Does anyone know how large the world of DAoC was? To me it felt vast, especially because you had three continents to explore which where seperated due to the realms. Although I played this game for years I can show you so many places on the map I have never been to and don't know what they look like
Very interesting indeed, I would have never guessed that LotRO was larger than WoW. That is an eye opener although I must admit the Turbine was a bit sneaky about hiding areas in very small passages like Rath Teraig in Erud Luin you could completely miss it easily if you did not actually know where it was.
Just as a minor sidenote, my MMO design in this thread http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306154/page/2 handily outstrips the world size of all these games by a factor of at least several thousand, up to and including EvE (Once you factor in travel time)
Okay developers, hurry up and get to it! People want big game worlds!
Surely WAR is one of the smallest. At least if you pvp at 30+, considering pvp lakes arent even half a zone AND only 3 zones are open at a time. Lets say there's a lockdown and it gets even smaller. Different ways of meassuring I guess.
Even if you are an explorer type, what you find in the various nooks and cranies has to be interesting.
As long as things aren't feeling restrictive or clumped up it, the actual amount of space is not really an issue.
FF14 has a large land mass apparently but it isn't getting high-scores from the critics. (I havne't played FF14 so this is 2nd hand info).
Elder scrolls4: Obvilion has a vastly larger world compared to Divinity2 but I prefer Divinity2 cause it offers a more interesting story/char/gameplay and an infinitely better VA.
FFXIV:
I checked FFXIV out when it was released, obviously I didnt tarry too long in there, but I did have time to run from the desert city to the forest city, and it actually didnt take too long (I dont have any solid numbers or estimates anymore really, I just remember it didnt take very long, the overall world propably is quite big IF there's access to it). Sure there were plenty of landmass to left and right as I went on, but most of it seems to be just heavily copy pasted, along the way there was nothing interesting for ones eye. The map indicated there could be something more interesting but from city A to B it was heavily copy pasted with full of squirrels to crack.
Rift:
I like exploring big worlds as long as there's details and uniqueness to places, so it comes as a quite big dissapointment how long Rift's world is, I was kinda looking forward to it as something polished, and if too WoW like overall, at least a new fresh world to explore on, that tiny screen next to Kalimdor is a bit disheartening considering exploration...
I guess great polish comes with a great price too.
Problem with that is in game you simply can't walk in a straight line to get from one end to the other. We're talking walking distance rigth? How do you Gage zones with multiple levels? Or impassible sections? Basically measuring Te overall size is meaningless honestly. You don't know how long it would take to get around objects if you have no access to them. So basically your telling us how big a world is if it was flat...
?
Eh, that applies to all the figures above, and that's how all the people tested it in the various MMO's, because that's the only objective measurement.
It's not a 'how long does it take for you to travel from city A to capital B going through mountain passes, circumventing impassable mountains and ravines etc', no it's meant to gauge the size of a world.
Or as I stated in the OP:
crossing distance: the time it takes to travel at normal speed from one end of the map to the other end in a straight line without hindrances, as a bird could fly it
The time it would take you to cross a certain distance at normal speed if you could travel it as a bird, in a straight line with no obstacles that would add to your travel time.
What are crossing distance and speed relevant to if this is for a fictiional path that cannot ever be traveled. What do these measurements rate or gauge?
Whatever the results, I hope this thread helps people realize that concerns about the size of a game world are ridiculous, and that it is the quantity and fidelity of the content within the game world that truly dictates whether a world feels big or small or empty or immersiv eor whatever.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I checked FFXIV out when it was released, obviously I didnt tarry too long in there, but I did have time to run from the desert city to the forest city, and it actually didnt take too long (I dont have any solid numbers or estimates anymore really, I just remember it didnt take very long, the overall world propably is quite big IF there's access to it).
I can't recall it exactly anymore, but FFXIV isn't that large, it's certainly smaller than WoW. You have these maps that show a raster of squares, and iirc to cross such a square took 20-30s or such. From there you can determine how large a region approximately is.
Maybe I'll add FFXIV to the list if I've time to take measures again.
Originally posted by Loktofeit
What are crossing distance and speed relevant to if this is for a fictiional path that cannot ever be traveled. What do these measurements rate or gauge?
Whatever the results, I hope this thread helps people realize that concerns about the size of a game world are ridiculous, and that it is the quantity and fidelity of the content within the game world that truly dictates whether a world feels big or small or empty or immersiv eor whatever.
