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TOR's Total World Size (Land Area) is way smaller then WoW?
Imperator101
Member Posts: 131
I have concluded that TOR is probably way smaller then WoW, while I have never played the game or have seen every single world map, I came up with a simple solution to determine which MMO has a bigger land area. TOR has 17 planets, I assume each planet is the size of 3 WoW zones, WoW has 85 zones, TOR would be the size of 54 WoW zones. This 3 zones per planet is being very generous, some maps are very small. Even if you only included Vanilla WoW, it would probably be 70-80% the size of TOR. Even though this MMO seems very large with all the planets, it truly is a very small MMO by todays standards.
Comments
You came to this conclusion all on your own?
Wow = 8 years old
SWTOR - 1 year old
Point?
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
Looks like you did not read the post, I said Vanilla WoW is almost the same size, it is probably the same size anyway.
3 WoW zones is WAY over estimating for many of the worlds. One WoW zone per planet feels more like it, but the zones and planet sizes vary widely. Much of what you can see you can't travel to based on exhaustion zones and terrain. Wide open desert zones of Tatooine? Nope, stay on the road or die.
Very little actual terrain to travel on and explore.
They were 5 years in development, promised hundreds of planets, 10 years of content. And this is what we got. Somebody was wasting a lot of time.
I'm not sure. Some planets felt really big - I'd say as big as half of Kalimdor. On the whole I'd not be surprised if SWTOR's landmass is *way* bigger than Vanilla WOW landmass.
EDIT: Hoth, Tatooine and Alderaan are good examples for some big planets in SWTOR.
Agreed, I felt Belsavis was pretty big to.
Yah, but OTOH you have starter worlds, Capital worlds, Nar Shadaa, Quesh and Ilum which are very small.
stopped here.....can I have those 20 secs back?
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
And Taris.
Some of the planets are big, but a lot of un-used and wasted space. On Taris with my agent, I had to do a lot of traveling around between zones for my quest objectives. So it felt big because of the time I spent just riding my mount from place to place. But it was a big waste beacause all I did was go to the objective spot for a few seconds and leave again.
One of the things they wanted to do was to get rid of grind. So they did and it gave us these big planets with large wast of space areas. Completely un-used and not needed at all. When you take out the grind, you are left with a clear path and no need to wander around and explore. One big reason for the state of the game now is a lack of grind imo. And the feeling of being small.
The one thing I remember from Vanilla WoW was the grind. Having to kill the same thing over and over because what I needed just wouldn't drop. Or having to travel a long way on foot to get to a flight path for the first time. And finding quest hub areas along the way. Or grinding faction rep to continue questing or one faction over another. Long quest chains that made you travel all over the place, sometimes for hours.
Today's MMO's want to get you in the action without any work at all, no grind. Then at end game they want to make the game only grind. Makes the worlds seem small because you travel through them so fast from point A to point B. That is one thing that games trying to copy WoW miss IMO.
WoW after 8 years is now just a loby game without the grind while questing. They have so much content that the grind is no longer needed to make the game seem bigger. It is huge with all the expansions over the years. But new games need the grind IMO to make them seem bigger and make the content last longer. SWTOR failed with this so it feels small even though it could be very big is they used all of what these planets could offer. Including many overlaping areas for open world PvP. But it never happened and here we are. The game feels small because of a lack of grind.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
And yet you honestly feel qualified to comment?
Wow.
And the point TOR cost 250+/- mil to make and was to be the most epic mmo of the century claimed by bioware. And ended up being far less than older games. Kind of backwards there dont you think?
What they spent the money on did make the quests themselves better IMO than most other MMO's by far. But the lack of grind and use of the created worlds makes the game too small because everything was on fast forword. Nothing to make the player work while questing.
A lack of grind = fast forword gaming = the feeling of being small.
Vanilla WoW was about the same size, but felt much much bigger because of the time sinks and grinding in the game to make the leveling process take a long long time vs todays standards.
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A.Salvatore
And we have as far as i know never seen the costs of developing WoW... Even just up to Vanilla release.
And there is still no chance for WoW to match SWToR when it comes to story... Very rarley did i ever feel like i had to continue to get the full story in WoW.. In SWToR it is the main driving force for me.
That does not make it the best MMO in history but it is the reason why i keep playing it.
This have been a good conversation
I believe Vanilla WoW had 40 zones or close to it and I'm not far enough into SWTOR to see the planet sizes,so I'm not going to comment on that.
Compared to most AAA mmo's on the last few years SWTOR looks bigger to me except GW2.Games I've played that came out in last 5 yrs or so,Lotro,Tera,Tsw,Rift,Aion,War and GW2.The only one of those that seems bigger as far as the world is GW2.
I dunno,I'm having a blast with it atm,ymmv though.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
I don't half of you read what the OP said in his post.
He said he doesn't play the game, nor has seen most of the planets. lol.
Having played both WoW about 4 years on and off and SwToR still.
SWToR is much smaller. It one of my peeves with the game.
The map sizes are decent, but there is a lot of area that is there to channel/funnel you into certain areas within those zones.
They do tend to open up more the further into the game you get. But you are still more or less lead (forced) thru a certain progressing path.
There are only two open worlds (zones), and that is Tatooine and Hoth. And Tatooine is by far the more fun planet to explore.
I see this MMO desgine as almost condesending by developers. I really think they assume we are too stupid (or too young) to find the next quest hub ourselves, and must be "directed" that way by small cliffs, large rocks and walls.
I'd go so far as to say full 1/3 to even 1/2 of most ToR maps are all just filler features that take up space and are designed to direct the player.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
Very true^^.
Most of the newer games are so linear that playing 1-2 characters basically let's you see the zones and quest's.I never played much EQ,but EQ2,WOW and even GW2 seem much more in variation of levelling choices.Variation is good,usually.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark
If you are story-focused like SWTOR, you normally limit the leveling choice so you get a more focused narration.
GW2 does some interesting mechanics that are paper-thin (now that we have seen what this so called 'DE' is) and gives you options when leveling but the story / lore / char part is atrociously bad.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
It is. Regardless of compared to Vanilla or not.
WoW is a lot more free-roaming compared to TOR, so you ended up having access to more significant landmasses.
Yep and it seems nowadays it's one or the other.Either story and linear or more variation,but dare I say...shallow.
Some day I'm going to put a sword through your eye and out the back of your skull!
Arya Stark