I'm sorry, but this hardly has any base to it. There is no way to have a constant measurement across all the games in order to make a reliable comparison. While the idea is something to write on, but that map is no where near reliable, accurate or worth the memory it's stored in.
There actually is a way to accurately compare game world sizes. And it's how ancient peoples measures distances to begin with, and the modern military teaches soldiers how to use the same thing.
Paces. A person measures their pace stride and figue out how many paces per mile/kilometer/furlong/league. Then as you walk, you count your pces, keep a tally of how many times you get to 50 or 100 or some convenient number. When you get to your destination, you do the math and get the distance travelled.
So a game can measure their map distances by stride lengths.
Using that measure, a game could "increase their map size" by just making the characters smaller, and thus need more strides to travel the same distance.
I have always thought Aion could have been a better game by shrinking the charactes and mobs by 50%, making the heavily segmented maps 'seem' bigger.
Anarchy Online deserves a shout, that has a very large single world (pre expansions)
Agreed. The AO landmass of Rubi-ka would dwarf most of those, and that's before adding in the Shadowlands.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
IMO not the size in square miles or kilometers does matter to me. LotRo might be signifigant larger than WoW, the questing content seems smaller though. An other interesting aspect is how quick you can travel from one side of the world to the other one. I think here LotRo will take far longer than WoW, but the travel rate in LotRo is slower than WoW...
I also missed Lineage II's game world. I think this one is surely bugger than WoW as well, and there the content feels as full as WoW. But travelling from one end to the other takes dramatically longer in L2 over WoW. Even on mount. I remember a siege we had in Heine, where our clanleader took a wyvern flight from Aden. Even through air it would take him about 30 minutes to reach Heine and that distance is about 35% of the total map...
I don't think this comparison takes into account abstraction. Or, to be more precise, it DOES, but without applying it to actual experience playing. For example, LOTRO, while fairly largish, did not feel like 30,000 sq mi to me. Granted, the last time I played was right before Moria, but assuming the gameworld is now 2 times the size at release, it didn't even feel 15,000 sq mi. From what I remember, it felt pretty linear. Start from the Elvish/Dwarven starting area, head east through the Shire to Bree-land, continuing east towards the Lone Lands and Weathertop, and on to Rivendell. Sure, you could go north and south a bit here and there, but I felt the game suffered from too much reliance on the path of the Fellowship. I would like to have seen areas not covered in the books.
Anyway, yes, it felt pretty big in its own right, but not THAT big. So my question is this: Where did the measurements come from? Was it from a map in one of the books, using the scale marker you usually see in the map's legend (1 inch= 10 miles, or similar)? Games set either in a real world location or an established fantasy world with known geographical statistics are always scaled down and abstracted from what it would "really" be. Using LOTRO, it took several days for the Fellowship to get from the Shire to Bree-town, but it can be done in 8-10 minutes max in the game on foot. Saying the world is 30,000 square miles means Jack if a mile equals 5 steps in the game at running speed.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
I don't think this comparison takes into account abstraction. Or, to be more precise, it DOES, but without applying it to actual experience playing. For example, LOTRO, while fairly largish, did not feel like 30,000 sq mi to me. Granted, the last time I played was right before Moria, but assuming the gameworld is now 2 times the size at release, it didn't even feel 15,000 sq mi. From what I remember, it felt pretty linear. Start from the Elvish/Dwarven starting area, head east through the Shire to Bree-land, continuing east towards the Lone Lands and Weathertop, and on to Rivendell. Sure, you could go north and south a bit here and there, but I felt the game suffered from too much reliance on the path of the Fellowship. I would like to have seen areas not covered in the books.
Anyway, yes, it felt pretty big in its own right, but not THAT big. So my question is this: Where did the measurements come from? Was it from a map in one of the books, using the scale marker you usually see in the map's legend (1 inch= 10 miles, or similar)? Games set either in a real world location or an established fantasy world with known geographical statistics are always scaled down and abstracted from what it would "really" be. Using LOTRO, it took several days for the Fellowship to get from the Shire to Bree-town, but it can be done in 8-10 minutes max in the game on foot. Saying the world is 30,000 square miles means Jack if a mile equals 5 steps in the game at running speed.
In MMOs, large game worlds need large population as well. The two MMOs i have enjoyed most, Rubies of Eventide and Warhammer Online, both had a very small map.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
...As long as world content has to be created by hand we're not likely to see a huge world that is meaningful anytime soon.
Thats why Daggerfall have the biggest world even the game was released around 1997 with Doom II like graphics.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration ______\m/_____ LordOfDarkDesire
Recently on the Lotro message boards, it was posted that someone "walked" (i.e. not ran) from one end of Lotro to the other (thorins hall to Dol Guldur). It took almost 5hrs.
At an average walking speed of 3mph, thats 15miles.
Wait... is this a contest? Will WW2O anthropomorph into a harbinger of doom and destroy the world if it's size isn't asserted enough? What am I missing here?
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Wait... is this a contest? Will WW2O anthropomorph into a harbinger of doom and destroy the world if it's size isn't asserted enough? What am I missing here?
