c of the whole perma death) it does not work in a story driven anime where ppl look to characters to figure out wtf is going on. we can only look from kirito's POV for so long, and unfortunately he's not a fleshed out enough character.
it sounds negative, but it's not i give SAO a nice solid 7.5, soley b/c we're only invested in the main char kirito.
a more expansive focus on other characters like accel world, gets a nice8