How large is Tyria in GW2?

[Ogretron]

Even though I would say by comparing the beginner zones in GW2 to some zones in WoW, it seems WoW is bigger. Both in time it takes to traverse (comparing using feral druid movement) and time it take to complete all the quests. Which is fine by me, I don't know why people want such a big world. I'd rather have a smaller world with more detail put in, than a bigger world that is empty and lacks detail.

Even though Divinity's Reach is obviously bigger than Stormwind, I feel like I can spend 20x more time in it just because of the vast amount of detail. That is what matters to me, not square footage.

[Herecius]

The zones definitely are just about as big as an average large-sized WoW zone, but the space is used so effectively, you scarcely notice, so it works out well. WoW, or at least vanilla WoW, would tend to leave big huge swaths of space unused and full of scattered mobs, and even now, most of your questing is still done from a quest hub that has you then venture out into the zone, whereas in GW2 you spend your whole time wandering, generally, adding to the sense of scale.

[Ibbi]

It's not that big. Although it is much larger than Telara (RIFT's world). Tyria will seem big because there's no mounts or any kind of flying.

Azeroth seemed huge back before flying mounts, and when flying was allowed it made it feel smaller.

[justaguy]

Its also worth noting that, because of the level scaling when you visit old zones, the entire world should still be challenging when you are max level. If you compare the actual "playable" (eg, level 85) zones in WoW to the playable zones in GW2 (pretty much every level zone), Tyria should make Azeroth look tiny.

[Investigator]

Seeing as how the Guild wars NIGHT FALL (as in only elonia) is larger then all of wow... i'm going to say that GW2 is just as big if not bigger, god help them when expansions start to emerge...

Not to mention we run faster in GW2 then we do in wow to compensate for the lack of mounts, it's pretty freaking apparent too, ever play wow at low lvs? Yeah you move like a dying snail!! that's why they put mounts in game... Not to mention you'd need to run faster in GW2 to allow you to dodge out of the way of spells and the like..

PS: That map you linked of tyria is missing almost the entirety of the Maguuma jungle, all the crystal desert, all of the northern shiverpeaks, and half the southern shiverpeaks... so after noticing that wow MAY be bigger for now... once they add in the rest of tyria though GW2 will be a freaking titan of a map!!

Sorry. but that comparison map has been proven to be untrue a long time ago, by people who did their own tests on it. Each expansion was actually more the size of a WoW main continent in available landmass. GW2's Tyria was actually pretty close the size of GW's Tyria, what some people showed in overlay maps on the GW2Guru forums.

As for that map I linked, I don't know what you're exactly referring to, but what I'm referring to is the worldmap as can be found in its totality when completely zoomed out. But as an alternative, you might also use the map with explored zones and available zones that another poster posted in this thread, and do your own calculations. Queensdale has a width of 4.5 min, the math follows easily from there (to compare: Kalimdor is in a straight line from north to south coast 45 min, and from east to west coast approx 17 min; in LotrO from Bree to Rivendell would be 22 min in a straight line)

[bvoid]

Sorry. but that comparison map has been proven to be untrue a long time ago, by people who did their own tests on it. Each expansion was actually more the size of a WoW main continent in available landmass. GW2's Tyria was actually pretty close the size of GW's Tyria, what some people showed in overlay maps on the GW2Guru forums.

As for that map I linked, I don't know what you're exactly referring to, but what I'm referring to is the worldmap as can be found in its totality when completely zoomed out. But as an alternative, you might also use the map with explored zones and available zones that another poster posted in this thread, and do your own calculations. Queensdale has a width of 4.5 min, the math follows easily from there (to compare: Kalimdor is in a straight line from north to south coast 45 min, and from east to west coast approx 17 min; in LotrO from Bree to Rivendell would be 22 min in a straight line)

The problem is that you are comparing with travel time, however movement speed between the games are different, which throws off your estimates. For example it takes 30 minutes to walk across imaginary island A at 1km/hr which is 500 meters across. It takes 5 minutes to run across island B at 10km/hr which is 833 meters across. Based on the fact that it takes 30 minutes to cross island A and 5 minutes to cross island B, you are saying that Island A is larger.