Heh. If you don't care about the size of the MMORPG world you play in, then it should be obvious that this isn't a thread of interest to you. This is for people who've wondered about the actual size of MMO worlds, when subjective perception and 'gut feeling' aren't in the picture, but just pure objective facts and figures.
How big or small a worlds feels or how immersive it is, is all subjective emotion, it differs from one person to another and you can't measure that, neither is there an objective measure that rates content density.
Crossing distance, run speed, size, how long it takes to traverse from one side of a zone to the other side, or how far you could travel in a game from one MMO to the next in 5 min, those are all things that can be measured, devoid from any misleading emotional coloring that'll skew any guesswork about worldsizes.
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."
WoW does have mounts/fast travels so you travel faster in WoW.
I am a bit surprised at the land mass difference though.
Obviously, largest MMO World will be EVE. :P
Someone mentioned it'd take 4 hr of straight flying (no fast jumps) to get from 1 side of EVE's galaxy to the other end of EVE's galaxy, so it sure is in the top-rank sized worlds
I wonder though about Vanguard, that seems to be one of the largest as well in worldsize, and Darkfall from what it looks like has as 2 hour crossing distance from one end of its main continent to the other, making it also one of the more vastly sized MMO worlds.
But regarding Rift, yes, I was surprised as well especially when you put it next to other MMO worlds like WoW, which is of medium worldsize.
Darkfall is about 2 1/2 hours, if you only run and don't sprint at any time.
What are crossing distance and speed relevant to if this is for a fictiional path that cannot ever be traveled. What do these measurements rate or gauge?
Whatever the results, I hope this thread helps people realize that concerns about the size of a game world are ridiculous, and that it is the quantity and fidelity of the content within the game world that truly dictates whether a world feels big or small or empty or immersiv eor whatever.
Basically the thread simply is about how big world X is compared to the other worlds. For whatever purpose you would like to know it, out of curiosity or if you are looking for a game with big world / small world, whatever.
To many people it means a lot, some simply want a huge world to explore, even with the cost of detail, I suppose it works the otherway around too. I generally tend to favour big worlds, where you have somekind of mount or fast travel to explore and move, hopefully even at later "levels" you still have meaningful stuff to do at the "beginning" (please TOR, big world and this).
In this thread, I'm mostly just curious. I expect mmog world to be big, and a thread like this is perfect one to roughly compare some upcoming worlds into some older ones I've already experienced.
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."
This subject has been hashed out many, many times... I use to have alot of charts/maps with all the data collected by in-game cartagraphers for testing world size, unfortuneatly, that HD that housed all that old data is no longer. I have a few older charts, but they are no longer significant, because those games worlds have increased in size.
One thing to stipulate when discusing world size is the actual game world. Is it real, or zoned? For instance, Everquest is zoned, while Vanguard is real. A real world is much harder to maintain (both financially & technically) but that also means 360 degree content. UNlike say WoW, where it is still zones (zone walls), but no zone time between the zones... it is still not a real world, so the content and game world are funneled to you.
That said, everquest is by far the largest MMORPG to date. Which makes sense because it is one of the oldest. For instance, if a newbie started today, it would take nearly 5 years to visit all the zones & explore them. Not only because of what it takes, because of it sheer size. Dark & Light bragged about world size, but when released & still today has only 10% of what they intended... and it was still massive. But then again, the game is a flop because no matter where you went, it was dead.
Vangaurd is the largest open world to date & I wish I could find the discussion within those forums (& much later on the DF forums) where most of the MMORPG research went on.
There are many things to consider, but don't make the mistake of large game world = large amounts of game content. If there isn't content, then how big it is, is moot. That is why Vanguard takes the prize, not only is it open and massive, but highly designed and content hand placed. Which takes alot of money.
I think Mortal Online & Darkfall both deserves attention here. Both are 360 content (open world) and not a themepark, thus more usable land.
Now as to your point.
Sorry, I have no difinitive #'s (sizes)to give you, (their exact figures no longer matter to me), because those lost charts said it all & as you get older (41) you forget exactness, but remember differences and Deltas.
Though, I think a big distinction should be made in regards to open worlds -vs- zoned ones... in terms of USABLE size.
ps: Sorry it early and the Superbowl coverage has my attention. But this topic has been dear to me for nearly 12 years and I had considerable data that I was collecting for a blog. It's all lost, so has my energy and zeal on the topic.