It's the largest world in any game. That was the point of the article. Perhaps that's what you were missing.
Wait... is this a contest? Will WW2O anthropomorph into a harbinger of doom and destroy the world if it's size isn't asserted enough? What am I missing here?
It's the largest world in any game. That was the point of the article. Perhaps that's what you were missing.
No, the point of the article was to COMPARE large video game worlds, not figure out which is the biggest. WW2OL was already mentioned. I think its anger has been sated for now.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Wait... is this a contest? Will WW2O anthropomorph into a harbinger of doom and destroy the world if it's size isn't asserted enough? What am I missing here?
It's the largest world in any game. That was the point of the article. Perhaps that's what you were missing.
No, the point of the article was to COMPARE large video game worlds, not figure out which is the biggest. WW2OL was already mentioned. I think its anger has been sated for now.
ROFL!!! My MMO is bigger than your MMO...and its got more interesting tricks to make it seem even larger. :P
sry, couldn't resist
The scale has less to do with percieved 'size' than, as mentioned above, content. That and how open the world is.
I am curioius as to what GW 4 campaign total would be tho. Prophesies was the largest of the 4 with Nightfall and Factions and the smaller end. Dunno about Eye of the North ( it seemed smallest but then it popped up all over the Prophesies map A huge dif with it and an open world is that there were limits as to where one could go on a given map. That said, anyone who didn't explore prophesies missed a ton of neat spots to check out.
Pre-searing? Or After? I'm currently all over the place trying to catch up. I made it to level 20 but I didn't finish the campaign yet!
In developer terms, the world is measured by the units of measure when creating the map, so the person above who said they could increase the world size by reducing the models is sorta correct. The map/terrain itself is set by the adjusted unit in the terrain creators so for instance if you set a map to be 1 unit = 1 kilometer = 512 texture map, you'll could get a fairly decent sized world with a crappy looking terrain. 1 unit of the world scaled to 1 meter would look totally awesome by comparison though so in essence making a 1 unit = 1 meter = 512 texture map would be extremely detailed.
One of the first terrains I created was 4098 x 4098 km square or roughly 2546 square miles, the map was over a gb in size (as an image file) and took roughly about hour to break up the entire map zone into 512x512 square image files which are "stitched" together to make the giant world map.
And to give you an idea of how far the distance of 2546 square miles is....the distance from Virginia Beach, Va (us east coast) to San Jose California (west coast) is 2,990 miles.
Dark and Light was supposed 15,000 square miles, yet was desolate and empty IMHO
Darkfall has the largest seamless handcrafted world without instances. It takes 6 hours to run from one corner to the opposite corner (just the middle continent).
Face the facts!
All of the other worlds have invisible walls.
Vanguard came close . .. but hard mobs that are too difficult to pass is kind of like an invisible wall so it is very theme-park.
And yes . .. size does matter ; )
NEWS FLASH!"A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished!https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
Vissar2, Arena was significantly smaller than Daggerfall and provided size of Daggerfall in art seems to be correct. Which is something that I doubt in case of LOTRO... If I remember correcly even on box it was saying 50 km2.
Anyway just to proove it in Daggerfall to get on foot from one border to the other one it wook atleast a week (without running). Assuming that data is correct and taking running into it in LOTRO it would take atleast 24 hours without any break.
Comments
There actually is a way to accurately compare game world sizes. And it's how ancient peoples measures distances to begin with, and the modern military teaches soldiers how to use the same thing.
Paces. A person measures their pace stride and figue out how many paces per mile/kilometer/furlong/league. Then as you walk, you count your pces, keep a tally of how many times you get to 50 or 100 or some convenient number. When you get to your destination, you do the math and get the distance travelled.
So a game can measure their map distances by stride lengths.
Using that measure, a game could "increase their map size" by just making the characters smaller, and thus need more strides to travel the same distance.
I have always thought Aion could have been a better game by shrinking the charactes and mobs by 50%, making the heavily segmented maps 'seem' bigger.
noobs where is darkfall, gg shawk!
Agreed. The AO landmass of Rubi-ka would dwarf most of those, and that's before adding in the Shadowlands.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
IMO not the size in square miles or kilometers does matter to me. LotRo might be signifigant larger than WoW, the questing content seems smaller though. An other interesting aspect is how quick you can travel from one side of the world to the other one. I think here LotRo will take far longer than WoW, but the travel rate in LotRo is slower than WoW...
I also missed Lineage II's game world. I think this one is surely bugger than WoW as well, and there the content feels as full as WoW. But travelling from one end to the other takes dramatically longer in L2 over WoW. Even on mount. I remember a siege we had in Heine, where our clanleader took a wyvern flight from Aden. Even through air it would take him about 30 minutes to reach Heine and that distance is about 35% of the total map...