Travel Time =/= World Size.
If you take a look these videos:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rhRpIsxXm7U#t=682s
and
youtube.com/watch?v=GjLmknda6_Q&feature=g-crec-u
side by side, you will see that movement speed in guild wars 2 is much faster than that of wow. And if thats different, then the estimates of world size are wrong. Cause size related to spatial dimension, not travel time.

If you want a more accurate comparison, then you need to measure something that is identical in both games and use that as a basis to measure world size. A better method would be to use the median human height in both games as a point of comparison. Eg. have humans in both games sleep in a chain, measure the distance on a world map and scale the maps appropriately.

[aevitas]

One thing I noticed (which someone pointed out) was that the further you zoomed out on the worldmap the areas seemed more compact.. Scaled down a lot it seems, I think to figure out how big it is you would need to calculate it by completly zooming in on each area.

Either way it doesn't matter. The world is HUGE, not to mention all the hidden underground stuff you 'suddenly' discover by swimming somewhere and finding a hole, or suddenly falling down while walking somewhere.

[Deleted]

The problem is that you are comparing with travel time, however movement speed between the games are different, which throws off your estimates. For example it takes 30 minutes to walk across imaginary island A at 1km/hr which is 500 meters across. It takes 5 minutes to run across island B at 10km/hr which is 833 meters across. Based on the fact that it takes 30 minutes to cross island A and 5 minutes to cross island B, you are saying that Island A is larger.

Travel Time =/= World Size.
If you take a look these videos:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rhRpIsxXm7U#t=682s
and
youtube.com/watch?v=GjLmknda6_Q&feature=g-crec-u
side by side, you will see that movement speed in guild wars 2 is much faster than that of wow. And if thats different, then the estimates of world size are wrong. Cause size related to spatial dimension, not travel time.

If you want a more accurate comparison, then you need to measure something that is identical in both games and use that as a basis to measure world size. A better method would be to use the median human height in both games as a point of comparison. Eg. have humans in both games sleep in a chain, measure the distance on a world map and scale the maps appropriately.

This is entirely true. One of the first things I noticed in the game is that you move much faster than in WoW - and you get a speed boost while out of combat as well.

[Deleted]

tyria maps are weird.

I mean they look like they cut off a lot of land. or will they add more in expansions?

edit: they cut off alot D:

[~Valen~]

Divinity's Reach is much larger than Stormwind. So the whole scaling seems off.



Stormwind is about 1/4 the size

To me it seems that 70% of that place is covered with trees!

[Queen of Hamsters]

Size or no size comparison, all I know is that I came out of the human starting area after 15 hours, and I still wasn't done! I still had stuff to do and see and craft and buy and gather. I complete Elwynn Forest in 1 hour 30 minutes, and characters in wow run much slower than those in GW2.

So, Tyria is bigger in content imo. Zone size? Perhaps not, but it sure does FEEL bigger and that's all I need to sate my need for adventure and danger. Not to mention that underwater is included as well. In WoW there's tons of underwater areas not in use.

Also, Divinity's reach is much larger than Stormwind, much more content and a lot less copy pasta. I almost feel out my chair when I walked into the center of Divinity's reach...was it called the high seat? With all those pretty things hanging from the ceiling and such.

Flying mounts make Azeroth smaller, all that water between the continents make it feel smaller, all the portals make it feel smaller and the fact that zones get outdated makes it feel smaller. All in all I'd dare say that if it FEELS smaller, then it IS smaller.

No bashing of WOW ofc, I love the game. But GW2 and WoW can't even be compared properly, they're just so different it's amazing to see.

[Deleted]

The problem with timing by minutes taken is movement speed varies between the games, as does the amount of 'stuff' in a zone. So it's a fairly arbitrary form of measurement.

[Deleted]

The only way to really tell how the measurements compare to each other would be to first time how long it takes for a WoW character to run a specific distance, calculate the movement speed based on that, do the same for a GW2 character, extrapolate the difference in speed, then applying that to the calculation of time to run through an area.

The things that make this impossible in this case are three:
1. In WoW, while the abilities are measured in yards, it's just an arbitrary unit. 40 yards in the game isn't actually 40 yard.
2. Until proven otherwise, point 1 should be assumed is true for GW2 as well.
3. In GW2, abilities do not have a unit attached to their ranges. While one could guess that the measurement is in inches (ranger non-traited longbow at 1200 inches meaning ~30 meters, which seems feasible when "eyeballing" the distance and comparing it to character height), this remains guesswork and as such cannot be used as a foundation for mathematics.