Ask away...
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
This subject has been hashed out many, many times... I use to have alot of charts/maps with all the data collected by in-game cartagraphers for testing world size, unfortuneatly, that HD that housed all that old data is no longer. I have a few older charts, but they are no longer significant, because those games worlds have increased in size.
One thing to stipulate when discusing world size is the actual game world. Is it real, or zoned? For instance, Everquest is zoned, while Vanguard is real. A real world is much harder to maintain (both financially & technically) but that also means 360 degree content. UNlike say WoW, where it is still zones (zone walls), but no zone time between the zones... it is still not a real world, so the content and game world are funneled to you.
Now as to your point.
Sorry, I have no difinitive #'s (sizes)to give you, (their exact figures no longer matter to me), because those lost charts said it all & as you get older (41) you forget exactness, but remember differences and Deltas.
Though, I think a big distinction should be made in regards to open worlds -vs- zoned ones... in terms of USABLE size.
ps: Sorry it early and the Superbowl coverage has my attention. But this topic has been dear to me for nearly 12 years and I had considerable data that I was collecting for a blog. It's all lost, so has my energy and zeal on the topic.
Ask away...
It's a shame you lost the data, especially regarding the older MMO's as EQ, DAoC, UO, AC and AO it'd have been handy, as well as for Vanguard of which size seems hard to track down. If by any chance you might be able to dig up any of that remaining data that'd be appreciated.
As for zones vs seamless, I think what you're referring to is the amount of explorable area within the size of a world and true, that should be taken into account: for example, LotrO's Middle Earth isn't fully explorable, even the western area of it isn't, and the same applies to GW, although ANet seems to use the same sizes for the GW2 regions as has been used for GW, with the difference that in GW2 the whole map will be explorable.
I find worldsize and crossing distance to get a feel for how vast new, upcoming MMORPG's compared to current MMORPG's: regarding content and content density, I can get a feel for that, but it's the size of an MMO world added to that that gives me an indication how much there'll be to explore and to do.
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."
Just as a minor sidenote, my MMO design in this thread http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306154/page/2 handily outstrips the world size of all these games by a factor of at least several thousand, up to and including EvE (Once you factor in travel time)
Okay developers, hurry up and get to it! People want big game worlds!
But how much content fills it?
That's the reason games don't just randomly enlarge their game worlds.
It's not that it's not possible: it is. It's fairly easy. It's that players crave content rather than empty game worlds.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I recalled LotrO uses map coordinates, which makes more accurate measuring possible than I did with my former test, so I went back for another test, and this is what I came up with.
LotrO distances
To travel 10 coord. points either from N->S or E->W takes 5m15s
Celondim, the elven starter town in the west lies at (28.0S, 92.4W), near the stablemaster.
Bree west gate lies at (29.5S, 52.6W), Rivendell's west end near the stable master at (29.5S, 6.7W) and Elrond's house in Rivendell at (29.5S, 3.3W).
Which makes the distance
- between Celondim and Rivendell roughly 45 min
- and between Bree and Elrond's house at Rivendell around 26 min, or 6.3 miles as the crow flies.
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."
Just as a minor sidenote, my MMO design in this thread http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306154/page/2 handily outstrips the world size of all these games by a factor of at least several thousand, up to and including EvE (Once you factor in travel time)
Okay developers, hurry up and get to it! People want big game worlds!
But how much content fills it?
That's the reason games don't just randomly enlarge their game worlds.
It's not that it's not possible: it is. It's fairly easy. It's that players crave content rather than empty game worlds.
Considering that my theoretical game budget for this game was several trillion? (Well, the guy DID say 'Given an unlimited budget, what kind of an MMO would you make. I got tired of people saying 'An MMO just like the one I used to play back in the day, only more polished and with better graphics') I'm assuming a ton of content! If I'm going to pay tens of thousands of programmers to design procedural content generating programs, they better work it out, darn it.
*cough*
I was mostly joking about developers hurrying up and designing my MMO, since it would require brand new cutting edge hardware for every player (Subsidized of course, since I don't think your average person would want to shell out several thousand in hardware costs just to play an MMO) , an improved communication and GPS infrastructure across the whole world, and a lot of other big budget items. ... but y'know, if the US decides not to spend any of their GNP some year, and donates it to me, I know what game I'll be designing, right?
