Development team has common interest in anime, comic books, anime modeling. I played a lot of NetHack and Diablo. I guess they influenced a lot. Other areas, like towns with all basic merchant and storage NPCs, villages and fortresses, castles that can be owned by bloodpledges, slime races and animal tournament areas where players can gamble or bet on their pets. Then there are also unique areas like elven forest, for example.
Elves start the game there and it is specific to that character class.
There are also temples where players can go to learn spells. Players can travel in various ways. The basic way is to walk, or run if you have a haste potion or haste spell. You can also teleport to any general area in the game. You can also take a ship to travel overseas or go through an underground tunnel.