Location from Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara
Floor 1's starting city — where ten thousand players spawned, heard they were trapped, and had to decide whether to fight or give up.
The Town of Beginnings went from cheerful tutorial zone to refugee camp within hours of Kayaba's announcement. The central plaza, designed for ten thousand players to spawn into an exciting new game, became the site of mass panic, despair, and eventually, the slow organization of survival. Months into the game, the town is divided: the ground floors bustle with NPC commerce and the players who've chosen to grind and fight; the upper residential areas house thousands of players who've given up — sitting in rented rooms, waiting for rescue, slowly consuming their savings. The atmosphere is split between desperate activity and eerie stillness.
A massive medieval city built around a central plaza, with cobblestone streets, half-timbered buildings, NPC shops with colorful awnings, and a fountain in the main square. It looks like a charming RPG starter town — which is exactly what it is, except the players can't log out and the cute aesthetic is now permanent scenery for the worst experience of their lives.
Also known as: Town of Beginnings, Starting City