I'm fully aware of the problems of filling a big world with suitably varied, dense and deep content. :< Nothing you can't fix up with spending more money than WoW + SWToR + GW2 on game design though! Some problems really do go away if you throw enough money at them.
Just as a minor sidenote, my MMO design in this thread http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306154/page/2 handily outstrips the world size of all these games by a factor of at least several thousand, up to and including EvE (Once you factor in travel time)
Okay developers, hurry up and get to it! People want big game worlds!
But how much content fills it?
That's the reason games don't just randomly enlarge their game worlds.
It's not that it's not possible: it is. It's fairly easy. It's that players crave content rather than empty game worlds.
Considering that my theoretical game budget for this game was several trillion? (Well, the guy DID say 'Given an unlimited budget, what kind of an MMO would you make. I got tired of people saying 'An MMO just like the one I used to play back in the day, only more polished and with better graphics') I'm assuming a ton of content! If I'm going to pay tens of thousands of programmers to design procedural content generating programs, they better work it out, darn it.
*cough*
I was mostly joking about developers hurrying up and designing my MMO, since it would require brand new cutting edge hardware for every player (Subsidized of course, since I don't think your average person would want to shell out several thousand in hardware costs just to play an MMO) , an improved communication and GPS infrastructure across the whole world, and a lot of other big budget items. ... but y'know, if the US decides not to spend any of their GNP some year, and donates it to me, I know what game I'll be designing, right?
I'm fully aware of the problems of filling a big world with suitably varied, dense and deep content. :< Nothing you can't fix up with spending more money than WoW + SWToR + GW2 on game design though! Some problems really do go away if you throw enough money at them.
Heh well that's a very realistic attitude towards it! I approve!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I miss there few games like Lineage 2, Ultima Online, Ragnarok online for ex. But this is realy nice thread! Thx for this info guys.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
Very interesting indeed, I would have never guessed that LotRO was larger than WoW. That is an eye opener although I must admit the Turbine was a bit sneaky about hiding areas in very small passages like Rath Teraig in Erud Luin you could completely miss it easily if you did not actually know where it was.
I wasn't surprised. I actually saw a post once here that had the map scaled to a 1:1 scale between LotRO and WoW, and LotRO dwarfed it by a rather large magnitude (and this was pre-Moria / pre-Wrath). It becomes more obvious once you realize that one zone in LotrO is roughly the equivalent of roughly 3 average sized WoW zones. For example, the Shire is roughly 1/4th the size of the Eastern Kingdoms all by itself.
"The total map size is roughly 83 km by 83 km (the exact numbers would be 83.89 x 83.89), or roughly 7000+ square kilometers." - from Fallen Earth Wiki,
The following statement is false The previous statement is true
Comments
Does anyone know how large the world of DAoC was? To me it felt vast, especially because you had three continents to explore which where seperated due to the realms. Although I played this game for years I can show you so many places on the map I have never been to and don't know what they look like
Very interesting indeed, I would have never guessed that LotRO was larger than WoW. That is an eye opener although I must admit the Turbine was a bit sneaky about hiding areas in very small passages like Rath Teraig in Erud Luin you could completely miss it easily if you did not actually know where it was.
Just as a minor sidenote, my MMO design in this thread http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306154/page/2 handily outstrips the world size of all these games by a factor of at least several thousand, up to and including EvE (Once you factor in travel time)
Okay developers, hurry up and get to it! People want big game worlds!
Anybody remember Anarchy Online?
You ought to measure that one. I think it would be a contender, or perhaps I'm remembering it incorrectly. I've been kind of jaded since I played VG.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Surely WAR is one of the smallest. At least if you pvp at 30+, considering pvp lakes arent even half a zone AND only 3 zones are open at a time. Lets say there's a lockdown and it gets even smaller. Different ways of meassuring I guess.
FFXIV:
I checked FFXIV out when it was released, obviously I didnt tarry too long in there, but I did have time to run from the desert city to the forest city, and it actually didnt take too long (I dont have any solid numbers or estimates anymore really, I just remember it didnt take very long, the overall world propably is quite big IF there's access to it). Sure there were plenty of landmass to left and right as I went on, but most of it seems to be just heavily copy pasted, along the way there was nothing interesting for ones eye. The map indicated there could be something more interesting but from city A to B it was heavily copy pasted with full of squirrels to crack.
