In a talk titled, "From Franchise To Fantasy: How to Build a Universe Worthy of Devotion," Salvatore spoke mainly about Copernicus, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game whose universe he created from the ground up with Schilling and others at 38 Studios. He revealed that the Project Mercury RPG is actually part of the Copernicus universe but will be set in a different time period than the MMO.

Salvatore said he and his team spent six months developing a 10,000-year history for the world of Copernicus and Project Mercury so the artists, writers, designers and programmers would have a solid basis for development before work even began on the project.

"That was what I insisted on. We need a huge history. We need deep threads so we're all going to be painting on the same canvas. You need consistency. It has to make sense. The way the races interact with each other has to make sense. You have to know how it all fits together. The way you do that is you do a history of the world," Salvatore said.​