Most Asian MMORPGs fail because of the lack of interest from the western gaming population. Why? Because Asian games are usually created in a way that to get strong, it needs to be a grind fest. There will be a lack of instances, repeatable quests, and such... mostly just grinding monsters non-stop every day to gain a couple levels (if that).
If there was an invention similar to nerve-gear, I doubt that they would actually create a mirror of SAO (minus the trapped in the game) because it wouldn't gain many dedicated followers after the initial hype.
The 2nd part of the anime was not completely horrible, it just skipped too much of what the LNs said. Other than that, it wasn't too bad. The anime was rushed, each arc could've spanned 25 episodes each...