Yeah, we ask a lot around here – how big should your virtual world be? It’s a question that two new releases have come to – and they’ve come to very different answers. Here’s Tobold on LotRO’s land mass.
The real size [of Middle Earth] is 50 million square meters, which is less than 20 square miles, and thus just a quarter of the size of pre-BC Azeroth. I can believe that number, I once ran from Ered Lindon to the Misty Mountains, and it wasn’t all that far.
Now if you take the size of Eriador and assume that the rest of Middle-Earth will have the same scale, the whole world of the Lord of the Rings Online, after all expansions are out, will be as big as World of Warcraft before the first expansion. Fortunately we can expect Turbine to bring out expansions faster than Blizzard. But criticism that Lord of the Rings Online will be relatively small on release is certainly justified.
So LotRO is significantly smaller. Let’s look at the other recent release: Vanguard. Here’s a fan’s appraisal of Vanguard from a fan comparision between Vanguard and WoW.
The scale of Vanguard is much, much bigger. So much so that the entire landmass of WoW and expansions could easily fit one of Vanguards three continents. All that room means that there is more room for mountain ranges that feel like regions, cave systems that seem to stretch on forever; and oceans that are impossibly vast and dotted with explorable islands. The topography is realistically rendered and seems to be more on scale with your toon. The mountains are tall – you can spend literally hours winding your way up the twisted mountain roads. The buildings – while lacking some of the imagination of WoW – are built to a more correct scale and their floor plans are rarely repeated. As a result, the cities are much bigger in Vanguard. Tursh, an early village in Vanguard, covers about half the area of WoW’s Ellwyn Forest. The massive Vanguard city of New Tarangor has a keep, a city proper, an underground “undercity” and a port that could easily accommodate WoW’s Stormind, Ironforge, Orgrimmar and Thunderbluff combined and still have room for WoW’s four other capitals.
The article then goes on to describe the sheer scope of Vanguard as being a severe advantage over that of WoW (and one can only assume, over LotRO as well). I’m not so sure – I think LotRO is probably closer to being on the right path.
In the past, I’ve argued that the size of worlds should be content-driven. Or simply put, your worlds should only be as big as the amount of compelling content you can provide. And randomly generated endless terrain doesn’t qualify, since it so rarely is compelling. And I still think that. (Note to those with endless terrain – have you ever noticed that players hang out at the hand-crafted points of interest?)
But now I think there’s a better way to look at it: social density. Have you ever been to a bar that was empty on Friday night? The urge to flee can be compelling. Bar owners obsess about hitting critical mass, and having a bunch of regulars, so the place feels full. Full places are popular places. Success breeds success. And players WANT to be reassured that they are actually in ‘the place to be’.
Players play MMOs largely for other people – they don’t necessarily do it for community, or to compete, or because they want to group – but they want those other people around. Other people are interesting. Yeah, a lot of times, it’s interesting the same way that a car wreck is interesting. But let’s face it, car wrecks are interesting.
By comparison, when a MMO player opens an empty who list, and sends out a shout and gets no answer, he feels alone. When a player goes on a 10 minute run and sees no one else, he feels alone. When you go into a private instance, and all chatter ceases, you feel alone. And when you feel alone in a game with ‘massively multiplayer’ in it’s description, the irony hits you in the face like a skillet.
How big should your MMO be? I would argue that they should be ‘cozy’, which is to say small enough to ensure that players are always around other players, and that all-important chatter is present. But cozy also implies ‘comfortable’ — players should not constantly be competing for camps or stepping on each others tools, and the world needs to be large enough for them to go elsewhere to get away from a disruptive presence.
And those moments of remoteness? Those lost islands in the ocean? Those are still valuable, but they should be the exception, not the rule. Players should have to seek those moments out. And to tell you the truth, isolation is a much more vivid emotion when it happens in 5% of your virtual world, instead of nearly all of it.
Recent Comments