Shouldn't zones become bigger?

[Rycul]

How would this fit the lore though?

According to lore, the zones are MUCH bigger than they are in-game. Lore-wise, it should take days to travel from certain location to location.

Surely days =/= minutes...

[Frozenbeef]

humm...low levels will be the one using them....the only reason to make them bigger would be to make them suffer while leveling....i agree with the OP and feel the zones should be bigger ';..;'

[Deleted]

The 1-58 zones are perfect size given who is going to be questing and doing stuff in them.

Yes, I agree that these areas are well designed for what they have to be used. Yet, their scale is not correct.... is very frustrating to want to go to a place in the game about which you've been reading in the books of lore but that does not exist because there is no place for it.

In fact if Blizzard had done Azeroth with the correct scale now it would not have to invent cataclysms to put the zones where they please because they do not fit where they should be located.

[Malthurius]

Yes, I agree that these areas are well designed for what they have to be used. Yet, their scale is not correct.... is very frustrating to want to go to a place in the game about which you've been reading in the books of lore but that does not exist because there is no place for it.

In fact if Blizzard had done Azeroth with the correct scale now it would not have to invent cataclysms to put the zones where they please because they do not fit where they should be located.

Lore has to take a backseat to gameplay a lot of the time, and this in one of those times.

[Corjha]

In TBC and Northrend the zones where made MUCH bigger than those in first WoW to "justify the relative speeds at which flying mounts travel".

Now that we're gonna have flying mounts on old world shouldnt the areas expand?

idk if you realize how big the old zones actually are.

[Rayzan]

Tbc and wotlk zones were purposely bigger because they wanted to give you a lot of content so it's worth buying yet with far fewer zones because you're only leveling 10lvls each expansion. The flying mounts and better flight paths made up for traveling these huge zones. Leveling in vanilla (and cata) you'd only spend usually 5 levels in each zone and have a plethora of zones in which you could level. To say these zones should be bigger now that we can fly isn't a very good reason. They might be smaller but there's about 20 times more zones than in outlands or northrend. For a player to level only 5 levels out of 60 in a zone the size of Borean Tundra would be more than a waste. Also, it will still take you more time to travel from one end of Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor to the other than it would outlands or northrend.

---------- Post added 2010-07-18 at 02:28 PM ----------

Something I thought of after posting. Personally, I think if we had every zone the size of the barrens how they are now it would severly hinder the leveling experience. Running from one side of the barrens to another without a mount and 1 flight path just for 1 or 2 quests isn't fun to me. If every zone was like that I would probably not even bother leveling another alt in cataclysm.

[esmifra]

Simply: yes, it is time that the areas acquire their true scale...

True scale? Taking one week from undercity to scarlet monastery ain't very fun...

[Rawrsome]

I actually like this idea Always thought the zones were too small : / Didn't really get that traveler feel. And I don't know how they would pull this off, but the first thing that poped into my head was just stretch out the maps and scale the zone bigger :P

[Qtulu]

According to lore, all areas should be much larger than the ones we see in the game. In fact, there are locations which appear in the lore but that can not appear in the game because no place for them ... is so crappy ... Conclusion: The scale should be increased.

The difference is, in written lore, it takes some hours maybe to design a big area in your mind. Obviously, it takes lots of more time to design it as a playable zone in a game.

[restoxpresso]

i must say that even thou kalimdor and EK is merely 7 kilometers long, it's fitting for the game, if azeroth would be the size of earth, barrens would be ENTIRE africa, you can do the rest of the math yourself, not gonna happend

[Alyran]

One good thing about this; It will take goldsellers weeks, if not months, to get from the Valley of Trials to Ogrimmar!

[Mewmix]

Deepholme took me 14 hours to clear. 14 HOURS PLAYED. You don't consider that kinda big for 82-83?

As for the old world zones, you are looking at getting 5 levels per zone or there abouts and it is fairly easy. Lowbie level is easymode.

[Dryade]

Yes, I agree that these areas are well designed for what they have to be used. Yet, their scale is not correct.... is very frustrating to want to go to a place in the game about which you've been reading in the books of lore but that does not exist because there is no place for it.

In fact if Blizzard had done Azeroth with the correct scale now it would not have to invent cataclysms to put the zones where they please because they do not fit where they should be located.

