Of the many games that have been announced leading up to E3 2021, Palia is certainly one of the most intriguing. Described as a community sim game, Palia's announcement trailer teased a massively multiplayer online experience crossing over with an Animal Crossing/Stardew Valley gameplay experience. What the trailer didn't do is clarify just what kind of open world Palia will offer. While much is left to be shown, Palia's devs have provided a variety of new information in the game's official Discord.
Palia's announcement trailer presented it as an open-world fantasy game in which players interacted with their friends and strangers. However, Palia's devs seem wary of that description. Instead, the devs describe Palia as "open but curated" and even "more curated than open world." One dev describes that they'll be using geometry to gate players, rather than invisible walls. As such, Palia's open spaces will be explorable but smaller than the trailer may have conveyed, but still big enough that environmental traversal is a big part of the game.
One other important factor that Palia's devs acknowledged is that there will be instances, though with an asterisk. For example, the alpha will have instanced "maps" since each map can hold only so many players. But the goal is to enable players to group with their friends and play without loading screens. Similarly, housing is said to have instances for both inside and outside, but friends will still be able to visit "without loading screens." Perhaps it'll use a phasing-based instance system to make instancing less obvious.
Perhaps the bigger question then is how big of a map Palia will have, regardless of whether it's instanced or phased. To start, Palia's devs say that the game will "smaller and aiming to grow bigger." Apparently smaller is still pretty big, however. Palia will employ a fast travel system that's akin to portal travel, but different. Mounts are also on Palia's development roadmap and are being treated as a type of fast travel.
A big detail that Palia hasn't revealed, and likely won't for some time, is how many players it's going to allow per map. Palia won't have servers, per se. Players will log in, press a play button, and be put into a game. How many other players they'll see and interact with remains to be figured out. At least for the alpha, players can form parties of up to four players who will stay together through any instancing.
Suffice to say, Palia won't necessarily be the vanilla World of Warcraft type of open-world experience some were hoping for. It still seems to have lofty ambitions, though. Players can expect to find out more in the next several months as Palia begins its alpha.
Palia is in development for PC.
Source: Google Documents