- if the run speed varies from 1 MMO to the next, then that crossing distance measured in minutes becomes deceptive. A good example is Rift, where you run slower at normal speed than in MMO's like WoW or LotrO. In fact, the difference is that large that it'd take 15 minutes to travel the same distance in Rift for which you'd need 10 minutes in LotrO or WoW. It's a neat designer trick, decrease the normal run speed, heavily infuse your regions with abundance of mobs, and an MMO world can feel larger than it really is.
If it takes longer to travel across one MMO world than another then they are different sizes.
As humans, our perception of distance is based on travel time and the difficulty of travel.
For example - if you know people who travel alot (internationally) you will find they talk in terms of flight time. How far is it from London to Sydney? Who knows... but it is about 24-26 hours travel time.
Your example of Rift only illistrates the point about scaling. The Rift designers have scaled their world to suit their game - but so have all the other designers. While you might say "where you run slower at normal speed than in MMO's like WoW or LotrO" I could say - "you run at the same speed but the distance is greater"
Here are two worlds
World A .......... This one is 10km
World B .......... This one is 50km
You cannot say I am wrong - because I designed them.
Now, suppose it takes 20 minutes to cross World A and 15 minutes to cross world B - which is the bigger world?
- of course, you'd have to work under the assumption that 1 meter in 1 MMO = 1 meter in another MMO. But with the crossing time/distance you work under the assumption that travel speed is the same in all MMO's.
Not at all.
You work under the assumption that travel time is the variable to be compared.
The example I often use here is that I could design an MMO called "World of Bugs".
In it you could take 4 hours to travel across the Shagpile Forest to the Mountains of Pillows to defeat mobs of Dust Mites and Fleas in the Puppy Bed Basket Citadel. Is this a small world? Does the fact that it takes place in a room measuring 4 metres by 3 metres matter? Or that your actual travel speed is measured in centimetres per hour? Not at all. It's a big world because of the scaling applied and the perception of distance players get. What gives them that perception? Travel time.
- the 2nd issue is that actual miles or kilometers, or square miles and kilometers, is being used to quantify the size of an world or map. Look at that famous world comparison picture that was posted on several sites, including here on this site. It's all measured in square miles or kilometers, not in the time that it takes to cross a distance by foot or by car or such.
And that is why it's wrong. And that's why both you and I set out (using our own methods) to varify this data.
Using any comparison like this - EvE always wins because it spans "light years"
Besides which, if you start factoring in 'run speed' then you cannot fairly compare any MMO that does not use human avatars.
But, rather than argue the point - here is a challenge for you.
Include the following MMOs in your list
EvE Online (Avatars are spaceships)
Pirates of the Burning Sea (Avatars are Tall Ships - and scaling issues will prove very difficult)
What do you scale from here? The ships? And which one? Or the planets? Or the arbitary 'distances' quoted by the developers?
Urban Dead (Free Browser based MMO)
Pardus (Free Browser based MMO)
Ultimately – in most (if not all?) those examples the only meaningful data that can be easily obtained is travel time. In many it would be impossible to calculate any kind of run speed comparible to other games.
Let me say beforehand that I agree that crossing distance and time are important measuring variables when you want to compare worldsizes across MMO's.
Where I disagree is that those are the only measuring variables that are important. In my opinion: actual size in square km/miles, and the run speed that's needed to determine that actual size, are important and handy as well.
Regarding the examples you used, that's a simple one: if crossing distance and time is the only variable that I can determine, then that's where it stays. However, if I can figure out the size of your ship in EVE or the 'run' speed in those games, then I'll add those variables to my list and I'll see if I can get a size of the distance, measured in the ingame used miles or km's.
All the issues and questions you raised, I've wrestled with them as well.
For example, if you could play a giant of 100 meters high, and you could travel 400m/s then your sensation of the world would be a lot different than when playing the normal characters, as giant the world would feel a lot smaller.
In the same way, if you play a gnome in EQ/WoW or a fairy in EQ2, then your sensation of the travel speed is different than when playing an ogre, even if the travel speed is the same.
The same if everyone could use a speeder or horse right from the start: would this mean that the world is smaller as well?
