Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-36649908-20181201214052/@comment-35248429-20181204010430

Ryanq214 wrote: Gsimenas wrote: In the light novel, yes. In the web novel (the version of the story before it became published), Eugeo was late. thanks for all the answers. I'm glad they changed the web novel / cannon version so they were saved before anything happened. Like I said I hate when something like that happenes in the story, and the girls seem like nice characters --especially tiese.

Reimu Daze wrote: Also worth mentioning that web novel is not canon, though this is the case with pretty much all light novels that came from web novels, they are kinda like pilots. But yeah they were rescued before anything, Frenica Szeski was also not raped, she was asked to give massages on her underwear, which is still messedup. Also thanks reimu, the first response to my question made me wonder what the difference is between the light novel and web novel. So if you could answer to be clear on my end ---the web novel is basically like a rough draft and an unfinished/unfinalized version of the light novel? Reki Kawahara originally wrote SAO for a novel contest. He exceeded the page limits and didn't submit it. Instead he kept writing it and putting it on his website. When he won the contest with Accel world years later the publisher decided to publish both Sword art online and Accel world. The original web content was removed and published as actual novels.

The first few novels are largely the same as the web novel bar a few major exceptions like Asuna killing Kuradeel. After volume 5 the novels became full rewrites.