Editor's Note: This article had previously been posted on the official Ryzom website. It is however, reposted here for context as we continue this series and soon begin posting these diaries as a limited time exclusive on MMORPG.com.

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Who am I?

To start with, let me introduce myself. My name is Daniel Miller (also known as 'Sadge'), I am Nevrax's Technical Director and the Producer of R2. I run the R2 production team with the aid of David Blanchard. He and I will both be writing articles here.Although I am a native English speaker, David is French, so the original versions of my articles will be in English while the original versions of his will be in French. In any case, all of our articles will be translated as need be and posted simultaneously in English, French and German.

The R2 team is moving forwards at a fast pace, meaning that David and myself have very busy days :) . As a result, we won't have time to answer all of the questions that come up on the forums. We'll be relying on Xavier (Nevrax's Community Liaison) and the Community Managers to gather your questions, concerns and comments for us. Even if we don't respond immediately, don't despair; your voice will have been heard. We'll reply to a handful of questions following each of our articles and we'll do our best to choose our subjects to bring you information that's really of interest.

What is R2 about?

R2 is fundamentally about "giving power to the players to shape the game and play the way that they want to play". In a nutshell, we are developing tools for our players to use to create and animate their own areas within the game. With the introduction of these areas, we will modify the way that the core of the game is put together, introducing the possibility for characters from different shards to assemble and play together in player maps and event areas. This will of course bring a new dimension to Ryzom's events and story development.

David Cohen, Nevrax's Creative Director and the visionary behind Ryzom, introduced R2 and the place that it holds in his vision of the future of the Saga of Ryzom. It can be found here.

• What kind of areas can be created in the game?

When planning out R2, we spent some time working through the different types of play that we wanted to support. We came to the conclusion that we needed to provide different types of areas for different types of play. As I'll explain, we're giving the option of creating both private and public areas within the game, of creating both instantiated maps and persistent maps and of being tied in more or less tightly to the Ryzom storyline.

Ryzom is a rich universe for role players and, as a result, we wanted to make sure that we give the possibility of creating and running real scenarios. In order for this to be practical, we have split scenarios into two categories: stand alone 'punctual adventures' and 'events' running on Persistent Outland maps (explained below). The deal with Punctual Adventures is that someone can create a scenario and invite other players to come and participate. When the scenario is launched, we create a new 'instance' on the servers and, when it ends, the instance vanishes. These scenarios are not linked directly to the game at all. It is simply possible to 'jump into' a scenario from the character selection screen. When the scenario ends and you log into the game, you will be back in the same place that you were before you went into the scenario, wherever that may be.

On the other hand, we also want to provide the possibility of having one's own persistent areas in the game that are properly linked into the world. We call these areas Persistent Outlands. Persistent Outlands are accessed via special teleportation points in game. At each such teleportation point, a menu of Persistent Outlands appears, showing which outlands are accessible. Each outland will have a return teleport beacon which will send you back to the place from which you came.

Each outland can have it's own persistent population of NPCs, creatures and so on. One can create characters with their own personalities and histories, put text into their mouths and have them participate in scenarios as one develops one's own story branch within Atys. It will also be possible to run 'event' scenarios in much the same way as the SoR event teams run events in the game today.