I don't think this comparison takes into account abstraction. Or, to be more precise, it DOES, but without applying it to actual experience playing. For example, LOTRO, while fairly largish, did not feel like 30,000 sq mi to me. Granted, the last time I played was right before Moria, but assuming the gameworld is now 2 times the size at release, it didn't even feel 15,000 sq mi. From what I remember, it felt pretty linear. Start from the Elvish/Dwarven starting area, head east through the Shire to Bree-land, continuing east towards the Lone Lands and Weathertop, and on to Rivendell. Sure, you could go north and south a bit here and there, but I felt the game suffered from too much reliance on the path of the Fellowship. I would like to have seen areas not covered in the books.
Anyway, yes, it felt pretty big in its own right, but not THAT big. So my question is this: Where did the measurements come from? Was it from a map in one of the books, using the scale marker you usually see in the map's legend (1 inch= 10 miles, or similar)? Games set either in a real world location or an established fantasy world with known geographical statistics are always scaled down and abstracted from what it would "really" be. Using LOTRO, it took several days for the Fellowship to get from the Shire to Bree-town, but it can be done in 8-10 minutes max in the game on foot. Saying the world is 30,000 square miles means Jack if a mile equals 5 steps in the game at running speed.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
who cares how big the game world is? what are you doing in giant, but sterile and boring game world?
EXACTLY.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
A big game world is nice but if its freaking empty (mob density, no content) with a low population whats the point.
I want a realistic game world but i hate running for two hours not seeing anyone.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
In MMOs, large game worlds need large population as well. The two MMOs i have enjoyed most, Rubies of Eventide and Warhammer Online, both had a very small map.
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
Thats why Daggerfall have the biggest world even the game was released around 1997 with Doom II like graphics.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
______\m/_____
LordOfDarkDesire
I wish they added "Planet Calypso", which is apart of Entropia Online to this mix...
It's the largest seamless world I've ever played. 12 hours+ to walk from one side of the map to the other....
Recently on the Lotro message boards, it was posted that someone "walked" (i.e. not ran) from one end of Lotro to the other (thorins hall to Dol Guldur). It took almost 5hrs.
At an average walking speed of 3mph, thats 15miles.
Seems alot smaller than the quoted figure...
Again, another WWII-online / Battle ground europe entry.
Pain is the little thing that reminds us we are alive.
Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
WWII-Online Stats this map:
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Brit Air
French Air
Oh and a link to view the WWII / BattleGround europe map in full size : http://public.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pPV2q7zBbXxdQr35hJkoQXuqPZ7mZAkChdJaYD3Re7Q4tlaH7TJGeF5jYXQQNlLJc_9ktt9WiwaOTrutUXXQPQQ/Mmogmaps_001.jpg
Pain is the little thing that reminds us we are alive.
Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
WWII-Online Stats this map:
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Brit Air
French Air
Wait... is this a contest? Will WW2O anthropomorph into a harbinger of doom and destroy the world if it's size isn't asserted enough? What am I missing here?
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
It's the largest world in any game. That was the point of the article. Perhaps that's what you were missing.
No, the point of the article was to COMPARE large video game worlds, not figure out which is the biggest. WW2OL was already mentioned. I think its anger has been sated for now.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Right. And this is a comparison as well.
Pre-searing? Or After? I'm currently all over the place trying to catch up. I made it to level 20 but I didn't finish the campaign yet!
Elder Scrolls: Arena= 6,000,000 square miles= Size of South America.
Talk about being massive.
In developer terms, the world is measured by the units of measure when creating the map, so the person above who said they could increase the world size by reducing the models is sorta correct. The map/terrain itself is set by the adjusted unit in the terrain creators so for instance if you set a map to be 1 unit = 1 kilometer = 512 texture map, you'll could get a fairly decent sized world with a crappy looking terrain. 1 unit of the world scaled to 1 meter would look totally awesome by comparison though so in essence making a 1 unit = 1 meter = 512 texture map would be extremely detailed.
One of the first terrains I created was 4098 x 4098 km square or roughly 2546 square miles, the map was over a gb in size (as an image file) and took roughly about hour to break up the entire map zone into 512x512 square image files which are "stitched" together to make the giant world map.
And to give you an idea of how far the distance of 2546 square miles is....the distance from Virginia Beach, Va (us east coast) to San Jose California (west coast) is 2,990 miles.
Dark and Light was supposed 15,000 square miles, yet was desolate and empty IMHO
http://www.forceofarms.com/index.php
Darkfall has the largest seamless handcrafted world without instances. It takes 6 hours to run from one corner to the opposite corner (just the middle continent).
Face the facts!
All of the other worlds have invisible walls.
Vanguard came close . .. but hard mobs that are too difficult to pass is kind of like an invisible wall so it is very theme-park.
And yes . .. size does matter ; )
NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
Lol at the reason why vanguard doesn't have big world. You fail my friend o_O
Size matters, but in a different way. I think many MMOG worlds are simply too large.
Vissar2, Arena was significantly smaller than Daggerfall and provided size of Daggerfall in art seems to be correct. Which is something that I doubt in case of LOTRO... If I remember correcly even on box it was saying 50 km2.
Anyway just to proove it in Daggerfall to get on foot from one border to the other one it wook atleast a week (without running). Assuming that data is correct and taking running into it in LOTRO it would take atleast 24 hours without any break.