If Freemarch is about the size of Westfall then it would seem that the scale in the picture is indeed off. Although not as much as if you compare it to Durotar. Since you are using someone elses scaling for WoW and your own method for rift and lotro that may be where the difference is coming from. Telara is definitly smaller as it currently is than Kalimdor but again I  just doesn't seem to be fully half the size of Kalimdor at least in feel.

It is interesting to note however just how small these worlds are compared to real world.

edit: it is definitly good to see that the three upcoming games you have hear all have very large maps. I do think that is on thing that Rift, Aion and others have suffered from lately. Of course strongly quest based games are going to tend way. It is simply more managable but I suspect that we will be seeing more and more sandbox like elements added to games that are soon to come. Themeparks just aren't doing it for people any more. More possiblities, more choices, more dynamicism and more ways for the characters to directly effect the world.

Originally posted by Gyrus

Hmmm... why (after previous discussions) you have decided to revert to miles and the developer claims...I don't understand.

Because TERA and ArcheAge were about worldsize measured in square miles and not in crossing times, nothing is known about crossing time of those MMO's.

As for Battleground Europe, I didn't include that for the same reason as that I didn't include SWG, Vanguard, AC's Dereth or any other older MMO: this is a thread about world sizes of recent and upcoming MMO's, not old ones. Kalimdor and Eriador are only added as a baseline comparison.

There are a couple of other aspects beyond pure landmass size though. Travel time is a big one, games with easy long distance teleports/fast transit will feel much smaller, same for ones with very fast land movement rates. EVE is probably the largest map out there in terms of transit times.

Terrain usage is another one; Anarchy Online (early on) is a prime example of a pointlessly large world...lots of map space and nothing to do in any of it.  LotRO used to be much better about this, but the latest revamps have moved it ever more towards quest hubs and away from wandering. Fallen Earth is the best in this regard out of the ones I have played recently. I suppose diversity factors in here too; EVE for example has a lot of space and most of it is exactly the same as every other bit of it.

Very cool charts! Well done.

Originally posted by MumboJumbo

Those maps are impressive. AA has all that water for broadside battles no doubt? But it's landmass looks quite a lot smaller than 16x16. Here's a quote from ArenaNet (not sure how accurate it is tbh but good interview on exploration in general) on map size:

Interview with Leah Rivera - Content Designer

3. How big are the maps? Let’s say you walk from the most northern to the most southern point – how long will that take? Half an hour? Or more?

This is a tough one to answer. In a single map (which is just a small part of Tyria) there are a lot of things that can affect your run time, such as natural obstacles, monster encounters, character level, and the general shape of the map. I tried it out for you guys on my current map and, being in a familiar setting, running straight across, at the upper level range and only fighting what I couldn’t avoid, I made it across the map in about 15 minutes.

My memory is really fail then xD

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Originally posted by Gyrus

Hmmm... why (after previous discussions) you have decided to revert to miles and the developer claims...I don't understand.

Because TERA and ArcheAge were about worldsize measured in square miles and not in crossing times, nothing is known about crossing time of those MMO's.

 

As for Battleground Europe, I didn't include that for the same reason as that I didn't include SWG, Vanguard, AC's Dereth or any other older MMO: this is a thread about world sizes of recent and upcoming MMO's, not old ones. Kalimdor and Eriador are only added as a baseline comparison.

The recent and upcoming MMOs are small then.SWG is larger than all six games in the op combined.

Cool info, OP! :)

Well, while the bigger the better has always been my motto, there also must be something IN IT. I mean, 10 times as big as X doesn't really help if it is just empty. I mean, I am an explorer. In Rift I explore every nook and edge, and in Rift it pays off. You can find hidden lore, puzzles, treasure and whatnot. Whereas games like WAR or AoC had no reason to explore whatsoever.

I wonder where TOR fits in here. ^^

Originally posted by Elikal

Cool info, OP! :)

Well, while the bigger the better has always been my motto, there also must be something IN IT. I mean, 10 times as big as X doesn't really help if it is just empty. I mean, I am an explorer. In Rift I explore every nook and edge, and in Rift it pays off. You can find hidden lore, puzzles, treasure and whatnot. Whereas games like WAR or AoC had no reason to explore whatsoever.

