Guild Wars Nightfall larger than Azeroth?

We here at Massively love to lurk on gaming forums. Aside from the occasional breaking news bit or entertaining discussion, we sometimes stumble across something so interesting that we can't help but share. In this case, a discussion concerning game world size over at GuildWars2Guru.com piqued our interest.

The thread, originally started to discuss a preview article on ArenaNet's forthcoming Guild Wars sequel, quickly veered into new territory, namely the sizes of various worlds both online and off. A user by the name of IceD'Bear even produced a couple of images showing direct map comparisons of games as diverse as the Elder Scrolls series, Grand Theft Auto III, Lord of the Rings Online, and of course Guild Wars.

Now, we know what you're thinking. A game's map size doesn't automatically translate into playable area, and therein lies the rub with these types of comparisons. That said, it makes for a nifty trek down memory lane with regard to old games, and it might add a few onto the list of titles to check out if you're of the explorer persuasion. You can view the map comparisons here and here, and be sure to let us know what you think about the largest game world to date, as well as any games you'd like to see measured against those listed.

Reader Comments (32)

Virtually all of the Asheron's Call 1 landmass was accessible. The islands required teleportation to reach, but it was rare to find a mainland mountain that couldn't be scaled.

It was a rude shock to me when I played later games and found that mountains were treated as rat maze walls rather than points of interest or vantage points.

Can you throw up a comparable map of WW2 Online? Still the biggest MMO map size of all - not bad for a game pushing 9 years old ;)

hehe what is it 1/4 scale europe i forget but it is huge

1/8th from memory.....I remember those long, lonely runs just from the FB to the nearest towns if there was no trucks/armour to take you in.....or bombing runs from England to the factories and back to Antwerp......never made it to the Alps though.....

Not really a surprise.. the landmasses of GW are rather massive. Needless to say there's a part of me not looking forward to working on the Elonian Cartographer title.

well... with billions of lightyears I think EVE Online won this match :D

The EVE Online map is roughly 80x80 lightyears, and that's without counting the systems that are only available through wormholes, and don't show up on the regular map. However, most of that space is useless since it's deadspace between stars, where no stargates go and spaceships cannot fly, unless you're prepared to wait days for your ship to reach an empty place in space. That said, you CAN actually reach the space between stars, it's just that you won't find anything there, and it takes a freaking long time.

Shouldn't Eve Online be considered the definitive end of this discussion especially with the console expansion featuring planet combat?

The upcoming MMO Infinity: Quest for Earth (http://www.infinity-universe.com) will feature a procedurally generated full sized galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars, all realistically sized, at realistic distances from each other. So :P on EvE (which is a fun game anyways). I think that would represent the be all end all of large games.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5toQqcxcNc --> pre-alpha prototype video

What about SWG's worlds? 10 planets each 256km², plus an 11th that is 64km². A little bit of math says SWG's worlds are 2,624km². And that's only counting the ground maps, and not the huge space zones that were each about 16*16km as well, in all 3 dimensions.

Looks like they are comparing single maps not combining multiple map in to one big map (take Guild Wars, they only show one of the maps.) Even so it would be interesting to see what one planet on SWG looks like compared to everything else there. I still remember those long runs on Tattoine and Dantooine.

It is interesting to see how large Daggerfall is though, I remember how they boasted about its size and even trying to run from one end to the other eventually giving up half way. :-p

saw this on another forum, and we reckon Burnout Paradise's scale on the first map is pretty screwy - there's no way a WoW zone is about the size of a city block in Burnout. the other maps seem alright though.

I stopped as soon as I saw the comparison of GTA3 and GTA:SA. I've played both and recognized that both maps were not on the same scale. This also immediately invalidates everything after that as it's based on off-scale comparisons.

On that note, how is this even measured? Based on the scale on the maps themselves? Is someone walking a toon across each world counting steps? How do you know they're moving at the same speed?

The entire process is flawed and anyone who considers this a "real" comparison needs to pull the wool off their eyes.

Elite had 8 galaxies, which I imagine would total several billion au. So :P EVE ;)

What's with the LotRO link? That's not their website. lol.

Watchoo talkin' 'bout, course it is!

Fixed. Thanks.

Too soon, Jef. Too soon.

~Sera

Land Land Everywhere, but not a Clump to Jump!

Even with inconsistencies, Daggerfall would still blow the rest away. Which makes me happy enough.

I think pure size is a useless metric.

V:SoH was nice and large.
And almost totally devoid of content.
Much the same can be said of EQ2. At least the classic zones.

World of Warcraft, on the other hand, has taken the art of scenic compression to a new level. Packing more content into the area it has than any other game produced to date.

Maybe GW2 will make use of all that terrain, but I seriously doubt it. It takes huge numbers of developers to craft and populate a world to the level that WoW has done so.

Some folks may not like the WoW gameplay, but you have to admit that Blizzard filled their world with a tremendous amout of stuff to do.

So, maybe we should talk about 'gameplay per square mile'. Don't know how you would measure it, but to me, that is what really counts.

And, a game in the hand is worth about ten in development. Let's see what GW2 is like AFTER it is released.

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Guild Wars Nightfall larger than Azeroth?

Reader Comments (32)

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:09PM Stormwaltz said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:27PM Dread said

Posted: Jun 3rd 2010 1:24AM AnotherPint said

Posted: Jun 3rd 2010 3:55AM Dread said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:28PM Arkanaloth said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:33PM WARXion said

Posted: Jun 3rd 2010 10:21AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:35PM Malvicus said

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Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 6:37PM RogueJedi86 said

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Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 8:41PM ChaosInc said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 8:52PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 10:20PM gildhur said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 10:33PM Jef Reahard said

Posted: Jun 4th 2010 9:07AM Seraphina Brennan said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 11:14PM Zellis said

Posted: Jun 2nd 2010 11:26PM Orvidos said

Posted: Jun 3rd 2010 12:08AM Innocentte said

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