Attention to all Arrakis in addition (hi it's almost rhymes): I had another big look at Funcom's upcoming survival MMO Hill: Awakening. First, our own Joshua Wolens said that even though he's not an mmo guy or a survival game fan, he's too lazy to play it after watching the demo. 

Then, in a 30-minute Dune: Awakening direct presentation that covered character creation and an alternate timeline for MMO, creative director Joel Bylos explains how the world, maps and servers work to provide players with a "relatively seamless" experience as they explore Arrakis. This is the first time I've seen a video of a video that I've seen in the past.

"It's like choosing a server in an MMORPG, but it's a massive infrastructure of connected servers," says Bylos. "Most survival games run 1 map, 1 server. But we have multiple connected servers running in a single world."

A place called the Hagga Basin is your starting point, a "server with a minimum of 40 other players," where you can build, clean and craft your base. If you want to link with your friends, Dune:Awakening's server browser will show you where they're all playing, Bylos said. Once you're ready for bigger challenges and have built your own ornithopter, you can "physically fly" around the world with a "land map" in the top-down view.

You can see what this overland map looks like in the video below. It is a little reminiscent of the scene in the Harkonnen map room of the dunes: Part 2, there is a holographic topological view of Arrakis showing the locations and flight paths of various aerial vehicles

Overland maps "You can meet hundreds of other players on and you can see all the places of the world." "We can do that," Bylos said. "So you physically fly between locations on land-based maps."

It looks interesting, or at least different: I do not remember seeing this kind of overworld map in MMO before that you can simply click on the icon of the place you want to travel, rather than navigate to visit a new area. It reminds me a bit of something like Mount & Blade that looks down on the representation of yourself and the area you're physically in the world as you and your mates, and I don't know if this overland map has any actual encounters, but the video doesn't show any interaction, and the UI has move and zoom in and zoom out options

. Among the places to visit are several social hubs like Harko Village and Arrakeen, where you can find bars, vendors, CHOAM exchanges and apparently have peaceful interactions with other players, including dancing in nightclubs. You can also travel across overland maps to reach deep deserts for all the really dangerous things like PvP, spice mining, sandworm encounters, and this part of the world is regularly wiped clean and reconfigured by massive sandstorms, creating competition between players who are hunting for spices and other resources. It is intended to be used as a tool to improve the performance of the system.

You can check out the full Dune: Awakening Direct presentation here.