Like said, I use length in km/miles and square km/miles, because that's the measurement type that other people are using, that data is already available to be used. If they're right can be verified as well: for example, I know that in that other comparison picture where video worlds are measured, they're way off for GW Nightfall and LotrO, when looked at the ingame definition of a meter. In the same way I know that the figures for WoW of 80 square miles is only true if the person that gave it off meant explorable landmass of WoW, not the total size of its world.
To know if a definition of a meter in an MMORPG is something that is comparable with the RL definition, to see if it's proportional, you pick a average sized human or humanoid character, assume it's 1.7-1.8m high, and then see how many times your character would fit in a ranged 10-15m. Granted, that's no exact science, but this would teach you very quickly whether the devs have defined the character heights to be something like 3 to 4 of their ingame meters, or like 0.5-1 meter by their definition.
If the results are that your character's height approaches the 1.6-2m range, then you can assume that the designers used ingame measurements that are comparable with RL definition of meters.
Long text wall, but basically it comes down to the more info I can find out regarding an MMO world, the better.
To use Rift as an example, I'm not merely satisfied in the crossing time, but also in the actual size of its world if I can find it out, especially if the base travel speed in one MMO is 4 times an avatar's average height or 2.5 times an avatar's average height.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Maverik, do you update the 1st post to the always most recent conclusions?
Well, dagnabit... but some people telling me here LOTRO is 300 times as big as WOW? NO WAY! I mean, hell, I am no WOW defender, really, and I loved LOTRO waaay more... but 300 times... that just CAN'T be right! I mean, 3 or 4 times or even 10 times... but that... that just sounds totally out of whack! So, what are the latest news in sizes? Can someone make a simple size-list in sqaure miles and square kilometers from 1 to 10 or so for us simpletons so we don't have to dig the entire thread? ^^
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Maverik, do you update the 1st post to the always most recent conclusions?
Well, dagnabit... but some people telling me here LOTRO is 300 times as big as WOW? NO WAY! I mean, hell, I am no WOW defender, really, and I loved LOTRO waaay more... but 300 times... that just CAN'T be right! I mean, 3 or 4 times or even 10 times... but that... that just sounds totally out of whack! So, what are the latest news in sizes? Can someone make a simple size-list in sqaure miles and square kilometers from 1 to 10 or so for us simpletons so we don't have to dig the entire thread? ^^
Yep, I try to, so if you have any more info please let me know (I need to update the OP with Gyrus' latest info though)
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Maverik, do you update the 1st post to the always most recent conclusions?
Well, dagnabit... but some people telling me here LOTRO is 300 times as big as WOW? NO WAY! I mean, hell, I am no WOW defender, really, and I loved LOTRO waaay more... but 300 times... that just CAN'T be right! I mean, 3 or 4 times or even 10 times... but that... that just sounds totally out of whack! So, what are the latest news in sizes? Can someone make a simple size-list in sqaure miles and square kilometers from 1 to 10 or so for us simpletons so we don't have to dig the entire thread? ^^
Yep, I try to, so if you have any more info please let me know (I need to update the OP with Gyrus' latest info though)
Ha, nah I have no idea of such things. ^^
Cool stuff. Since I am an explorer type more than anything else, it is of interest to me. I also love big worlds in single player RPGs. It's why I love Bethesda over Bioware, even tho I LOVE story, I love exploration more. And game never can be too big for me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Cool stuff. Since I am an explorer type more than anything else, it is of interest to me. I also love big worlds in single player RPGs. It's why I love Bethesda over Bioware, even tho I LOVE story, I love exploration more. And game never can be too big for me.
I think you'll find that SWTOR will be able to satisfy that explorer's need, so far it looks like SWTOR will be almost 3 times as large as WoW vanilla in total size of explorable landmass. And there's all kinds of neat hard-to-reach secret places hidden around on the Planets.
It's one of the things that I like what I heard so far from SWTOR, that it'll satisfy the MMO explorer in me
GW2 so far looks like it'll be 1.3-1.5 times the size of WoW vanilla, with the advantage though of Tyria being one contiguous landmass with underwater exploration to be done as well.
TERA I haven't found out yet, some say it's pretty large but I couldn't find any estimations regarding size.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
GW2 so far looks like it'll be 1.3-1.5 times the size of WoW vanilla, with the advantage though of Tyria being one contiguous landmass with underwater exploration to be done as well.
Having underwater exploration as a really major part of gameplay could be a huge advantage to expanding the GW2 game world.
It better, with all the time and effort they seem to be dumping into it!
