[aohige]

I'll explain some of the backbone of the story and setting, without touching on too spoilerly stuff.
First, the world and how it's different from the MMORPG...

Much of the video game systems did carry over, but there's a slew of things that changed to make things more "real".

Earthlings: The most important change. They were NPC characters in the Elder Tale games.
However in this world, they are breathing, living, sentient natives. They have feelings, emotion, thoughts, and livelihood. Not robotic AIs.
The native Earthlings know the Adventurers (Players) are mighty heroes from another world, but that's about extent of their knowledge of them.

Unlike the Adventurers, an Earthling is not immortal. Once they die, that's it. They never come back. They are much weaker than Adventurers, and have very low levels. Even the mightiest of knights in most kingdoms are only like level 30-40. Commoners are generally below level 10s.

Another major difference.... this world of Theldesia has anywhere from 5~10x more Earthling population than the game. There's literally a million of them just in Japan.

The world: Elder Tales was created by using satellite image of the Earth, and using software to replicate its geographical shape. The world of Elder Tales is half distance of that of Earth - meaning, 1/4 the size. The environment is created by random generator software, and small Earthling villages were generated on the map all over the place as well.

The environments didn't have much of a meaning in the game, but now, they are alive and functional. The same goes for the villages. Each "server" handled different area. Japan and China have their own separate servers, Americas, North Europe, etc. But the world is all connected, and can be traveled between each other. However, you cannot communicate with other players on another server unless you yourself move there.

This rule has carried over into this world as well. Each server has different method of payment systems as well, some countries have monthly subscriptions and purchased packages, Korea has a freemium format, China has a daily basis payment option, etc. A large server such as China has tons of areas where players haven't explored yet. (mostly random generated anyways)

In general, where game rules exist they apply. But on things the game never touched upon, real physics apply.
It feels like forcing game system on a real world, or vice versa, forcing real physics on a game world.