The One Minute Walk survey

Here are some preliminary results from my "One Minute Walk" survey of open world mmos. The idea is simple: trace a 60 second walk from north-south and west-east, then scale and combine the maps to the largest 1 minute coordinate system.

Here is my current result from World of Warcraft, with the expansion maps scaled to the Kalimdor/Eastern-Kingdoms maps. Notice how puny looking that Outland expansion looks.

If anyone would like to contribute I'd be happy to merge other maps with these.

Notice: these aren't exact measurements but they should be fairly accurate. I also assume there is a 1:1 mapping of player position across the whole map that is surveyed.

Updates:

• Added map for Tatooine from SWTOR
• Added map for Taris from SWTOR.
• Added map for Telara from Rift.

That's a great idea!

Is that really in walk mode, or is it with the default run that most games have? Just curious in case I decide to make a few maps to add.

The walking mode is running, aka normal walking mode, but not sprinting etc. if the game has that.

Oh my… City of Heroes is going to be insane. Everyone gets a sprint power (and it's definitely a power that consumes endurance) when they start and a choice of distance-eating travel powers after a few days of play. The maps are designed with that in mind. The Shadow Shard has those gravity geysers that shoot you over the map so it's even bigger yet!

Updated with a map from SWTOR. The blue blob is the planet Taris.

Interesting concept. I wonder what Tatooine would look like - it's pretty massive. Gothic would probably be tiny, as it's smaller than most people remember. The feeling of a huge world comes from being able to walk around in the same area several times, but still find new details and places to visit.

The amazing thing about Azeroth, to me, was not just the scale. It was how Blizzard managed to make every… single… area… totally unique in terms of atmosphere and flavor.

It was literally like stepping onto a high production value Hollywood set while you were first exploring.

That's quite a feat.

SWtOR has a very bland world in comparison, but there are a few cool areas. So far, I like Hoth the most. Oh, this is the case for many MMOs - though some are almost as good. LOTRO is probably one example of an approach that's very different, but works VERY well.

I like the "classic" Star Wars planets a lot, such as Tatooine, Hoth and Alderaan. Hopefully, they'll add more such planets later (Kashyyyk for example).

Originally Posted by Maylander
I wonder what Tatooine would look like - it's pretty massive.

In a week or three maybe.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
SWtOR has a very bland world in comparison, but there are a few cool areas.

Its on rails but fortunately the areas are fairly big. If it didn't have the story component I would never be playing it. The same problem applies to WoW (with recent expansion/changes) for me, despite having two huge continents.

I was wondering how Skyrim would compare but I couldn't understand the instructions

You just need to trace a 1 minute walk, then scale that line down to 17 pixels.

Bump for Tatooine.

Wow, Tatooine is actually not that far off Outland. It has significantly less content, of course, as a lot of it is open desert. Still, it really is quite big.

Every time I see this topic, I wonder about Everquest. It would likely dwarf the map by several orders of magnitude ;o Alas, much of it was never visited by most players the last time I played - so goes the natural "progression" of MMO's.

Originally Posted by Maylander
Wow, Tatooine is actually not that far off Outland. It has significantly less content, of course, as a lot of it is open desert. Still, it really is quite big.

I'd give Risen an award for keeping the illusion of a big world!

I prefer middle-sized areas crammed with content, personally.