[quote=@Burning Kitty]
The movie I’m pretty sure indirectly mentioned levels. Once I’m pretty sure they referred to avatar death as resetting to zero and I know the wade told his aunt’s boyfriend to level up.
[/quote]

There are definitely no levels in the Oasis. I'll stake my reputation on it.

When you die your account "zeroes out". Basically you lose everything, your entire inventory and every single gold coin and you are given an essentially fresh character again. That's why people explode into piles of loot when they die.

I'm unsure whether it actually deletes your account or not, as in death is an actual permadeath and that character is just gone; accounts are free anyway so it wouldn't make much difference.

The "level up" line was just a general gaming reference I'm fairly sure. Wade was just telling him to "git gud scrub".

[quote=@Burning Kitty]
Ready Player One or unique setting?
[/quote]

What would the difference be, aside from the lack of references to canon characters or events? Would the game world function differently, would the real world be less of a dystopia?