During beta, the world will be quite small as we'll be focusing more on gameplay and game functions. The current internal beta consists of small towns, plains, and some mountainous areas. However, our game engine can support worlds thousands of kilometers in size.

We're not looking at the game in terms of size of the world. We want every square meter to have a purpose instead of randomly placing objects and/or mobs in an insanely large terrain.

We have plans for multiple zones, each with different climates such as snow, desert, and mild climates. We also have plans to add to the world as the life of the game progresses.

differing zones are one thing, but variable weather is another?
also would the extreams of hot or cold or wet have effects on your characters abilities?

Whether or not weather will affect the player is uncertain. Any penalty imposed on players in the game shouldn't be so restrictive that it make the game more like work than a fun experience. I'd be curious to see more comments from our little community on this.

That said, your animals will definitely be affected by the weather. Horses and pack animals won't be able to run for long distances in the hot sun without an adequate water supply, for example.

Will there my historical cities and landmarks incorporated into the Phoenix world, e.g. Fort Dodge, the Black Hills, the Ok Corral, etc.? For me, one of the awesome parts of SWG was visiting places mentioned in some of the movies, etc.

In terms of world size, will Phoenix's world be large enough to incorporate things like the Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas that was big for cattle driving?

Peace,
- Vinny

The limitation on world size has more to do with our artists time and ability than the technology running the game. Our game engine could literally have a world the size of...well, the world. However, as lead dev, I don't want to have a large world for the sake of being big. Each square meter must serve a purpose, be interesting, and provide value to the game experience.

We've talked a lot about historical places, and large open areas such as the Chisholm Trail, and all agree that having them is a must. Our plans are to roll out a world capable of supporting the player base we're expecting, and continually add to it as time progresses.

We're just a small group of indy developers with very limited time, and an even more limited budget, but we have big plans and the drive to carry them out.