#5 Describe the world to us. What was the design vision behind it? How did you keep it as futuristic as your story and still make it believable?

The world of Atys, that Saga of Ryzom takes place on, is a living, breathing planet with a unique ecology that is open for the players to discover and explore.

The Saga of Ryzom is a wide and profound story spanning across an entire universe, where many different worlds are concerned by what is about to happen on Atys. Supporting the main backbone of the story there are entire fleets of sub-stories which players will have an impact on. These medium and micro level stories are released by the GMs and based on what players do with them will evolve the macro story differently on each server.

The game world of the Saga of Ryzom was born from a huge variety of influences (books, movies, anime, cartoons, video clips, etc.), envies (do this, experience that, live that kind of moment, etc.), fears (situations, visions, etc.), ambitions (become this or that) and dreams (places, stories, actions, etc.). I could name Lovecraft, Myiazaki, Herbert, Asimov, Attenborough, Otomo, K. Dick among the influencers. But there are many more.

The Saga of Ryzom is more a universe than just a world. The game currently takes place on the green planet Atys which is an organic world that keeps growing and evolving. Players live on the crust of the planet, but will be able to go down into its Prime Roots as they progress, and will be able to climb up in the Canopies eventually as well.

To keep our worlds and story believable, we make them coherent and consistent. This is achieved through discipline (regular checks on everything across all the production teams), will (do not surrender to the temptation of the easiest way), and the ambition to still be competitive and interesting 8 years from now. What goes in the game today has to be coherent with what will come in later.