Would you end up counting GW2 as having more square feet of surface if all the bodies of water are traversable and full of content, or are you already counting bodies of water in other games?
Would you end up counting GW2 as having more square feet of surface if all the bodies of water are traversable and full of content, or are you already counting bodies of water in other games?
Hmm, that's actually a good point you make. I was counting the whole worldmap in GW2, which is so far measured to be 13 * 11 miles. While I was having solely the continents and islands in mind when it comes to WoW.
Guess I regard the water and underwater areas in GW2 of equal value as the landmass areas in GW2, while for WoW I regarded the sea areas of no importance compared to its landmass, purely the continents of WoW
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Maverik, do you update the 1st post to the always most recent conclusions?
Well, dagnabit... but some people telling me here LOTRO is 300 times as big as WOW? NO WAY! I mean, hell, I am no WOW defender, really, and I loved LOTRO waaay more... but 300 times... that just CAN'T be right! I mean, 3 or 4 times or even 10 times... but that... that just sounds totally out of whack! So, what are the latest news in sizes? Can someone make a simple size-list in sqaure miles and square kilometers from 1 to 10 or so for us simpletons so we don't have to dig the entire thread? ^^
One of the big issues i always had with this discussion was that people's perception of time and distance is warped - particularly in games.
Like I said, as humans our perception of distance is based on two main factors;
1/ Travel time
2/ The difficulty (or danger) of travel.
Time is interesting because our perception of time changes depending on what we are doing and what we could be doing. As a real life example - ask people how long they have to wait at traffic lights? Many people will tell you "ages", "forever" etc. Press for a time and they will say "At least 5 minutes..." Well, when you actually time it you will find that 2 1/2 minutes is about as long as it gets - ever (most light phases are much shorter). People think it takes longer because they see the time as 'wasted'.
In MMOs you find that people see travel (particularly on "Fed-Ex" missions) as wasted. Often they think they have to travel for 'miles' or 'ages' when in reality it will usually only be 60 seconds or less.
The difficulty of travel is a big factor in MMOs particularly with wandering mobs. 2 minutes of uninterrupted travel can turn into 10 minutes of travel with combat and that also makes us think that environments are bigger than they really are.
When I started doing this there were two "big" MMOs out there that people said took 'days' to cross.
WWIIoL and EvE.
Players use words like "massive", "huge", "forever" and "ages".
Yet when you ask players to actually take a stopwatch and make a measurement - they go silent. Often (I think) because they discover that the world is not nearly as big as they thought.
In the case of EvE - while many people quote 'days' to cross the universe - one player timed it and suggested "about four hours". (This needs confirmation though)
In the example of LotRO - a lot of it comes down to scaling. This (again) is why I don't like to use miles or kilometres in my comparisons. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings there are distances and clues to distances given. If people chose to use these it only adds considerable confusion to the arguement.
For example the Buckleberry Ferry to the Brandywine Bridge is about 10 miles IIRC(?) yet in LotRO you can run that distance in 70 seconds - applying that scale to the world would give you a massive run speed (approx 520mph or 820 km/hr!) and greatly warp any dimentions you gave after. Using that would make LotRO measure 600km from Celondim => Rivendell - making it twice the size of WWIIoL.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
While the whole ocean of AA is available for actual gameplay with isles actually offering some point to the players both through the city/housebuilding system and naval shipcombat, some stuff above some campffire in a deserted place and WoWs "vegetation" and environmental details or lack thereoff fades in shame compared to AAs. Its not just... well... moving through empty maps for no reason and exploring some groundtextures.
I wouldnt compare my game to some bloated empty maps.
Tbh, I'm more interested in how the landmass size between WoW vanilla and ArcheAge compare, so now I'm wondering whether he meant the size of the landmass of WoW and AA, or did he mean the worldmap of both games as a whole?
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
To me Vanguard FEELS the largest and Rift FEELS the smallest.....thats all that matters to me dont really care about actual size of the world.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Anyone have an idea of how big Ryzom's world is? I asked in-game, and was told it takes 2 hours to get from one end of the map to the other, and that didn't include the whole underground area (not sure how big that is). It could take longer because there is tons of animals and stuff that want to eat you, making the journey slower and therefore make the world seem bigger. But was told it had a big world...just not sure.
