How LARGE is Norrath? (WARNING: Math)

[Cusashorn]

Alright, you can chalk this up as being the most spontaneous topic of the night, but I was just doing some quests in Moors, and got the sudden curiosity to do a physics problem... I'm posting this here in the Look and Feel because the total size of Norrath falls under the Feel catagory.

...Yeah... I can thank my physics teacher, Professor James Bond (no joke) for making me think about these things for no reason.

The Obelisk of Ahzkul is the highest reachable point in the Moors of Ykesha, and I wanted to know how far it is from the platform to the water down below, so I jumped off and hit the stopwatch.

Lets see.. 12.81 seconds. Hmm. A longer than I expected. Alright. Lets throw these figures in and figure the theoretical distance I just covered. The first thing to point out is that these are theoretical calculations, which doesn't factor in any air resistance or terminal velocity. The good thing about this game is that there is no such thing as terminal velocity since there is no Mass factor in our characters or weight. Therefor, all character always fall at the same rate.

Keep in mind that I'm a student, so I'm trying to remember things correctly. If I'm understanding correctly, Displacement = Velocity x Time.

Lets assume that the constant velocity of falling in this game is equal to Gravity which equals 32.2 feet per second per second.

Velocity = 32.2 ft/s squared

t= 12.81 seconds

Distance = Velocity X Time / 2

So if my calculations and use of kinimatic equations are correct, then 32.2 ft/s squared X 12.81 / 2 = 6641 feet (6640.96 rounded up.)

Alright. My character just dropped a distance of 6641 feet into the water below... Thats over 1 mile of distance covered in just the game world alone.

Now here what I'm wondering: What would this distance be in the real world? How large is Norrath in EverQuest 2 in square or cubic feet? I figure that if I could figure out how large this game is by combining every zone together... Or at least every Overland and City zone, starting with Oakmyst Forest (the westernmost zone in the game) and ending with Kunzar Jungle (the easternmost zone in the game,) Then I could create a scale and calculate just how long that fall really was. Maybe if one of you developers would be so kind to help me out here, I'd appreciate it if you helped solve my own curiosity.

This is just wierd how I keep thinking like this now. A few weeks ago, I ended up hitting a deer on my way home one night. In that brief moment of chaos, the ONLY thing running through my mind other than bringing the car to a stop was how ironic it was that just earlier that day, I started learning about Impulse and Momentum.. Elastic Collisions, Inelastic collisions... etc. I even had to ask the teacher to use my accident as an example in class. The thought of "Am I going to be ok? Am I going to be injured?" never once crossed my mind. :/

Anyways. Fortunately for me, the damage done to my car was concentrated entirely to the hood. No damage to the bumper, windows, engine, wheels, axel, etc. My personal mechanic hooked me up with a carbon fiber, so hell yeah.

[Sylaz]

After reading that over and taking everything into consideration (and doing some of my own calculations) I've come a conclusion.

Norrath is bigger than a breadbox. Thank you, and no, I won't be signing autographs.

[Zabjade]

Don't forget the Oceans are not properly represented in the time. (I wouldn't mind the option to take a Full Boat/derigibale trip just for fun every once in a while for imersion but would prefer the ship to have a visable crew.) and the still undiscovered sections Odus comes to mind among other places so we may not have a defintive awnser for some time.

[wullailhuit]

It can't be that large,....it fits in my small PC box...

[troodon]

How much land area the game has in it is immaterial, these zones are abstract models of the "real" places they represent.  I think it's fair to say that the game also has a large amount of vertical exaggeration, which is why that tower can be located more than a mile above sea level but stand on a subcontinent that probably has (just guessing here) less than a hundred square miles of in-game land area.

[Cusashorn]

Yes, but every zone file has a boundry for each axis at one point or another. You could measure those zones.

[Lethe5683]

Norrath is a few gigabytes large.

[-Arctura-]

(( id like to meet the person who can fall 1 mile into water and survive

[Wyrmypops]

Game worlds are often tiny in comparisn to the world we know. Most obviously as they'd be a nightmare to describe and populate.

James Wallis, the writer and games designer, did a bit on it. http://www.spaaace.com/cope/?p=111 It has a link up top to a filmed version of his amusing presentation.

[Lenefir]

Cusashorn wrote:

The Obelisk of Ahzkul is the highest reachable point in the Moors of Ykesha, and I wanted to know how far it is from the platform to the water down below, so I jumped off and hit the stopwatch.

Lets see.. 12.81 seconds. Hmm. A longer than I expected. Alright. Lets throw these figures in and figure the theoretical distance I just covered. The first thing to point out is that these are theoretical calculations, which doesn't factor in any air resistance or terminal velocity. The good thing about this game is that there is no such thing as terminal velocity since there is no Mass factor in our characters or weight. Therefor, all character always fall at the same rate.

