Sounds like my yard. We were given a bid with a retaining wall and one without. We chose the one without. The back wall of the pool stands about 2 or 3 feet out of the ground and is 46 feet long. It's capped with coping and faced with stacked stone. There are 4 pillars that stand on the ground that have a deck jet in each that shoot water in arcs, up and over the coping, into the pool. If you're interested I can take a pic tomorrow.

A picture would be fantastic! Do you have a gunite pool? I knew my yard sloped, but I didn't think it would be that big a deal. It's not really steep or anything.

Let's see if this works. I want to post a couple pics to show how we did our NON retaining wall pool and our neighbors - 3 doors down and on the same slope - who DID a retaining wall. A $15,000 retaining wall. I'll post a picture of theirs in the next post.
This is ours. I would say our yard sloped downwards of about 5 feet from our patio door. So we built an upper patio which is just one step down from our kitchen and then the pool patio which is 3 steps down from that.
Then I'll post another to show you up close how the coping and back wall looks, up close.

Here goes nothing. I hope it works....

This is my neighbor's. You can see the angle of slope that everyone on our side of the street deals with. We all have 80'x200' lots with the swale running along the entire 80' width of each lot. We either had to build our pools on one side or the other of the swale because there is a drain pipe running the length of the street under that swale. We all chose to build our pools on the side closest to our homes.

My neighbor has had some issues with her wall. Up top she's got a 4' ribbon of concrete entirely around the pool that has needed to be repaired many times. Another problem with being so raised up, she says, is that she feels like they're on display all the time, and they can't easily access the rest of their backyard from the pool deck. I guess she could have put a stair from the wall to the ground but we all think of things we would have done differently no matter how much thought we put into it.

A closer look of our non-retaining wall. The coping was cut so it was 18" wide and laid so both sides are bull-nosed. We do not miss not having a 3 or 4' ribbon of deck on that side. The kids still run(!) on it especially when the deck jets are squirting over the side. Our pool builder didn't charge us anything to do it this way. He gave us credit for not putting the standard 4' ribbon on that side. We did pay an extra $1500 for the columns w/ deck jets that I don't think I'd do again.

I hope c9pilot doesn't mind but here's a link to his pool on a sloped lot. No retaining wall.

Here is a link that might be useful: c9pilot's pool

Thanks banana_fanna - the pictures are really helpful. I'm a visual person :) The pools are both beautiful but yours looks more finished and polished with the way you did the stonework.