Here’s a snippet from a recent preview of Irth Online.

Irth online is a new fantasy based MMO, created by Magic Hat Software, that is currently in beta. Irth consists of a large 3,800 square kilometers of land. Considering the size of the land they have built in a portal system for faster travel from one area of the map to another. You can also travel via horseback or by swimming, although the portal system will likely be your fastest means of travel from one town to the next.

Here’s a snippet from a faq of Dark And Light:

  • A medieval world of 15 000-square-mile of land (not including seas)
  • A strong emphasis on immersion thanks to a horizon view up to a distance of 30 miles away.
  • Fly in the air without restrictions with your own dragon, glider and parachute
  • Choose to explore whenever you want, no need to fight on a daily basis.
  • Hot spot management system: wherever you are in the huge world of DnL™ , you can call for or be asked for help to conquest, fight, defend.

Virtual peen waving between the various worlds is, needless to say, nothing new. What’s notable here is that, in both of these two games cases, this was the first thing that both of these games chose to brag about. Are there really that many people sitting around and saying “The problem with all of these games we’re playing right now is that they just aren’t BIG enough.” In many ways, it reminds me of the “100K players at a time” feature that Wish hung their hat on – interesting to a technologist, but not something a player will hang his hat on.

Of course, the real test is whether or not they actually find a way to FILL all this space. The general rule of content is that it only counts as different content if it provides a unique experience to the player. Players don’t count color shifted monsters as new content. To most of them, most green rolling hills your algorithmically generated terrain created look like the same randomly generated hills they just crossed over. It’s the Points Of Interest that make the world interesting, and it almost always takes human intelligence to create compelling and logical Points Of Interest.

It may be that these games have a lot more going on than huge worlds. It may be that they’re doing the smart thing, and inventing kickass systems (what any small MMO should be doing to go toe to toe with the big boys). If that’s the case, it’s sure a shame that both games are putting “A humungous world” as their first bullet point.

Original comment thread is here.