Rift:
I like exploring big worlds as long as there's details and uniqueness to places, so it comes as a quite big dissapointment how long Rift's world is, I was kinda looking forward to it as something polished, and if too WoW like overall, at least a new fresh world to explore on, that tiny screen next to Kalimdor is a bit disheartening considering exploration...
I guess great polish comes with a great price too.
What are crossing distance and speed relevant to if this is for a fictiional path that cannot ever be traveled. What do these measurements rate or gauge?
Whatever the results, I hope this thread helps people realize that concerns about the size of a game world are ridiculous, and that it is the quantity and fidelity of the content within the game world that truly dictates whether a world feels big or small or empty or immersiv eor whatever.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I can't recall it exactly anymore, but FFXIV isn't that large, it's certainly smaller than WoW. You have these maps that show a raster of squares, and iirc to cross such a square took 20-30s or such. From there you can determine how large a region approximately is.
Maybe I'll add FFXIV to the list if I've time to take measures again.
Heh. If you don't care about the size of the MMORPG world you play in, then it should be obvious that this isn't a thread of interest to you. This is for people who've wondered about the actual size of MMO worlds, when subjective perception and 'gut feeling' aren't in the picture, but just pure objective facts and figures.
How big or small a worlds feels or how immersive it is, is all subjective emotion, it differs from one person to another and you can't measure that, neither is there an objective measure that rates content density.
Crossing distance, run speed, size, how long it takes to traverse from one side of a zone to the other side, or how far you could travel in a game from one MMO to the next in 5 min, those are all things that can be measured, devoid from any misleading emotional coloring that'll skew any guesswork about worldsizes.
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."
Darkfall is about 2 1/2 hours, if you only run and don't sprint at any time.
Basically the thread simply is about how big world X is compared to the other worlds. For whatever purpose you would like to know it, out of curiosity or if you are looking for a game with big world / small world, whatever.
To many people it means a lot, some simply want a huge world to explore, even with the cost of detail, I suppose it works the otherway around too. I generally tend to favour big worlds, where you have somekind of mount or fast travel to explore and move, hopefully even at later "levels" you still have meaningful stuff to do at the "beginning" (please TOR, big world and this).
In this thread, I'm mostly just curious. I expect mmog world to be big, and a thread like this is perfect one to roughly compare some upcoming worlds into some older ones I've already experienced.
2-2.5 hours sounds conform this picture that someone made about Darkfall's world compared to WoW's Kalimdor continent:
From what I understand, the guy who found these sizes did sortlike tests, as in running a certain distance and see how far he'd come.
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."
Fallen Earth feels pretty big.
Been playing MMORPG since the very first one.
This subject has been hashed out many, many times... I use to have alot of charts/maps with all the data collected by in-game cartagraphers for testing world size, unfortuneatly, that HD that housed all that old data is no longer. I have a few older charts, but they are no longer significant, because those games worlds have increased in size.
One thing to stipulate when discusing world size is the actual game world. Is it real, or zoned? For instance, Everquest is zoned, while Vanguard is real. A real world is much harder to maintain (both financially & technically) but that also means 360 degree content. UNlike say WoW, where it is still zones (zone walls), but no zone time between the zones... it is still not a real world, so the content and game world are funneled to you.
That said, everquest is by far the largest MMORPG to date. Which makes sense because it is one of the oldest. For instance, if a newbie started today, it would take nearly 5 years to visit all the zones & explore them. Not only because of what it takes, because of it sheer size. Dark & Light bragged about world size, but when released & still today has only 10% of what they intended... and it was still massive. But then again, the game is a flop because no matter where you went, it was dead.
Vangaurd is the largest open world to date & I wish I could find the discussion within those forums (& much later on the DF forums) where most of the MMORPG research went on.
There are many things to consider, but don't make the mistake of large game world = large amounts of game content. If there isn't content, then how big it is, is moot. That is why Vanguard takes the prize, not only is it open and massive, but highly designed and content hand placed. Which takes alot of money.
I think Mortal Online & Darkfall both deserves attention here. Both are 360 content (open world) and not a themepark, thus more usable land.
Now as to your point.
Sorry, I have no difinitive #'s (sizes)to give you, (their exact figures no longer matter to me), because those lost charts said it all & as you get older (41) you forget exactness, but remember differences and Deltas.