Rift actually isn't that small. It seems small because you can just teleport to whatever zone you want. If you travel from northwestern Stillmoor (over by GSB) all the way to the Elites in Droughtland, it's a fair distance even on a 110% mount. It's not as big as FFXI or VG, but it's not small.
I am sure it has been said somewhere before in this thread but its not the actual size of the world that defines it but the speed at which you can go places and travel. is there fast/instant travel, are their mounts, whats the walking speed/run speed?
Darkfall felt huge even wtih a mount because there was no fast travel unless you had extremely expensive bind stones.
WoW and Diablo II feels like such small worlds because of how easy it is to get EXACTLY where you need to go.
In reference to a previous mention of Anarchy Online. It's a been while and my memory may be foggy, but I once ran my meta-physicist from the NW corner of Avalon to the SE corner of Southern Fouls Hills - no planes, no QW, just running, and it took about 30 odd minutes real time. This was going via Varmint Woods/Upper Stret East Bank.
First the whole world of Tyria, incl all the continents of the expansions (Cantha, Elona, EotN areas) with Kalimdor in it as size comparison:
And Asheron's Call's Dereth, Darkfall's worldmap and the 2 largest continents of Vanguard, Thestra and Qalia (Kalimdor as comparison is in the DF worldmap):
I think besides SWG and maybe EQ those are the biggest MMO worlds of the MMO's still active.
AC's Dereth is stated to have a landmass of 576 sq miles, and VG's Thestra continent a landmass of 112.5 sq miles.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ok, I finally did some digging and testing into Everquest worldsizes.
Some trivia:
- it takes as long to cross the zone of West Karana in a straight line as it takes to cross Kalimdor from east to west coast, or from Michel Delving in LotrO's The SHire to the Forsaken Inn in the Lone Lands or from the Forsaken Inn to Rivendell as the crow flies.
- the crossing distance of all the zones between Qeynos and Freeport in Antonica taken together is about 1 hour. That is, measured from east to west border in a straight horizontal line for each zone. Which means it'll take longer than 1 hour to travel from Freeport's harbor to Qeynos at normal run speed.
As far as zoned worlds can be compared to seamless worlds, when taking the sizes of EQ zones into account, this is how EQ's continent Antonica would compare with WoW's Kalimdor in size:
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I think it all depends on the complexity of the MMO you are playing. Some worlds are user friendly where you can explore without any danger or requirements. Where other ones you can end up on paths of destruction.
It all varies, most of them are middle size, that could expand a little more/better.
Comments
I got you all beat, sadly it isn't an MMO. And the world is randomly generated...having said that
Minecraft is 1 pedobyte big. Its so big, no hard drive has enough room to store the game if you get a world size too big.
Bigger than any game ever. But like I said, its randomly generated and made as you explore...still...
Check out my nature/animal/relaxing music channel on Youtube!
My game channel on Youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/vendayn
- if the run speed varies from 1 MMO to the next, then that crossing distance measured in minutes becomes deceptive. A good example is Rift, where you run slower at normal speed than in MMO's like WoW or LotrO. In fact, the difference is that large that it'd take 15 minutes to travel the same distance in Rift for which you'd need 10 minutes in LotrO or WoW. It's a neat designer trick, decrease the normal run speed, heavily infuse your regions with abundance of mobs, and an MMO world can feel larger than it really is.
If it takes longer to travel across one MMO world than another then they are different sizes.
As humans, our perception of distance is based on travel time and the difficulty of travel.
For example - if you know people who travel alot (internationally) you will find they talk in terms of flight time. How far is it from London to Sydney? Who knows... but it is about 24-26 hours travel time.
Your example of Rift only illistrates the point about scaling. The Rift designers have scaled their world to suit their game - but so have all the other designers. While you might say "where you run slower at normal speed than in MMO's like WoW or LotrO" I could say - "you run at the same speed but the distance is greater"
Here are two worlds
World A .......... This one is 10km
World B .......... This one is 50km
You cannot say I am wrong - because I designed them.
Now, suppose it takes 20 minutes to cross World A and 15 minutes to cross world B - which is the bigger world?
- of course, you'd have to work under the assumption that 1 meter in 1 MMO = 1 meter in another MMO. But with the crossing time/distance you work under the assumption that travel speed is the same in all MMO's.
Not at all.
You work under the assumption that travel time is the variable to be compared.
