It sounds like the multiplayer is implemented in similar way to Fabel 2. A single player game, but if your friends were online you would see a floating orb where ever they were in the world. You could interact through game play as well, though I am a little rusty on how that worked.

An implementation like that would be really cool. It would definitely me a nice argument against the EA / Activision(Blizzard) always online approach.