Talk:Timeline/@comment-75.177.90.95-20180402223746/@comment-34666853-20180618170410

If you mean the burger arc, haha, no. The burger arc wasn't just some cheap joke. It's what jumpstarted Log Horizon's unmatched world-building prowess. Because it wasn't just a burger. It was about jumpstarting a non-existent game economy, establishing new concepts, and planting the seeds of the idea that the possibilities extend beyond video game constraints. And it has since been the core of Log Horizon's world-building prowess: mixing and matching fixed, known, clearly defined MMORPG rules with real-world logic and a healthy helping of creativity to create a hybrid ever-evolving world, one of the few in anime that can go toe-to-toe with the best of the West, and is so fully intertwined with its videogame roots that it cannot exist without it.

And it starts with the simple burger. It builds its foundation from the simple fact establish by a simple burger: possibilities extend beyond video game constraints. The entire story is basically the author having a ball with twisting his established system into something ever more complicated and beautiful.

For example:

Thorn Bind Hostage is a simple spell. You cast a spell and the game engine wraps a target in magical vines. Every time an ally cuts one vine, it deals 1000 damage to the victim. Pretty straightforward spell from a squishy support class. But. But. But what if the support class uses it as a whip that deals 1000 damage per hit? You turn a squishy-ass support with virtually near zero solo damage output and make her one of the most terrifying DPS dealer in the entire game.

I'll just let Brandon Sanderson have the last word:

"A brilliant magic system for a book is less often one with a thousand different powers and abilities -- and is more often a magic system with relatively few powers that the author has considered in depth."