The example I often use here is that I could design an MMO called "World of Bugs".
In it you could take 4 hours to travel across the Shagpile Forest to the Mountains of Pillows to defeat mobs of Dust Mites and Fleas in the Puppy Bed Basket Citadel. Is this a small world? Does the fact that it takes place in a room measuring 4 metres by 3 metres matter? Or that your actual travel speed is measured in centimetres per hour? Not at all. It's a big world because of the scaling applied and the perception of distance players get. What gives them that perception? Travel time.
- the 2nd issue is that actual miles or kilometers, or square miles and kilometers, is being used to quantify the size of an world or map. Look at that famous world comparison picture that was posted on several sites, including here on this site. It's all measured in square miles or kilometers, not in the time that it takes to cross a distance by foot or by car or such.
And that is why it's wrong. And that's why both you and I set out (using our own methods) to varify this data.
Using any comparison like this - EvE always wins because it spans "light years"
Besides which, if you start factoring in 'run speed' then you cannot fairly compare any MMO that does not use human avatars.
But, rather than argue the point - here is a challenge for you.
Include the following MMOs in your list
EvE Online (Avatars are spaceships)
Pirates of the Burning Sea (Avatars are Tall Ships - and scaling issues will prove very difficult)
http://mmohut.com/wp-content/gallery/pirates-of-the-burning-sea/pirates-of-the-burning-sea-travel-seas.jpg
Do you scale from the ships? Or the towns? Or use real world map distances?
Star Trek Online
http://procrastinationamplification.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/screenshot_2010-01-18-13-28-49.jpg
http://knights.calltoreason.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/startrek_04.jpg
What do you scale from here? The ships? And which one? Or the planets? Or the arbitary 'distances' quoted by the developers?
Urban Dead (Free Browser based MMO)
Pardus (Free Browser based MMO)
Ultimately – in most (if not all?) those examples the only meaningful data that can be easily obtained is travel time. In many it would be impossible to calculate any kind of run speed comparible to other games.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Let me say beforehand that I agree that crossing distance and time are important measuring variables when you want to compare worldsizes across MMO's.
Where I disagree is that those are the only measuring variables that are important. In my opinion: actual size in square km/miles, and the run speed that's needed to determine that actual size, are important and handy as well.
Regarding the examples you used, that's a simple one: if crossing distance and time is the only variable that I can determine, then that's where it stays. However, if I can figure out the size of your ship in EVE or the 'run' speed in those games, then I'll add those variables to my list and I'll see if I can get a size of the distance, measured in the ingame used miles or km's.
All the issues and questions you raised, I've wrestled with them as well.
For example, if you could play a giant of 100 meters high, and you could travel 400m/s then your sensation of the world would be a lot different than when playing the normal characters, as giant the world would feel a lot smaller.
In the same way, if you play a gnome in EQ/WoW or a fairy in EQ2, then your sensation of the travel speed is different than when playing an ogre, even if the travel speed is the same.
The same if everyone could use a speeder or horse right from the start: would this mean that the world is smaller as well?
Like said, I use length in km/miles and square km/miles, because that's the measurement type that other people are using, that data is already available to be used. If they're right can be verified as well: for example, I know that in that other comparison picture where video worlds are measured, they're way off for GW Nightfall and LotrO, when looked at the ingame definition of a meter. In the same way I know that the figures for WoW of 80 square miles is only true if the person that gave it off meant explorable landmass of WoW, not the total size of its world.
To know if a definition of a meter in an MMORPG is something that is comparable with the RL definition, to see if it's proportional, you pick a average sized human or humanoid character, assume it's 1.7-1.8m high, and then see how many times your character would fit in a ranged 10-15m. Granted, that's no exact science, but this would teach you very quickly whether the devs have defined the character heights to be something like 3 to 4 of their ingame meters, or like 0.5-1 meter by their definition.
If the results are that your character's height approaches the 1.6-2m range, then you can assume that the designers used ingame measurements that are comparable with RL definition of meters.
Long text wall, but basically it comes down to the more info I can find out regarding an MMO world, the better.
To use Rift as an example, I'm not merely satisfied in the crossing time, but also in the actual size of its world if I can find it out, especially if the base travel speed in one MMO is 4 times an avatar's average height or 2.5 times an avatar's average height.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Maverik, do you update the 1st post to the always most recent conclusions?
