Well, given that the storyline is currently being reworked by a number of different people, that it was created as a game may not be the case soon.Kyokai wrote:1 - Rotonen and I talked about the shape of the Mana World, and thought a flat world would be best suited to preserve the idea that the gods created it as a game. Also, an irregularly shaped world reeks of magic and mystery. No one really knows what lies beyond or beneath it's edge...
There are two problems with your reasoning here. First is that, barring some sort of contrived "dimension hopping" or a fundamental redrawing of the map, having a hard-bordered world leaves absolutely zero room for expansion. This is an MMO, not a regular RPG. The map has to have the potential for dynamic expansion. The second problem is that you seem to be assuming that fiarness between kingdoms necessitates geometric equality and homogeneity. I posit that that's not true, that you can have a fair system in which everything is completely unique (and, as a result, much more realistic). Remember what WakkaCraft said: some of the best balance systems aren't those where everything is the same, but where balance is arrived at through everything being different.Kyokai wrote:2 - I decided to place the temples on the outskirts of the world on equal intervals to uphold the story convention that the world is supported by the flow of mana alone, and that these act as "pillars" holding the plane together. It's by no means final, and there's alot of space beyond and between these temples, it's really just more of an issue of deciding what landmarks we will have and where do they go (which paths can connect them, regardless of geographic locations). The asthetic map may have two cities at a different angle, or on different continents, or different distances, but as long as paths still connect in the ways shown on the original diagram, the world is at least mechanically fair to all the kingdoms.