Though, I think a big distinction should be made in regards to open worlds -vs- zoned ones... in terms of USABLE size.
ps: Sorry it early and the Superbowl coverage has my attention. But this topic has been dear to me for nearly 12 years and I had considerable data that I was collecting for a blog. It's all lost, so has my energy and zeal on the topic.
Ask away...
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I'm pretty sure EvE is the largest MMO world, even bigger than EQ's world.
How about ATitD's? I'm surprised no one mentioned that. It seems to me that that game world is very big.
Not sure if WAR is the smallest world in any MMO. How about Pocket Legends?
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
It's a shame you lost the data, especially regarding the older MMO's as EQ, DAoC, UO, AC and AO it'd have been handy, as well as for Vanguard of which size seems hard to track down. If by any chance you might be able to dig up any of that remaining data that'd be appreciated.
As for zones vs seamless, I think what you're referring to is the amount of explorable area within the size of a world and true, that should be taken into account: for example, LotrO's Middle Earth isn't fully explorable, even the western area of it isn't, and the same applies to GW, although ANet seems to use the same sizes for the GW2 regions as has been used for GW, with the difference that in GW2 the whole map will be explorable.
I find worldsize and crossing distance to get a feel for how vast new, upcoming MMORPG's compared to current MMORPG's: regarding content and content density, I can get a feel for that, but it's the size of an MMO world added to that that gives me an indication how much there'll be to explore and to do.
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."
But how much content fills it?
That's the reason games don't just randomly enlarge their game worlds.
It's not that it's not possible: it is. It's fairly easy. It's that players crave content rather than empty game worlds.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I recalled LotrO uses map coordinates, which makes more accurate measuring possible than I did with my former test, so I went back for another test, and this is what I came up with.
LotrO distances
To travel 10 coord. points either from N->S or E->W takes 5m15s
Celondim, the elven starter town in the west lies at (28.0S, 92.4W), near the stablemaster.
Bree west gate lies at (29.5S, 52.6W), Rivendell's west end near the stable master at (29.5S, 6.7W) and Elrond's house in Rivendell at (29.5S, 3.3W).
Which makes the distance
- between Celondim and Rivendell roughly 45 min
- and between Bree and Elrond's house at Rivendell around 26 min, or 6.3 miles as the crow flies.
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."
Considering that my theoretical game budget for this game was several trillion? (Well, the guy DID say 'Given an unlimited budget, what kind of an MMO would you make. I got tired of people saying 'An MMO just like the one I used to play back in the day, only more polished and with better graphics') I'm assuming a ton of content! If I'm going to pay tens of thousands of programmers to design procedural content generating programs, they better work it out, darn it.
*cough*
I was mostly joking about developers hurrying up and designing my MMO, since it would require brand new cutting edge hardware for every player (Subsidized of course, since I don't think your average person would want to shell out several thousand in hardware costs just to play an MMO) , an improved communication and GPS infrastructure across the whole world, and a lot of other big budget items. ... but y'know, if the US decides not to spend any of their GNP some year, and donates it to me, I know what game I'll be designing, right?
I'm fully aware of the problems of filling a big world with suitably varied, dense and deep content. :< Nothing you can't fix up with spending more money than WoW + SWToR + GW2 on game design though! Some problems really do go away if you throw enough money at them.
Heh well that's a very realistic attitude towards it! I approve!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I miss there few games like Lineage 2, Ultima Online, Ragnarok online for ex. But this is realy nice thread! Thx for this info guys.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
This is really cool I'm glad you took the time to gather and record your own info and compile it into a really nice list!
So in fact, compared to the earth, they are tiny.
They are, in fact, tiny compared to Rhode Island.
Even SWG's planet content is smaller than Rhode Island, and that is one of the biggest mentioned.
I wasn't surprised. I actually saw a post once here that had the map scaled to a 1:1 scale between LotRO and WoW, and LotRO dwarfed it by a rather large magnitude (and this was pre-Moria / pre-Wrath). It becomes more obvious once you realize that one zone in LotrO is roughly the equivalent of roughly 3 average sized WoW zones. For example, the Shire is roughly 1/4th the size of the Eastern Kingdoms all by itself.
"The total map size is roughly 83 km by 83 km (the exact numbers would be 83.89 x 83.89), or roughly 7000+ square kilometers." - from Fallen Earth Wiki,
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true