In January of 2007, Tobold asked the question “How big is Azeroth?“
…So what I did was run from the east end of Thousand Needles to the west coast of Feralas, because you can do so in pretty much a straight line. I timed it, and crossing the width of the continent of Kalimdor running took me 18 minutes and 35 seconds. That makes the distance 3.7 miles. That means the continent of Kalimdor is 41 square miles (just over 100 square kilometers) big, and the world of Azeroth pre-Burning Crusade is about 80 square miles or 200 square kilometers..
Methodology
Tobold presumes that heroic characters are, in fact, heroic, and can easily run at a marathon runner’s pace – approximately 12 mph – all day long. That seems to be a very reasonable proposition to me, and for this test, I adopted that presumption, which means that running (not sprinting) MMO characters move pretty uniformly at 17.6 feet per second across titles and genres.
As of 6 February 2014, there are 3 servers in the EverQuest Next: Landmark Alpha test, Liberation, Courage, and Serenity. Each server hosts a linked set of 39 procedurally generated “Islands”. While each of the 39 Islands are repeated across the servers in a manner that makes them somewhat similar to traditional ‘zones’ in other MMOs, players can claim sections of the island as their own, and modify it (more or less) to their liking, which in turn makes each Island unique – distinct from the other two Islands that share the same name and base topography. The EverQuest Next: Landmark team stated at one point that each Island was 2 miles square, and 1 mile deep. Tonight, I set out to measure using Tobold’s method to see how the islands of EverQuest Next: Landmark stand up in relation to their claimed size, allowing me to calculate the size of the EQN:L world with a fair comparison with Tobold’s original calculations for 2007-era World of Warcraft.
The Size of EverQuest Next: Landmark Claims
I started my measuring with a Claim. With marker blocks placed at the corners of a flat claim, I obtained an average block to block time of 7.175 seconds across 10 runs. 7.175 seconds @ 17.6 feet per second gives the claim an estimated size of 126.28′ / 38.49 meters per side. Either the claims are currently smaller than SOE’s original, but then totally crossed out 70m x 70m x 100m measurements (very likely), OR the characters are rather larger than a normal human being (unlikely). I’m entirely willing to entertain the notion that the EverQuest Next: Landmark development team had a meeting where they compared the number of Explorer and Trailblazer orders they’d processed with the hardware they were standing up for Alpha Launch, had a small panic attack, and then reduced the size of the claims to approximately 50% of their initial preview size in the interest of serving their customer the best possible experience. I’m entirely OK with a decision like that.
The Size of EverQuest Next: Landmark Islands
To test the size of an entire Island, both in relation to Claims and for comparison to Tobold’s measurements of Kalimdor, I used my home Island – Pingo on the Serenity Server. First, I ran down the west ‘coast’ of Pingo, and then I ran across the southern edge, timing the run in each direction. Due to the nature of the terrain, I wasn’t able to run absolutely straight on both attempts, but the results were very close. Certainly rather closer to a direct route than Tobold was originally able to take from Shimmering Flats through Feralas. North to south, the run took 13 minutes 24 seconds. West to east, the run took 13 minutes 22 seconds, for an average of 13 minutes, 23 seconds between the two.
Results
Using this method gives the calculated result that, compared to World of Warcraft, an EverQuest Next: Landmark Island is (approximately) 14,141 feet, or 2.678 miles per side.
Each island is 7.171 square miles (18.572 square km)
Each server is 279.695 square miles (724.406 square km) – that’s 10 Manhattans.
The entirety of EQN:L is 839.087 square miles (2173 square km) in size – that’s the size of Orange County, New York
The EQN:L team have said that they are taking possession of several more servers this week, one of which will be stationed in the EU.
Three new servers (a guess) will raise the available land area in Landmark to almost 1700 square miles of explorable, destructible, buildable terrain. That’s the size of the Great Salt Lake.
Compare EQN:L’s 839 square miles to Azeroth’s mere 80 square miles of terrain in 2007, and the mind fairly boggles.