Well, dagnabit... but some people telling me here LOTRO is 300 times as big as WOW? NO WAY! I mean, hell, I am no WOW defender, really, and I loved LOTRO waaay more... but 300 times... that just CAN'T be right! I mean, 3 or 4 times or even 10 times... but that... that just sounds totally out of whack! So, what are the latest news in sizes? Can someone make a simple size-list in sqaure miles and square kilometers from 1 to 10 or so for us simpletons so we don't have to dig the entire thread? ^^
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Yep, I try to, so if you have any more info please let me know (I need to update the OP with Gyrus' latest info though)
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ha, nah I have no idea of such things. ^^
Cool stuff. Since I am an explorer type more than anything else, it is of interest to me. I also love big worlds in single player RPGs. It's why I love Bethesda over Bioware, even tho I LOVE story, I love exploration more. And game never can be too big for me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I think you'll find that SWTOR will be able to satisfy that explorer's need, so far it looks like SWTOR will be almost 3 times as large as WoW vanilla in total size of explorable landmass. And there's all kinds of neat hard-to-reach secret places hidden around on the Planets.
It's one of the things that I like what I heard so far from SWTOR, that it'll satisfy the MMO explorer in me
GW2 so far looks like it'll be 1.3-1.5 times the size of WoW vanilla, with the advantage though of Tyria being one contiguous landmass with underwater exploration to be done as well.
TERA I haven't found out yet, some say it's pretty large but I couldn't find any estimations regarding size.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Having underwater exploration as a really major part of gameplay could be a huge advantage to expanding the GW2 game world.
It better, with all the time and effort they seem to be dumping into it!
Would you end up counting GW2 as having more square feet of surface if all the bodies of water are traversable and full of content, or are you already counting bodies of water in other games?
Hmm, that's actually a good point you make. I was counting the whole worldmap in GW2, which is so far measured to be 13 * 11 miles. While I was having solely the continents and islands in mind when it comes to WoW.
Guess I regard the water and underwater areas in GW2 of equal value as the landmass areas in GW2, while for WoW I regarded the sea areas of no importance compared to its landmass, purely the continents of WoW
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
One of the big issues i always had with this discussion was that people's perception of time and distance is warped - particularly in games.
Like I said, as humans our perception of distance is based on two main factors;
1/ Travel time
2/ The difficulty (or danger) of travel.
Time is interesting because our perception of time changes depending on what we are doing and what we could be doing. As a real life example - ask people how long they have to wait at traffic lights? Many people will tell you "ages", "forever" etc. Press for a time and they will say "At least 5 minutes..." Well, when you actually time it you will find that 2 1/2 minutes is about as long as it gets - ever (most light phases are much shorter). People think it takes longer because they see the time as 'wasted'.
In MMOs you find that people see travel (particularly on "Fed-Ex" missions) as wasted. Often they think they have to travel for 'miles' or 'ages' when in reality it will usually only be 60 seconds or less.
The difficulty of travel is a big factor in MMOs particularly with wandering mobs. 2 minutes of uninterrupted travel can turn into 10 minutes of travel with combat and that also makes us think that environments are bigger than they really are.
When I started doing this there were two "big" MMOs out there that people said took 'days' to cross.
WWIIoL and EvE.
Players use words like "massive", "huge", "forever" and "ages".
Yet when you ask players to actually take a stopwatch and make a measurement - they go silent. Often (I think) because they discover that the world is not nearly as big as they thought.
In the case of EvE - while many people quote 'days' to cross the universe - one player timed it and suggested "about four hours". (This needs confirmation though)
In the example of LotRO - a lot of it comes down to scaling. This (again) is why I don't like to use miles or kilometres in my comparisons. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings there are distances and clues to distances given. If people chose to use these it only adds considerable confusion to the arguement.
For example the Buckleberry Ferry to the Brandywine Bridge is about 10 miles IIRC(?) yet in LotRO you can run that distance in 70 seconds - applying that scale to the world would give you a massive run speed (approx 520mph or 820 km/hr!) and greatly warp any dimentions you gave after. Using that would make LotRO measure 600km from Celondim => Rivendell - making it twice the size of WWIIoL.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Alright, for Archeage there's also a general worldsize known now, from this source:
The size of ArcheAge’s world is about the size of original WoW’s before its expansion came out.