I wonder where TOR fits in here. ^^

Yeah remember what a game called Dark and Light did, all land and no content. You could walk for miles without seeing a single mob creature in that game at launch, so glad it failed it was worthless POS game of all time.

I hate lots of land and too little content on it. Bigger certainly doesn't mean better in this case.

Maverick you always talk about world sizes ;)  it´s ok if the world is not THAT big :)

remember its not the size of the world that counts. Its how it is used....

Originally posted by lectrocuda

remember its not the size of the world that counts. Its how it is used....

To the caterpillar it is the end of the world. To the master, it is a butterfly.

...same thing ;)

Originally posted by lectrocuda

remember its not the size of the world that counts. Its how it is used....

 I agree,

Take a look at RIFT..it isn't a big land, and it feels way too crowded, then take a look at Vanguard, it's the exact opposite of rift with too much unused land.

And then there is this size, if and when the game (Citadel of Sorcery) is finished. From the Developer's log dated March 16, 2011:

"It is almost that time again… E3. And like many game companies, the MMO Magic team is making a big push to get ready for the most important show in the game industry. This year we are setting up meetings with several publishers at E3 to give them a look at Citadel of Sorcery. As you can imagine, in order to be ready for that we are pushing many of the game elements forward to specific goals by June.

The new Terrain system has seen a lot of progress in the past few months, and is shaping up nicely. We have now generated several planets, though we have not settled on one in particular quite yet........

We can currently generate the entire world and process it through time with gravity, water and wind erosion, as well as glacier alterations and then add additional river systems improvements. Once created we can look at the world from space or zoom down to various levels of detail, or zoom to ground level and drop a character to walk around.

There is nothing quite like walking a character on the terrain to get a feel for size and distance… and the size is extraordinary. The world is the full 900,000,000 sq. kilometers we promised when we released that information a long time ago. Everything is to true world scale, meaning, if you want to climb a mountain, expect to spend a couple weeks doing so, or if you want to follow a major river to the source, expect to spend a few months. This is made like a real planet, not a postage stamp of ground that you can cross in twenty minutes."

As a singular world (not infinite outer space nor planet hopping MMO's), this has to be the largest attempt I know of to date!

How the hell are you supposed to interact with anyone if the total world area is equivalent to a PLANET? 

Originally posted by Skyy_High

How the hell are you supposed to interact with anyone if the total world area is equivalent to a PLANET? 

You realize that happens everyday on earth right?

Why not list EK + Kalimdor? I get why you didn't list expansion areas.

Also, lil Telara looks so cute up there.

tag

Interesting post.  I'm sort of surprised of the size of Rift.  It's smaller than I expected, only a bit bigger than the overland in WAC.

I could spend whole days exploring virtual worlds, it's like exploring someone else's mind.

Originally posted by onehunerdper

Originally posted by Skyy_High

How the hell are you supposed to interact with anyone if the total world area is equivalent to a PLANET? 

You realize that happens everyday on earth right?

Wow, you expect to get over 6 billion people to play this game? 

Even if they got a million players (which, frankly, considering how niche this game looks like it's going to be, would be miraculous), that's still hovering between 0.01% and 0.02% of the population of Earth. Now consider that, presumably, there will be stuff to do across all of this game world (ie, no wasted areas), so people won't necessarily be clustered together like they are on Earth (and, if they are, what the heck is the point of all of the empty areas?). 

Which brings me back to my initial question, which really comes with an unspoken corrolary: how are you supposed to interact with anyone if a few hundred thousand people (at best, and not considering the fact that most of your population will be offline at any given time) are spread over the surface of a planet? The corrolary: if they're not spread over the surface of the planet, what's the purpose of the other 90% of your game world? 

Seriously, the info on their website says to expect it to take weeks (real-life time) to climb one mountain, months to find the source of one river. You honestly expect me to believe that this world isn't going to be effectively single-player whenever you step outside? This is completely sidestepping the fact that I don't think it's possible to generate a world like that without procedural algorithms (which, if they're using, is really cool just because no one else has done that for an MMO...I just don't see it making for a good game).