Somewhere in the southern continent of TERA, the major new MMO from the minds behind Lineage II, there is a city. Velika, the ‘City Of Wheels’, is a topsy-turvy industrial hub which somehow makes sense despite most of its inner workings being on the outside, gears grinding amid workshops, bazaars, vast libraries and the spoils of empire. Little in an Asian MMO could ever be called ‘innocuous’, but down just such a street there is a door.

Far beyond its frame stretch mountains, fields, sea and cerulean sky. And as you accept their invitation, something quite incredible happens for an open world adventure game: nothing happens at all. There’s no loading screen, no teleport between instances, and no pop-up sending you back to the treadmill to earn your Pass Through An Open Door privileges. You walk out, sweep the mouse to confirm that yes, you have just left a giant city which now stands fortified and whole behind you, and then keep on walking.

An unimpeded adventure is a rare and precious thing in games. It runs contrary to much a pay-to-play MMO depends on, handing you the keys to a kingdom worth millions of dollars for as little as a trial subscription – or indeed an open beta account. TERA has all the tools of oppression at its disposal. It could, like Aion: The Tower Of Eternity, for instance, use bottlenecks guarded by high-level mobs to shepherd you through the levels. But it doesn’t. It leaves it gates open and its mobs free to roam, creating a uniquely passive adventure for those inclined to wander.

That’s the background to this collection, one which enriched its creation no end. Around 90 per cent of these travels saw a character without training or equipment brush shoulders with creatures happy to inflict a one-hit kill if properly disturbed. Even spookier, these outlands of the Korean open beta were practically devoid of the players still grinding through regions where victory was actually possible. Stolen glimpses, then, of a quite stunning dress rehearsal.

Southern Arun accounts for roughly a third of TERA’s unimaginably vast world, and this supreme scale is the key to its generosity. Like the golden age of shareware when id Software would give you what felt like an entire Doom or Hexen for free, TERA spends big in the hope its players respond in kind. In this collection you’ll see a groundbreaking use of Unreal technology paint captivating scenes of nature and civilization in and out of balance. In the arid Rebellion Plains, a region choked by sandstorms and heat haze, epic ruins evoke an Ico or Shadow Of The Colossus. Cities elsewhere succumb willingly to creeping vines and roots, hide within towering ramparts, cower beneath raging volcanoes or sit humble before views that defy any number of screenshots.