So, it'll be roughly the size of WoW vanilla as the ArcheAge devs state.
Here's a preliminary worldmap from the closed betas (source)
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Tbh, I'm more interested in how the landmass size between WoW vanilla and ArcheAge compare, so now I'm wondering whether he meant the size of the landmass of WoW and AA, or did he mean the worldmap of both games as a whole?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
One final correction on SWG. Each of the original 10 planets is 16384 x 16384 meters, or 103.64 sq mi.
Yet another example of why you cannot use "metres" or "kilometres" or "miles" in this project.
How long does it take to cross one of these zones?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I want to know this as well
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Here's a comparison with WoW's Kalimdor, explanation of the size and figures is done in 1 of the posts on the first page.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
To me Vanguard FEELS the largest and Rift FEELS the smallest.....thats all that matters to me dont really care about actual size of the world.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Anyone have an idea of how big Ryzom's world is? I asked in-game, and was told it takes 2 hours to get from one end of the map to the other, and that didn't include the whole underground area (not sure how big that is). It could take longer because there is tons of animals and stuff that want to eat you, making the journey slower and therefore make the world seem bigger. But was told it had a big world...just not sure.
(edit)
According to this...
http://www.worldofryzom.com/cgi-bin/wor.pl?page=faq1.html
-----------------------------
• How big is the game world?
A : The world is over a hundred square kilometers in size.
--------------------------
Think that was before the underground part too.
Not sure how big that would be compared to say WoW or other games, I imagine smaller than VG?
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Rift actually isn't that small. It seems small because you can just teleport to whatever zone you want. If you travel from northwestern Stillmoor (over by GSB) all the way to the Elites in Droughtland, it's a fair distance even on a 110% mount. It's not as big as FFXI or VG, but it's not small.
I am sure it has been said somewhere before in this thread but its not the actual size of the world that defines it but the speed at which you can go places and travel. is there fast/instant travel, are their mounts, whats the walking speed/run speed?
Darkfall felt huge even wtih a mount because there was no fast travel unless you had extremely expensive bind stones.
WoW and Diablo II feels like such small worlds because of how easy it is to get EXACTLY where you need to go.
In reference to a previous mention of Anarchy Online. It's a been while and my memory may be foggy, but I once ran my meta-physicist from the NW corner of Avalon to the SE corner of Southern Fouls Hills - no planes, no QW, just running, and it took about 30 odd minutes real time. This was going via Varmint Woods/Upper Stret East Bank.
Found some more info and put them in a picture.
First the whole world of Tyria, incl all the continents of the expansions (Cantha, Elona, EotN areas) with Kalimdor in it as size comparison:
And Asheron's Call's Dereth, Darkfall's worldmap and the 2 largest continents of Vanguard, Thestra and Qalia (Kalimdor as comparison is in the DF worldmap):
I think besides SWG and maybe EQ those are the biggest MMO worlds of the MMO's still active.
AC's Dereth is stated to have a landmass of 576 sq miles, and VG's Thestra continent a landmass of 112.5 sq miles.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ok, I finally did some digging and testing into Everquest worldsizes.
Some trivia:
- it takes as long to cross the zone of West Karana in a straight line as it takes to cross Kalimdor from east to west coast, or from Michel Delving in LotrO's The SHire to the Forsaken Inn in the Lone Lands or from the Forsaken Inn to Rivendell as the crow flies.
- the crossing distance of all the zones between Qeynos and Freeport in Antonica taken together is about 1 hour. That is, measured from east to west border in a straight horizontal line for each zone. Which means it'll take longer than 1 hour to travel from Freeport's harbor to Qeynos at normal run speed.
As far as zoned worlds can be compared to seamless worlds, when taking the sizes of EQ zones into account, this is how EQ's continent Antonica would compare with WoW's Kalimdor in size:
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I was interested to see the Vanguard data here - since I have been playing the trial for the last couple of days.
By my estimates it would take 7minutes and 20 seconds to cross each 'chunk' based on my trial runs on the Isle of Dawn.
So the scale given by MMO.Maverick pretty good.
Cross linkage FTW http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/315457/page/1
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I think it all depends on the complexity of the MMO you are playing. Some worlds are user friendly where you can explore without any danger or requirements. Where other ones you can end up on paths of destruction.
It all varies, most of them are middle size, that could expand a little more/better.