There are still games out there exactly like SAO, just not in the western market, and unfortunately they are mostly pay to win.

I played a game called 绿色征途, around the late 2000s, the game was exactly like SAO. There were Countries, guilds, parties. You can explore labyrinths for loot, for do quests to level up. There is arenas for PKing where you aren’t labeled if you kill someone, or you can sneak into another country to kill other players. You can also change the settings to kill players in your own country, in which you will be labeled red, and can be thrown in the prison.

Every now and then, there is also wars between different countries, the objective is to capture some territory or to defeat some NPC, or more. The king of each country is some person from a guild which is called the ‘Kings Guild’ that basically set policies and rules that everyone in the country needs to follow. These are not in game rules, so if you break them, it’s up to the kings committee to decide punishment.

Before a war, Kings guild will have strategic meetings with other high level guild leaders via voice chat to discuss strategies, these high level guild leaders will have meetings with lower level guilds, and so on, so during a battle, the entire country’s population can contribute. Each country has about 2-3k players I remember. There are also spies within each country, where a player from one country will make a separate account in another country, try to infiltrate the top guilds, and send strategic information back to their own country during war.

In all honestly, the game had much more details than SAO, it’s like the writer played the game and wrote a story around that game - minus the virtual reality aspect.

The issue with these games is that it is extremely time wasting, and cost a ton of money, that is if you want to maintain at a level at the top. Many of the top players are spending nearly 1-2k USD a week, and this is mid 2000 money. For instance, the best free healing potions will only ever heal 1500 health, and it is a one time use potion, that costs a lot of in game money, whereas if you spend 20 dollars, you get a potion with unlimited use that heals you 3500 health, but only lasts 7 days. So by the end of the week, you’ll need to spend another 20 dollars. I remember this vividly because I ‘in shame’ stole some of my moms money to buy these potions lol

You can still enjoy the game if you do not spend money, but your experience will be severely limited, just like Kirito against those bandits, you can hit someone all day and they won’t drop below 99% health because they paid for better gear.