I’m sure this has been talked about too death in other places, but I don’t know what those other places are or where to find them. Anyway, does anyone know just how big Azeroth is? How many days would it realistically take to walk the Barrens? How many days to sail from Kalimdor to Eastern Kingdoms?
{the information below is the results of other people’s work on their posts, also a heads up these are very meta numbers}
TL;DR: according to our 20 yard range spells and in-game run speed: Kalimdor is 22 km tall; Lore-wise/realistically, Kalimdor is ~14,000 km tall.
I found a few measurements done by someone years ago on the forum which stated that Kalimdor is about 22 km from Teldrassil to Uldum [Source: us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/1567927014].
In Lore; however, Goldshire has something like 7,000 citizens and the Barrens are supposed to take like a month or more to cross.
I found someone else who did an in-depth study of relating lore to our “in-game” numbers and they found Kalimdor to be just over 14,000 kilometres.
[source: wow.gamepedia. com/Talk:Kalimdor#.22Size.22_of_Kalimdor]
Edit: I just realized, that means the Teldrassil to Ironforge run is something epic like Frodo taking the ring to Mordor.
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Lorewise Azeroth is supposedly “earth-like” in size. In game it’s drastically scaled down.
It would probably take a few weeks to cross the Barrens on foot.
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14,000 km = 8700 miles
For those of us who don’t metric.
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Similar to other vagaries in Warcraft like the current timeline from vanilla through BFA, I don’t think a direct answer has ever been given. I think that in-game, the size of each zone has to be scaled down to create a more manageable world for gameplay reasons.
There is an Alliance quest in Howling Fjord (https://www.wowhead.com/quest=11228/hell-has-frozen-over) where an NPC mentions that the distance between Valgarde (Howling Fjord) and Valiance Keep (Borean Tundra) is “a few hundred miles”. Even just from the fact that Northrend appears fairly large on the global map, a few hundred miles seems… small.
But of course, to create a map that’s easily readable and easy to navigate, there is bound to be some issues of scaling. Just look at the size of Kul Tiras, Zandalar, and the Broken Isles on the map in Retail—they are probably much smaller in comparison to Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms than the global map makes them appear.
I choose to look at it this way: when I read that my spells have a 20yd range, I believe that that’s accurate on a small scale—from my position to that bear charging at me, it’s 20 yards. But as I progress on foot through the world, there comes a time when distance stretches. I would never add up 20 yards from this mob to the next, to the next, to finally calculate the overall size of a zone because I feel like you’d end up with some funky numbers.
Since Blizzard has never given us exact numbers for this, I always try to follow their example and just give approximations.
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Aye, in the Chronicles map, which is probably far more lore accurate then the in-game map, Kul Tiras is but a tiny island, smaller then Gilneas.
The in-game representations are obviously not accurate. I think in the Pandaria campaign is mentioned it would take a couple months for the Horde / Alliance fleets to arrive in Pandaria. I know that was mostly to align with patch release, probably, but it makes sense given that they are crossing an ocean and, according to Google, in the19th century it took ships about six weeks to cross the Atlantic.
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Thank you for replies, everyone. You’ve been very helpful. From what I an find online, North America is about 5000 miles from north to south, so that wkuld make Kalimdor “longer” than North America. Obviously it is not nearly as wide, but it gives us some good sense of scale.
You can do it yourself. Start at one end, and RP walk your way to the bottom. Then use a spell to work out 40yds (duel someone and get on the edge of range) and time that. The 40yds test will give you your walking speed in yards (divide time by 40 to get per yard), and the walk through the Barrens will give you the number of yards (divide time taken by per yard value).
Azeroth’s continents are really not that large.
I question this method of comparing size on screen. Also the Azerothian globes have changed in multiple ways over the years.
If you haven’t watched the warcraft movie, I would highly recommend you do so. While the plot isn’t the best and the acting could use some help, they do an excellent job of putting the world’s size into perspective.
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A bit of an added distance: IIRC, it takes three days to ride from South Shore to present day Undercity… which suggests movement from 8-12MPH at a trot, assuming they’re alternating between a gallop and a walk.
Edit: Note, this was while the traveller was in a pretty big rush, too.