Size comparison of game worlds, in square miles

[novasatori]

Yeah but there was actually something to do, or is there some connection that occurs? Anyone can distribute houses and ruins anywhere that have absolutely no meaning or purpose

yes, most of the dungeons had associated lore, or notes inside of them, there weren't really go do x quests though like current MMOs

like finding a named corpse or a note somewhere detailing the back story of the person who was dead or was there before, and going deeper and finding more to the story...

plus just finding random out of the way places to go hunt and find gear, and chests in the dungeons spawned random items which owned (at launch anyways)

one dungeon used to have a line of like 40 people all day waiting to get a chance to use the chests

good times, good times

 

[Fenixgoon]

do i really want to run for 20hrs just to get to the other side of the map?

quality > quantity in this case

 

[Daverino]

The only two MMORPGs I really played were Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online. Both of them struck me as very large, but it never occurred to me that MMORPG game maps have gotten smaller. Is WoW really that small? It seems that I could cover all that ground in a few days. Asheron's Call I played for years and I'm confident I never saw huge chunks of the land.

 

[-Slacker-]

Ahem

 

[imaheadcase]

Yah, Battlefield Europe wins in land mass. The game is HUGE. its funny because you look at map in game and think "Oh i'm real close to the town with action". Then you actually zoom in and like a 15min straight run/walk to get there. lol

 

[pontifex]

EVE wins, then?

EVE is nothing more than a few stars, gas clouds, and a random planet (which was just a colored sphere the last time i played) or space station. EVE loses.

 

[darkewaffle]

FFXI was pretty massive. I actually quite liked the scale of that game, though starting out in it is rough when you don't have access to all the proper modes of transportation.

And yea, I don't see any article either? Not sure what the deal with the site is.

 

[Malak]

EVE is nothing more than a few stars, gas clouds, and a random planet (which was just a colored sphere the last time i played) or space station. EVE loses.

You mean 10,000 stars? Since 2003 EVE has been, and still is, the reining champion on explorable area. No other game comes close. WISH was going to try but the game got canned during early beta.

 

[CurseTheSky]

IMO, open world vs. forced zones makes a HUGE difference. I personally see walled-off zones as a way to cheat to make the world seem bigger, forcing you to stay within the bounds of a zone to make it from one end to another. Consider how long it takes to go from the Barrens to Tanaris in World of Warcraft on foot, and then consider how long it would take if all of the mountains and cliffs in Thousand Needles had shortcuts and passage ways, allowing free travel to neighboring "zones" without having to take a pre-determined path.

In addition, travel speed plays a huge role in how big a game's map feels. In Asheron's Call, for example, the map was massive. It could literally take a few hours to run from coast to coast, and run speed at moderate to high levels in that game were easily equivalent to 100% or even 150% movement speed in WoW. Riding at 100% speed (epic ground mount) in WoW, on the other hand, would take you from one end of Kalimdor to the other in a matter of what, 30 minutes? And that's even with zones forcing you to take a less-than-ideal path.

With the way that they designed WoW, I think that adding flying mounts was a huge mistake. The world doesn't even feel remotely big now, mainly because you can simply fly over everything. In Asheron's Call, on the other hand, it would have been "nice" to be able to fly over a few mountain ranges or shear cliffs from time to time, but ultimately it wouldn't have made a big difference in travel time because of the world's open nature. As others have said, AC didn't have a bunch of landmass filled with nothing; there was something to see or do on virtually every square inch of that place.

 

[Ross Ridge]

You mean 10,000 stars? Since 2003 EVE has been, and still is, the reining champion on explorable area. No other game comes close. WISH was going to try but the game got canned during early beta.

Meh. You've seen one solar system, you've seen them all. Even the names of the systems are randomly generated. Like many things in EVE, the only thing that gives a system any real identity is the players. EVE loses big time in the quality versus quantity department.

 

[Anubis]

Riding at 100% speed (epic ground mount) in WoW, on the other hand, would take you from one end of Kalimdor to the other in a matter of what, 30 minutes? And that's even with zones forcing you to take a less-than-ideal path.

it takes longer then that, hell it takes 18 min to fly that distance on the flightpath

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Meh. You've seen one solar system, you've seen them all. Even the names of the systems are randomly generated. Like many things in EVE, the only thing that gives a system any real identity is the players. EVE loses big time in the quality versus quantity department.

That IS the point of Eve. Make a gigantic universe where alliances and corporations make their mark. Some space is more valuable than others, owing to better planets to mine or valuable rats.

Conflicts arise leading to massive wars of hundreds of players vs hundreds of players vying for control over something, rather than small instances of PVP minigames that has no meaning in the context of the world. You get wormholes that lead you into uncharted space and if you're lucky and have some balls, get Wh that exists right into the middle of an alliance you don't like too much, and so do some hit and run maneuvers in the middle of their space where it is essentially impossible to catch you.

The way Eve is done, the massiveness of Eve has no equal, because the very fact that it's so massive allows for truely epic in game events. How many other games have actual power wars when some of the biggest alliances collapse and hundreds of valuble systems suddenly lose sovereignty.

