"Planet" Tyria is very, very small.

Exactly. I'm a writer, and I've recently gotten into writing about Guild Wars and it's lore. So far I've written 1 complete expansion about the origin of the Margonites. The game begins in that little green area between the Southern Shiverpeaks and the Crystal Desert. It's about their origin and how they were outcast and went in search of Ascension and failed, and how they Migrated south to Elona and how Abaddon then corrupted them and turned them into his demonic servants. This expansion I wrote includes 200 quests total, 50 of them primary, and 50 missions. It takes place all over the Crystal Desert, that little green area, the South Shiverpeaks, and all over the Elonian Mainland. You'd play as any profession, but in the body of a Margonite. I developed new weapons and armor as well. No skills, just an elite campaign. And definitely the longest and largest. If you noticed on Elona, on the Western coast, you can see like a volcano-ish island. The game ends there. I've found that 5% of Tyrian map filler would be filled, and half of the filler in Elona? Fresh towns and explorable areas. The campaign would introduce 4 big towns and 30 small ones. And a bunch of explorable areas with monsters native to that region, but I have created several new monsters for some Elonian areas and for that little green area. If released, I think that campaign would be a smash hit.

If you send that to ANet, they might reconsider not adding any expansions to GW1. Of course if that happens, it will be after GW2 . Although, I can tell you thats more of a fan-fiction then lore, as it seems your making things up, but those such things could turn out to be useful in expanding the lore. Again, if I was you, I'd send to ANet.

cant wait to see more of tyria in guild wars 2

But damn A-Net if the remove Fast-Travel
If so they just lost a player.

But on-topic.

Yeah, the world seems really small when you tihnk about it.
But as others have mentioned, it's probably only a fraction of what is really there.

Map travel is staying, I'm sure they confirmed that.

The only way I can see a mmo using a full real world size would be using the torque engine or similar...which really isn't that great of a game engine :P

The upside is to be able to play the port on the iPhone, even though it would last a few minutes before the battery was out.

Planet-yrium

QFT.

OT: I honestly hope that they make Orr a large area full of NEW content, and not reskins of old content, like they did with EotN. *shame on you ArenaNet. Thought you were different from Blizzard*

If its going to tyrian map in gw2 i hope anet is going to change the map scale so it actually would be larger than in gw1.

Well, GW2 will have a new engine, so they'll most likely remake all the models again. Therefore, they won't just have reskins of GW1 stuff. I suspect Orr will be pretty large and mostly an elite dungeon.

Apparently dragonoid corsairs and undead patrol the walls of a beautiful (if destroyed by the sea) city filled with twisting spires and domed roofs. Sounds new to me? Perhaps a little Vabbian in style...

Given that Orr was implied (through the voice and clothing of the Vizier) to have something of a Middle Eastern nature, that wouldn't surprise me at all...

i know this is kinda off topic but- is tyria the biggest continent?
it seemed to me that it was when i had prophecies, but then in EN the width of the shiverpeaks seems to be half of what they are down south, or are there none of those pointless-whichever-way-you-look-at-it obstacles in EN?
if they re-addedd cantha or elona to GW2 it would be nice to see those tropical crescent shaped islands on the northern part of elona, and to see whataveres in the other half of kaineng city

Certainly, EOTN does seem to be less afraid to have wide open spaces than Prophecies...

i must say... i hope that TYRIA isnt that smal... mayb in GW 2 we get to see more (if not ALL) of tyria and get too explore it :P. Either way, with such a SMALL tyria, still hard for me to get grandmaster cartographer :P

Prophecies tried to keep the draw distance down without resorting to obvious depth culling, from what I can tell. It's mainly a system requirements thing. By the time of EotN most people's computers had improved enough to handle it, hence the added detail and more open areas.

At least, that's my theory.

If you're right Sirius, which I hope you are, that means Tyria will be much bigger in GW2

The Barradin Estates description in pre says the dukes farm's are 200 hectars or 2 square kilometers in size, so they probably scaled down the explorable areas for easy of game play.

That also sounds like a scale we might be able to apply to the rest of the map...

...shame the Estate isn't available in post, but we could possibly figure it out. That said, 200 hectares doesn't sound like all that much for a duke's estate...

lol the barridan estate wasn't really an estate. It was a building. With farm land.

This is good news. Time to take a pic of an explored Barridan Estate, then compare the length to post searing (do that by measuring a known spot that makes it to post, such as Ascalon City *or outside the city in post* or the gate distances *as the gates are in the same spot* seeing how Barridan's Estate is off the map in post).

I have yet another project to do... and this one I wouldn't mind someone else doing.