[Cyclone Jack]

To me it seems that 70% of that place is covered with trees!

Wha? There aren't that many trees in DV.

If you are going by that map pic alone, without having actually been in-game, then I'll let you know that those darker areas between the 'spokes' are entire districts, each of which felt like they were nearly the size of Vanilla Stormwind, at least to me. The spokes are bridges and the middle is a large arboretum/observatory thing, which make up the upper level. The lower level consists of 4 open districts, 1 instanced district (which is unique to each character), and a district with a big gaping hole in it that, from what I can tell, doesn't really have anything there (I could be wrong, as I was unable to get into that area with the bridge).

I would say DV is 3-4 times the size of Stormwind, easily.

[Durzlla]

Sorry. but that comparison map has been proven to be untrue a long time ago, by people who did their own tests on it. Each expansion was actually more the size of a WoW main continent in available landmass. GW2's Tyria was actually pretty close the size of GW's Tyria, what some people showed in overlay maps on the GW2Guru forums.

As for that map I linked, I don't know what you're exactly referring to, but what I'm referring to is the worldmap as can be found in its totality when completely zoomed out. But as an alternative, you might also use the map with explored zones and available zones that another poster posted in this thread, and do your own calculations. Queensdale has a width of 4.5 min, the math follows easily from there (to compare: Kalimdor is in a straight line from north to south coast 45 min, and from east to west coast approx 17 min; in LotrO from Bree to Rivendell would be 22 min in a straight line)

1) where is the proof that map has been proven wrong? I've heard of no such thing.
2) that map is missing HUGE CHUNKS OF TYRIA idk how that's a hard concept... Ye entirety of the northern snowy mountain is not on there, the "dwarven homelands" aka the southern shiver peaks is missin zones entirerly, and all of the maguuma jungle (north of tarnished coast) currently has no zones period. Lastly, the crystal desert has no zones either and can't even be seen yet...
3) they will NOT have all of TYRIA in at launch they have said this, they explicitly said the fire islands and crystal desert will not be there until a latter patch and/or expansion.
4) YOU CAN'T MEASURE DISTANCE IN TIME A LONE!! Jesus did you learn nothing in science class? According to your logic, if you drive 5000miles going 10mph, an I went the same distance going 500mph id be going a shorter distance, the fuck?

[Zeek Daniels]

i recently leveled a panda monk from 1-15 and i can say that my 1-15 experience in GW2 was way better than the panda starting zone.

[Ogretron]

1) where is the proof that map has been proven wrong? I've heard of no such thing.

I remember reading that you can't actually discover everything that's on the Nightfall map, so comparing that to WoWs map is dumb.

4) YOU CAN'T MEASURE DISTANCE IN TIME A LONE!! Jesus did you learn nothing in science class? According to your logic, if you drive 5000miles going 10mph, an I went the same distance going 500mph id be going a shorter distance, the fuck?

Let's say you're traveling at 50mph and it takes you 1 hour to go from point A to point B. Then we'll compare my distance, which is 50mph as well and it took me 2 hours to go from point C to point D. Pretend there aren't any other conditions (like hills, curves, etc), who traveled the furthest? Is that so hard to understand?

[Durzlla]

God damn the stupidity is strong in this thread YOU DON'T GO THE SAME SPEED IN WOW AND GW2, therefore you can't use time as the only determining factor of distance, how is it that hard for you people to understand?

And no, you can't discover everything on the nightfall map seeing as how you can swim and blah blah blah, but you can't discover everything on the wow map either so that doesn't mean jack shit, that picture I was referring to compares actual explore able land not the size of the map.

[Deleted]

OP are you fucking kidding? It doesn't work like that.

[Queen of Hamsters]

God damn the stupidity is strong in this thread YOU DON'T GO THE SAME SPEED IN WOW AND GW2, therefore you can't use time as the only determining factor of distance, how is it that hard for you people to understand?

And no, you can't discover everything on the nightfall map seeing as how you can swim and blah blah blah, but you can't discover everything on the wow map either so that doesn't mean jack shit, that picture I was referring to compares actual explore able land not the size of the map.

To me it feels like it's a "This games d'ck, the game I happen to prefer, is bigger than that games d'ck" now really.