Actually, that's nooot quite accurate? If anything, FullDive tech/VR continuing DESPITE SAO is probably the most realistic thing of the whole series, LMAO, is literally the most 'human' thing: First of all, just because the main focus is on teens/kids, you thinking that most players were children is wrong, if anything, and beyond gaming, adults were no doubt the biggest users of the technology and obviously the ones more interested in keeping it going for many reasons (Beyond games it was also used for simulations of all kinds of dangerous jobs, even military, medical treatment as we saw in Yuuki's arc, etc). And also, the literal thing that killed people, which was the Nerve Gear, WAS completely removed and destroyed and replaced by one that had to be factually proved to be unable to kill people at all, which is also the main reason why the next arcs/games could happen (And even with that it almost died if Kayaba hadn't given Kirito the Seed and he and Agil released it for free). So no, funnily enough, despite the many faults that SAO was, the fact that people got over the SAO incident and the technology kept being used/growing worldwide is probably the most realistic thing of it, like, when has humanity let one or two genocides stop it from still doing the same things, after all :3? This is that but less hardcore XP
I mean, Administrator actually indirectly DID confirm something like that, crazily enough: In one of her last talks of this last update, she literally told Kirito that while he couldn't change HIS destiny (So no matter what he does he WILL lose Asuna to Inoda), his choices CAN affect what happens to others. This seems to imply that Fujino may let the player get the choice of changing the destiny of one or more of the side-characters depending on how you have Kirito interact with them (Like I said, it felt surprisingly out of character yet interesting/unique for Liz to actually manage to 'tempt' Kirito, but checking in the rec. room you actually can AVOID that if you choose the boring/'in-character' options, which is a first in this game, before all options did was determine whether Kirito's "bars" went up or not :O)