Keep in mind that I'm a student, so I'm trying to remember things correctly. If I'm understanding correctly, Displacement = Velocity x Time.

Lets assume that the constant velocity of falling in this game is equal to Gravity which equals 32.2 feet per second per second.

A couple of comments.

I suppose I can understand that you used Imperial units in this post since you expect readers to be familiar with it, and I can understand if they are used in initial physics classes to not scare people away with new units in addition to all the new physics stuff.  But that said, if you are not already, you really would do yourself a favour if you start using the SI system (or not quite correctly called metric) sooner rather than later.  If you are going to continue with physics classes I will assume that you fairly soon will be expected to do calculations in metric units all the time.  Not to mention only 3 countries still does not use it as their official system, so if you start looking for examples and technical physics papers outside the U.S. border your odds of finding anything using Imperial units is slim.  In my opinion the metric system is much more "logical" built up too.

Anyway, regardless of that...

Remember that the units on the left side of the equal sign need to be similar to the units that are on the right side of the equal sign, just like the normal calulations.  Which brings up

Velocity = 32.2 ft/s squared

The unit for velocity is ft/s (m/s).  The unit for acceleration is ft/s² (m/s²).  I did see that you assumed the constant falling speed in eq2 equalled gravity, but that just meant you said the velocity v = 32.2 ft/s (9.81 m/s).  Minor details like this can earn you a lot of red (or whatever colour your professor uses) stroke marks, and it also can give an indication if a short cut or substitution you made somewhere was correct.

t= 12.81 seconds

Distance = Velocity X Time / 2

So if my calculations and use of kinimatic equations are correct, then 32.2 ft/s squared X 12.81 / 2 = 6641 feet (6640.96 rounded up.)

Sad to say, but neither your formula for distance, nor your insertion and calculation of the values within were quite correct

First off, since it is constant speed, a more simpler and more natural, formula for distance is

distance x = velocity v * time t = 32.2 ft/s * 12.81 s = 412.5 ft (125.7 m)

The formula you used is in its original state

x = 1/2 * (u + v) * t     (u = initial or starting velocity)

What I guess you assumed here is since you start at a standstill, you dropped the u from the formula.  A tinytiny fraction of time after you jumped off you have the constant speed.  In this little period of time you did have some acceleration, and as such you would have had to use the other formula for distance taking into account that acceleration, unless you accept that the game just instantly changes your vertical speed so the starting speed is the same as the general in-game falling speed.  So u = v, which also happens to be the definition when the speed is constant.

Anyway, if the numbers you did put into the formula would have been correct, you didn't calculate them correct.  You said

x = v * t / 2 = 32.2 ft/s squared * 12.81 / 2

First off, you missed writing the unit for the time, and you said ft/s squared for ft/s² which mentioned already is not only wrong unit for speed, but also actually introduced your calculating error.  You squared 32.2, or 32.2² which the formula not says anywhere to do, giving you a much larger number than what you should have gotten.

Alright. My character just dropped a distance of 6641 feet into the water below... Thats over 1 mile of distance covered in just the game world alone.

412.5 ft, 0.078 miles, or 125.7 m

To add a last comment, I think the falling speed in-game is higher, or the fall would have taken longer.

[Cusashorn]

412... You see, thats the first result I got in my initial calculation, but then someone told me that wasn't the case.

And I live in the United States, I use feet per second in a county that uses miles per hour. We've been using the metric system in my physics class all semester, but once I pass that class, Neutons, Joules, Watts, vectors, magnitudes anything other than Millimeters and Centimeters directly won't matter in my profession, and even then we just multiply it by .03937 to convert it to inches.

Thank you for going over it with me and pointing out the flaws though. I really thought it was originally 412 feet.

[Zabjade]

Back in the 70 there was a big push to convert the US to the metric system, it never panned out. people are just comfortable with the current system and just convert if they need to for a profession.

Only the Military uses it with any regularity, I believe and they call Kilometers "Klicks" [spelling]

[SilkenKidden]

Cusashorn wrote:

Alright, you can chalk this up as being the most spontaneous topic of the night, but I was just doing some quests in Moors, and got the sudden curiosity to do a physics problem... I'm posting this here in the Look and Feel because the total size of Norrath falls under the Feel catagory.

...Yeah... I can thank my physics teacher, Professor James Bond (no joke) for making me think about these things for no reason.

The Obelisk of Ahzkul is the highest reachable point in the Moors of Ykesha, and I wanted to know how far it is from the platform to the water down below, so I jumped off and hit the stopwatch.

Lets see.. 12.81 seconds. Hmm. A longer than I expected. Alright. Lets throw these figures in and figure the theoretical distance I just covered. The first thing to point out is that these are theoretical calculations, which doesn't factor in any air resistance or terminal velocity. The good thing about this game is that there is no such thing as terminal velocity since there is no Mass factor in our characters or weight. Therefor, all character always fall at the same rate.