Also, the planets are really pretty, and when you warp to a station in orbit, the scale of the planet is jaw dropping.

Eve space has quality AND quantity. Everyone riles about being given a sandbox game where ANYTHING is possible and you make your own game is the largest game world ever created, Eve has it.

 

[magomago]

The connection is that you get to explore the world and kill monsters in it, just like real life. Do you require a quest to go hiking?

i fail to see how this unique to AC, and can't be done in any modern MMO

 

[Ross Ridge]

Eve space has quality AND quantity. Everyone riles about being given a sandbox game where ANYTHING is possible and you make your own game is the largest game world ever created, Eve has it.

We're talking about the virtual game world here. The bland boring repeative randomly generated part that CCP created. The fact that players came to inhabit it and gave some corners of the game world a bit of character, doesn't change the fact that game world as "designed" by CCP is dull and uninteresting. CCP could spew out a million more solar systems into the game world tomorrow at the push of a button. It wouldn't improve the quality of the game world one bit.

Imagine playing a single player version of EVE. Would you want to explore that world? In just about any other MMORPG, their worlds are interesting enough just explore without other players, without combat, quests or anything else to do. You could spend hours doing that. I doubt I've been to even half of the regions in EVE. I could go visit them all right now on the test server with interference from other players, but why would I? They're no different from any of the other regions I've been to.

I think it's great that player organized events like Hulkagedon can be major news, and have a bigger impact on the game than anything CCP does in terms of events or content (as opposed to changes in the mechanics of the game). Where the Caldari Navy station at Jita 4.4 is the major trade hub of the game, not because CCP put the auction house there or because game lore gave it some importance, but because players decided that's where it should be. EVE is a great game, but its world is dull. Did you know that Minmatar homeworld is in the Pator system? Most people don't, not even most Minmatar players. No one cares, it's just another boring system.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I used to like this comparison chart, not sure how accurate it is :

 

[darkewaffle]

Guild Wars is that big? I didn't play it much but I never got that impression at all, huh.

Also I'd still like to know where FFXI would sit in that regard.

 

[Throckmorton]

The only two MMORPGs I really played were Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online. Both of them struck me as very large, but it never occurred to me that MMORPG game maps have gotten smaller. Is WoW really that small? It seems that I could cover all that ground in a few days. Asheron's Call I played for years and I'm confident I never saw huge chunks of the land.

WoW is set up like a set of small theme parks. Each theme park (zone) contains a bunch of rides (quests) you go on, within a small space.

Asheron's Call was a massive open world sandbox

 

[Throckmorton]

i fail to see how this unique to AC, and can't be done in any modern MMO

The point is that it CAN'T be done in just any modern MMO. None of them has an open world anywhere close to that size as far as I know, except Eve.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

We're talking about the virtual game world here. The bland boring repeative randomly generated part that CCP created. The fact that players came to inhabit it and gave some corners of the game world a bit of character, doesn't change the fact that game world as "designed" by CCP is dull and uninteresting. CCP could spew out a million more solar systems into the game world tomorrow at the push of a button. It wouldn't improve the quality of the game world one bit.

Imagine playing a single player version of EVE. Would you want to explore that world? In just about any other MMORPG, their worlds are interesting enough just explore without other players, without combat, quests or anything else to do. You could spend hours doing that. I doubt I've been to even half of the regions in EVE. I could go visit them all right now on the test server with interference from other players, but why would I? They're no different from any of the other regions I've been to.

I think it's great that player organized events like Hulkagedon can be major news, and have a bigger impact on the game than anything CCP does in terms of events or content (as opposed to changes in the mechanics of the game). Where the Caldari Navy station at Jita 4.4 is the major trade hub of the game, not because CCP put the auction house there or because game lore gave it some importance, but because players decided that's where it should be. EVE is a great game, but its world is dull. Did you know that Minmatar homeworld is in the Pator system? Most people don't, not even most Minmatar players. No one cares, it's just another boring system.

It's the same thing with normal open game worlds though. I never really got the entire exploring for the sake of exploring thing. When I do something in a game, its for the purpose of doing something to get me ahead. I could never get myself to blindly wander without an objective. At least with Eve, instead of just falling upon something interesting, it takes some skill to probe something out. And with Wormholes, its always awesome to take a blind jump and realize you're in the heart of Red Alliance space then start building gangs to start killing stuff in Red space. In no game have I ever just explored for the sake of exploring, because its much more efficient and fun to be actively DOING things. How is it fun to wander around with no objective, I can't really imagine it.

Sure the systems themselves don't matter from an in game perspective, but a ton of places in eve have lots of value to me. There are stations deep in 00 space now in enemy hands that I occupied for 6 months before we lost a war, (And left like 400 mil isk of stuff behind). You make your own adventure, and by adventure I mean killing every person worth more than 2 racks of missiles.

Making someone cry/ smack talk to you in local because you just destroyed his brand new expensive ship is an amazing experience.

 

[apac]

The point is that it CAN'T be done in just any modern MMO. None of them has an open world anywhere close to that size as far as I know, except Eve.

I miss AC really, really fun game.