How exactly do you know what the true scale is?? Yes so Blizzard should redesign the entire world to true scale, making the trip from Winterspring on a flying mount 5 hours and 4-5 days on a 100% ground mount.

So because Knaack said that it took Rhonin and Krasus 10 hours to walk across the Wetlands to get to Grim Batol, than Blizzard should follow suit in game. /sarcasm

[Krekko]

What it breaks down to is this; Why create HUGE zones (2-3 size of what we have, as to lore so on so forth), when people will end up just complaining about having to travel across these large areas and mounts not being fast enough, and flights being too long, and not being able to run fast enough and things being to spread out, only for them to get bored of it and want to move on come next expansion. Or if they even kept it and revamp it or add stuff to it next expansion people will be like BORED OLD YESTERDAYS STUFF. Cataclysm actually did something good, brought us back after a long vacation away. Had they changed the zones right off the bad IDK how well people would have reacted, probably would have been less welcome than what it is now, simply because we had time to go away from it and miss it, rather then just them adding stuff again and again and again.

It's always going to be a trade off.

[ElAmigo]

if we were to make the zones to scale traveling from borean tundra to howling fjord takes a couple of days......do you really want that?

[Halicia]

IMO, the zones are already too big.

as people level faster and faster they experience less and less of the specific zones. unless they choose to go back and 'slum' it on old quests.

[Rayzan]

I actually like this idea Always thought the zones were too small : / Didn't really get that traveler feel. And I don't know how they would pull this off, but the first thing that poped into my head was just stretch out the maps and scale the zone bigger :P

I'm not trying to be rude when asking this but instead trying to make a point. I could be wrong. You started playing in TBC or WotLK, right?

When wow first came out they pushed the notion that Azeroth was a gigantic world and they wanted you to travel a while to get from place to place. Flight paths were longer, mounts didn't come till level 40 and fast mounts weren't till level cap at 60 (and having one took some serious farming of gold). Many players didn't get anything other than their 60% mount till TBC came out. This made Azeroth feel huge. You had to travel, by foot, more than half your leveling experience. Later on they reduced the level at which you obtained mounts twice, each by 10 levels and dramatically reduced the cost to purchase the mount and the training. Also, by reducing the amount of xp needed to level a player doesn't need to do most, if not all the quests anymore before moving on to the next zone. This leaves so much of the zones untouched, making them feel small. Beta wow, and quite possibly early wow (although my memory slips me, I don't think it ever made it live) there were portals connecting every major city kind of like what Dalaran and Shattrath have. This was scrapped due to it making the game feel small. In order to make the game feel as big as it is while flying, as compared to running, blizz would have to increase the size of all areas of the game by about 300% which is just unrealistic.

I'm not going to be the guy that says "flying mounts ruined a part of wow" because I love the whole aspect of them, but they definately made everything feel smaller and I believe a lot of people will notice this more when flying in areas they've always had to run through.

Portals connecting the cities, hearthstone CD reductions, streamlined flight paths, more boats and zepplins, lower level requirements for mounts, flying mounts, and the LFD tool is what makes wow feel small, not the fact that it might actually be small. Blizzard seemed to have scrapped the "real gigantic world feel" they were aiming for early on for a more convienent one. But hey, who wants to wait almost thirty minutes to fly from Darnasus to Gadgetzan anyways?

[Laukkanen]

no because its boring to run around in huge zones even with a 100% mount.. heck i even find it boring to ride around in tanaris and that zone isnt that big.

Tanaris is extremely big.

If they make the zones bigger they certainly need to add more quests. I feel a lot of zones lack a good questflow altogether. Too many zones are too centered around one part of the zone and then half a zone can be completely empty. Take Tanaris for example. How many is it in the south? 10 overall?

[Jubite]

Yea, let's makes zone bigger so we can hastily fly through them and think 'wow'. Then go on our way and never fly there again since we are mostly afking in org/if.
Excellent.
/sign

[Heldamon]

Just how much time you need to fly from one side of Hellfire Peninsula and how much time you need for Elwynn, Searing Gorge, Redridge and Duswood.

The quoted part in the OP is from WoWWiki's Hellfire Peninsula description.

---------- Post added 2010-07-19 at 07:13 AM ----------

Yea, let's makes zone bigger so we can hastily fly through them and think 'wow'. Then go on our way and never fly there again since we are mostly afking in org/if.
Excellent.
/sign

yea, cause cool things cannot be added in maps. darn