Not from the real world, just from my idea of a mmorpg. The site is still on vacation but I’ll add a few notes about random ideas.

Basically the world based on the Stormbringer’s setting is flat. Not flat because the men believe that but because it’s really flat. The world has borders, if you reach those borders you’ll see the “chaos” exactly as it has been described in the books. It will be also a very dangerous zone so it won’t be something common to see.

More or less the landmass is a big square. In the center there’s the most important place, Melnibone’. This isle will have a major role in the game and it will be another element aside Law and Chaos. Melnibone is a faction on its own, still near the Chaos. This race won’t be playable at the beginning because of this role and because of its power. They will be able to fly on dragons and dragons are cool and powerful. I have special plans about all this but I won’t explain them now. Just remember that in the center of the map there’s a very important isle, home of the most powerful race available in the world (think to Jedis, but they won’t be lame as in SWG).

Around the isle there’s the sea and it’s where piracy will happen. You’ll have here the dynamics about the commerce. Everything is real and not faked. You’ll need ships to transport goods from a place to another and I expect to build a full naval combat on a very big scale. Realistic as it’s technically possible. And tweaked around the “fun”, so no endless journeys to move a cargo from a part the world to the other.

Then you have the land at the margins of the sea. Each zone will have its style and it will go from a tropical setting to enormous and strange mountains, to deserts, to medieval cities built around big castles, to small outpost and farms. Each style will be affected by the population/race of the zone. Each of these places will be completely in the hands of the players. Every small building can be conquered or bought and managed for concrete purposes purposes. Nothing can be destroyed or built from the void. Each structure can be damaged till it will be useless but nothing will leave or join the world. Cities and each structure part of these cities is already there. The crafting will have a minor effect to tweak and transform all this, but not radically.

The margins aren’t static. As in the books the world will change completely. New lands could come out from the mist of Chaos, along with populations and demons. The idea is that whatever will appear on this main world will still be suitable for conquest. Everything on this “side” of the game is completely in the hands of the players. You’ll have here the basic form of PvE regulated by meaningful and factional purposes and you’ll have the main part of the game, the factional PvP.

The fact that new lands will be added just means that the game has space for additions. New races, new types of commerce, new resources to manage and so on.

This is a side. Then there are the planes. In the planes of Chaos everything can be built (from devs perspective). From a technological point of view the main land is static while the various planes are instanced (these instances happen outside the single server boundaries). Instances could be built as “worlds” or “adventures” (for the lack of better terms).

Worlds are zones communal to all the servers. The access will be restricted but you can meet here players coming from different servers. Worlds are instanced but also persistent. You don’t have different “copies” of the same world. Each “world” will be absolutely unique and communal to all the servers/main-lands.

“Adventures”, instead, are instanced as in the common implementation but they are still server-independent. You can build a party (coming from a “world”) of players coming from different servers than yours, then enter an instanced-adventure. Each instance is an “adventure” and each will be cloned if different parties want to experience the same adventure.

Each of these adventures will have a purpose, a mission to figure out. The access to each of these adventures will also be limited, it could happen that if you fail you’ll have to renounce for an amount of time (a few days or even weeks). Everything on these planes behaves following precise rules. The access to these worlds (both worlds and adventures) happens through portals built on the main land and these portals can be activated only if certain conditions are met (think to Darkness Falls in DAoC).

Once a portal is activated you can step in with your friends (the portal could hold or not, based on different elements, like the number of players passing through it). And you’ll enter a “world” along with players coming from other servers if the portal is also active on their servers.

Each of these worlds will be a quite big, closed zone. Each will have a main city where you’ll be able to get basic equipment and informations, if the aligment won’t determine that NPCs in the city want to kill you. From these commonal “hubs” you can find your way to have access to different adventures starting from this world or going back to your own server. There will be conditions to meet so that you will also be able to enter a different server from your home. In this case the character will suffer a penalty. Each character will be weakened during its permanence in a foreign server but some missions could send you to a different server to accomplish your duties and only a few magic tools could allow you to limit the effect of this weakness.

A long permanence will have persistent effects on your character. Both good and bad effects.

The other possibility is to remain inside the “world”. Movement between different planar “worlds” isn’t possible and portals to “adventures” and back to the main servers/landmass are limited and they vanish depending on what happens on those main standard-worlds. So you could finish “trapped” in a plane for some time, without being able to go back to your server. This could be a choice obviously.

Also in this case the permanence on a plane will affect your character in a persistent way. As you enter a new level your affinity with that level is very low. You won’t be able to use magic for example. As you pass time on these planes the affinity will raise and you’ll reach a point where, potentially, your power can grow out the boundaries you have on your home server. A long permanence on a plane allows you to develop new skills and powers. The positive effect is that the affinity could reach a point where you’ll hold these new powers and you’ll be able to reach new levels even when you are on a different plane or back to your home.

Each plane is like a “school”. You’ll develop an affinity with that school based on your actions and your permanence on that level. And you’ll be able to bring back this new power with you even outside the proper level. The cost is that you’ll also be corrupted by a plane. The affinity you develop in one will contrast with another plane.

This happens if you decide to remain on a plane, without going back to your home (or another server, if you can) and without building a party and start an “adventure”.

If you decide to start an “adventure” you’ll enter the proper instanced dimension. Here you will never meet someone else. You’ll be able to invite a player from the outside but you are basically safe from interruptions. During these adventures everything could happen. The purpose could be to explore a dungeon to recover an artifact, or get it in a limited time, or a trial you have to pass, or knowledge to discover etc…

Purposes can be tied to your homeland in a similar way the homeland is tied to what happens on these planes but basically these zones (both worlds and adventures) are conceived to develop each character beyond its limits. Magic items can be found ONLY here.

So this is how the whole world is shaped. Each server represents a cloned landmass with the characteristics I’ve explained at the beginning. There’s an isle in the center, home of the most powerful race, not enabled to be played right at the start. The rest of the landmass is the scenery for the “main game”, the factional PvP and the basic PvE. You can build or destroy empires, conquer lands or just buy a small house for yourself and start a commercial activity, or train your mount or whatever else. This is also where the basic development of your character (or other “items” like magic tools, mounts, pets and so on) happens.

Then you can jump through portals and have access to communal worlds, unique for all the servers. Here you can meet other peoples coming from different servers. You can stay here to develop “special” powers tied to the affinity with a level, or go on a mission on a different server from your starting one, or build a party to start an “adventure” to discover some kind of magic loot or accomplish a major objective useful for your homeland, or whatever.

That’s the general idea of what players do in this game.

Note that the main land where the PvP and basic PvE happen is located on different shards/servers as it happens in the various mmorpgs today. Youer character, instead, is unique and you’ll see this when you access the other side of the game: the planar levels. Here you have “worlds” that are built as communal instances for all the servers. Each character here is unique and these zones are at the same time huge hubs and the tie between each main server and the instanced “adventures” where most of the “loot” will come from.

All these worlds/shards/servers/dimensions are accessible to EVERY character.