Keep in mind that I'm a student, so I'm trying to remember things correctly. If I'm understanding correctly, Displacement = Velocity x Time.

Lets assume that the constant velocity of falling in this game is equal to Gravity which equals 32.2 feet per second per second.

Velocity = 32.2 ft/s squared

t= 12.81 seconds

Distance = Velocity X Time / 2

So if my calculations and use of kinimatic equations are correct, then 32.2 ft/s squared X 12.81 / 2 = 6641 feet (6640.96 rounded up.)

Alright. My character just dropped a distance of 6641 feet into the water below... Thats over 1 mile of distance covered in just the game world alone.

Now here what I'm wondering: What would this distance be in the real world? How large is Norrath in EverQuest 2 in square or cubic feet? I figure that if I could figure out how large this game is by combining every zone together... Or at least every Overland and City zone, starting with Oakmyst Forest (the westernmost zone in the game) and ending with Kunzar Jungle (the easternmost zone in the game,) Then I could create a scale and calculate just how long that fall really was. Maybe if one of you developers would be so kind to help me out here, I'd appreciate it if you helped solve my own curiosity.

This is just wierd how I keep thinking like this now. A few weeks ago, I ended up hitting a deer on my way home one night. In that brief moment of chaos, the ONLY thing running through my mind other than bringing the car to a stop was how ironic it was that just earlier that day, I started learning about Impulse and Momentum.. Elastic Collisions, Inelastic collisions... etc. I even had to ask the teacher to use my accident as an example in class. The thought of "Am I going to be ok? Am I going to be injured?" never once crossed my mind. :/

Anyways. Fortunately for me, the damage done to my car was concentrated entirely to the hood. No damage to the bumper, windows, engine, wheels, axel, etc. My personal mechanic hooked me up with a carbon fiber, so hell yeah.

Cusashorn, you are one funny, funny writer.  I'm sure your teachers love you.  And the EQ2 devs too.  Hope you get an answer about how big the game really is.

Regarding your mishap the other day, I have to admit my first concern was for the deer.  My last too.  I hope the poor creature went swiftly and peacefully, but I guess an analytical mind like yours would first think of velocity.  Also reminded me of that dumb Geico ad. 

[Cusashorn]

I shattered the deer's leg on impact. A cop put two bullets in it's head as an act of mercy. It couldn't move anymore, it would have slowly died in agony otherwise.

[Laeal]

a = v / t  (acceleration = velocity / time)

v = d / t  (velocity = distance / time)

Plug in the numbers and we have:

9.81 m/s^2 = ( d / 12.81s ) / 12.81s

d = 1,609.78m  (5280.46ft, just barely over a mile)

- or if we do the calculations using Imperial Units:

32.2 ft/s^2 = ( d / 12.81s ) / 12.81s

d = 32.2 * 12.81 * 12.81 = 5283.89ft

Interestingly, since this calculation disregards air resistance and assumes your initial velocity is 0 and constant acceleration, your velocity when hitting the water would have been over 251m/s or just over 562mph.

If we take into account a terminal velocity of 53m/s (standard for a human with arms outstretched) the total height would drop to 610.83m or 2004.04ft.

Or since this is not Earth but Norrath we can leave it as just HIGH! 

 Edited for spelling...

[Mary the Prophetess]

I found this at MMORPG a long while back.  It doesn't have EQ2 listed, but by comparing it to EQ Live you can get a rough 'guestimate'  I'm not sure how they arrived at their calculations though.

Total area (square kilometers):

Dark and Light - 40,000SWG (all worlds) - 2025Horizons - 1024WoW - 950AC1 - 576EQ1 - 144UO - 49

I believe that Darkfall is supposed to be DnL sized, and I am guessing that Vanguard would occupy the 2nd slot position as of right now.

If AoC continues on and eventually includes all of Hyboria, it will be right up there too.  I read a rumor somewhere that Bethesda was thinking of putting Daggerfall into an MMO format.  If so, that would also be incredibly large.

[Amphibia]

Two words: Make believe

I don't know how large Norrath is, but as a roleplayer, I imagine it as much, much larger than the it seems when you're just playing the game and travelling from one side of Norrath to the other in a matter of minutes. Obviously, travel has to be fast and the world have to be small in an MMO, otherwise gameplay would be horribly inconvenient. This just falls into a long list of things in the game that don't really make any sense, but has to be in certain ways for balance and gameplay reasons.

But if I was writing a story about a journey through a place like Commonlands, I'd imagine it as a vast and desolate place that it would take weeks to cross on foot. On a fast horse, maybe days. And Freeport I would imagine as a large city, where in-game it looks like little more than a small town.

That's how I see it.