What if Azeroth was larger?

Community General Discussion
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I always thought a what if scenario, what if they made some of the assets like 200% bigger and than shrunk the players down by 50% or whatever, what would the game look like? Would it again make everything feel massive and make you want to once again explore? Like right here the starting area of the Humans looks like you just zoned into Arathi.

What if they made things like the the buildings 4 times the size, the structures like the gates, the fences, the roads, the farms, if they were all super sized, what than would the rest of the world look like? Could you imagine going over to Stonetalon and it’s just these massive mountains that take minutes to get to the top instead of 20 seconds?

But what do we have? Shadowlands that takes minutes to run across each zone. It’s not all about looking good and having 45 billion enemies crammed into the one zone to make it feel large, it’s about having an actual large area to explore and enjoy.

All we get now are systems that lock us down in small zones to make it feel like there is content, even when Korthia was about to release the maps looked decent, but than it released and I was like “…?” and I didn’t know what to say, I can go on a ground mount from one end to the other in like 45 seconds and that’s it, that’s the entire new 9.1 zone, doesn’t really give me much to look forward to in 9.2.

Sure they had the rift and 45 new rares all crammed in with plenty to do… right?

I would honestly love a new Kalimdor or EK sized zone with enemies spread out where the fun once again is not about dailies or farming or rares, but where the fun is the zones, the exploration, the enjoyment finding a cave with a rare enemy that might drop something fancy and than instead of camping in the middle of the zone and running to each rare as it spawns, we need to actually traverse these land masses and make our way there like we’re having a real adventure.

Than we can remove all the gating, stop with the whole “This rare spawns in 1 hour while that rare spawns in 15 minutes, and we’re than going to make that one over there for no real reason have an 8 hour spawn time”, make it fun and enjoyable.

What if Korthia was the size of say, EPL? Or Twilight Highlands? Maybe the old Barrens? If they made things larger, stopped with so much gating of content and put more emphasis on the exploration and made it take longer to do things simply because it took longer to get around, would that make things better?

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Feel like it wouldn’t be that productive in actual value. Most of the space would be empty and would increase travel time. It would make a lot of current issues worse. I’d rather 90% content with 10% empty space then 90% empty space with 10% content.

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I’d like the zones to feel massive. It feels like since WoD the zones we get have been getting smaller and smaller.

If Azeroth was scaled up the size you’re suggesting it could even offer player housing / player towns.

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World rares dont drop anything useful. Its dungeons/raids

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So like that custom counterstrike map where we’re mouse sized running around in a kitchen? I guess it would look pretty impressive but ultimately would be kinda pointless.

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WoW is an “amusement park” MMO world, and the majority of players don’t want to spend time going from attraction to attraction already (see the various flying threads all over the place). This would make so many players angry at the time they have to “waste” going from one point of interest to another, lol.

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Lorewise it is larger, and I’d love to see a more realistic sized game world. Alas, the tech isn’t there for WoW or any other fantasy game.

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Might not be so bad if there were portals everywhere.

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Let’s be honest here, people would just complain that the world feels dead and empty, and would ask for faster flying mounts and/or portals everywhere.

The tech has been there for a very long time. There are already game worlds that are bigger than our planet. Procedural generation.

The problem is actually making such a world interesting. If Azeroth was the size of Earth, then you could realistically travel for several IRL days worth of game time without finding anything at all.

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Maybe we need Blizzard to add in some more diaries of lost travelers to illustrate how large Azeroth really is (and how special the player character is)

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I want more massive zones, Borean Tundra sized or even bigger. Tired of these small island sized zones.

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I love those reddit posts by people who got bored and worked out the actual size of Azeroth. One of them figured the circumference to be only 1/5 that of Earth.

Now from a design perspective that is understandable. But physically it would have different characteristics like gravity.

1 Like
15

Azeroth is way larger than FF14.

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Blizz likes this idea.

That said, I’d be for expanding or making Azeroth larger, but not making us smaller. It would be like playing Toy Story.

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It would feel more immersive that for sure but like it was said that most players wouldn’t go for it.

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  1. Use a toy that shrinks you,
  2. Zoom in your camera to scale.

there ya go, you dont need to wonder anymore.

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It is… there is another half of the globe we haven’t seen.

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Ironically I think it was proven at one point that the zones aren’t actually shrinking on a steady scale, and that something like Bastion was actually the size of the Jade forest, Pandaria. What IS happening is perceptually the zones have “shrunk” by being their own isolated islands, the travel time to and from the zones makes them feel smaller and isolated.

The effect is largely psychological, rather than technical, but I do suggest we stop isolating the zones on the technical level to fix the psychological effect.

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This is exactly why we have cramped island expansions now. Because traveling is just boring filler right? I mean who cares about the sense of scale or adventure, the feel of the world, the sweeping vistas or soaking in the scenery?

1 Like