You and your ragtag band wander from island to island on your cobbled-together airship, scouring for lost technology and scavenging for resources. You are constantly trying to improve your ship, keep it fueled, and keep it repaired. Sky predators, storms, and other travelling bands—all of which could be a threat to your ship—will dominate your thoughts. But in the back of your mind, you still ask yourself questions: How did your world become this way? What calamity, a thousand years ago, could have shattered the world into a thousand pieces? Deep down you know that the world was not always this way, and your questions are what drive you onward and upward, towards the endless skyline.

First, Worlds Adrift is set in a persistent, shared multiplayer environment. That means anyone who plays the game will be in the same enormous world. (Due to the increased importance of low latency in a game with physics, however, the current plan is to have separate servers for different geographic regions—we can’t overcome the speed of light, I’m afraid).

Offering a number of ways for players to interact with the burgeoning Worlds Adrift community, Alliances will help form the bedrock on which players will build their own stories and friendships in the game world.

In addition to the base benefit of pooled knowledge Alliances offer to Worlds Adrift players, aligning with an Alliance now will give players a head-start on planning and strategizing with team members ahead of the game’s launch later this year--essentially, a player’s alliance and companions will be ready and waiting when the game launches.

Worlds Adrift’s focus on simulating real-world physics across multiple players and entities in the game makes teamwork vital to the success of Alliances. Players are free to create their own Alliances or join an existing group, both of which can be done on the game’s official site. Once united with an Alliance, players will have access to unique tools to enable Alliance communication and recruitment, including:

• Access to a private Alliance-specific forum to share knowledge and strategies
• Ability to recruit new players into your Alliance, vetted by Alliance leaders
• Customization and creation of official Alliance Emblem (coming soon)

To further incentivize players to join an Alliance, Bossa will be hosting a number of contests and giveaways for prizes like a powerful Alienware Alpha gaming machine and much more.

Secondly, the world will live and breathe. Worlds Adrift will not be an MMORPG as we know them. There are no quest hubs and no NPCs standing around forever, waiting to give you tasks. There are no low-level zones and high-level zones, because there will be no levels. There are no static, choreographed environments and events that replay for every new player.

Instead, there will be creatures that eat and live and die, and trees that grow, and ruins that hold secrets, and wreckage that rusts and rots, all inside a world that doesn’t revolve around you, but that can be permanently affected by your actions. You are a part of the world, and it’s up to you to decide which part that is, and how it relates to all the other parts.

Lastly, the world will behave according to believable physics. Ships are constructed of pieces — each of which can be snapped off if there’s a strong enough impact. Much of the world will also behave like this: creatures, wreckage, loose objects on the ground. And of course there will be plenty of rope physics involved in player movement.