WoW world map, Google maps style:

[SurfD]

http://mapwow.com/

[Bunk]

tis broked

[SurfD]

Odd, works perfectly fine for me.

Incase my origional post was a little sparse on words, this is a Top Down view of the ENTIRE world map of Azeroth, which can be scrolled / zoomed down to prety close level.

[Merusk]

Tis broked for me too. All I get are a lot of "no image at this resolution" errors.  I suspect it might use your WoW directory, and WoW isn't installed on this machine.

[Ironwood]

Worked fine for me.  I fear you may be right.

[Comstar]

Worked fine for me, and I've never installed WoW.

Reminds me of HoMM2. Different coloured landmasses next to each for no reason whatsoever.

[SurfD]

If the error you are getting is "We are sorry, but we dont have maps at this zoom level for this region", try messing with the zoom settings (sliders / arrow keys) in the upper right hand corner of the window.

For some odd reason, everything in the bottom left of the "map" should you go too far below or to the left of the "world' just consists of empty plates with that error on them.

Alternately, you could try clicking on one of the navigaton links on the right hand side (under common lotacions).

As a last resort, it could be your browser?  Im using vanilla netscape 1.8, and it works ok.

[SurfD]

Reminds me of HoMM2. Different coloured landmasses next to each for no reason whatsoever.

Yeah, the first thing i thought about when i saw it was RISK.  Damn near every zone is a strikingly different colour then every other one it joins.

Some neat stuff to see there too:
-  Mount Hyjal looks like a pretty neat zone. Winding path works its way up the mountain to a HUGE blasted crater where the Tree used to stand. (and when i say Huge, the crater appears to be roughly the same size as the entire island of Theramore).
- The area behind the Greymane wall is there, but totally empty.

Lots of space tucked away for complete new zones:
- There is a crecent shaped area of space all along the northern edge of the Eastern plaguelands.  Should be intresting to see what they do to stick the Bloodelf starting area into that space.
- Very large chunk of unused space North East of wetlands.
- same with north east of that Dwarven Uncontested zone south of wetlands (name escapes me)
- Huge swath of space directly east of Burning Steppes
- HUMOUGOUS open space directly north of Stormwind.  WTF?

It is rather odd.  The only other MMOG i have played with full world maps to look at was Asherons call, and when you compare the two, the sheer amount of totally wasted space on the WoW map, even tucked in little chunks between zones, is just staggering.  In asherons call, from what i remember, EVERY section of space was rendered with something.  textures, trees, rocks, all of it was covered. In wow, you have city sized chunks of totally unused, untextured space littered all over the map.

[schild]

You know, globes and maps have had different colored countries and continents for years. It's not like a "new thing." It's also not done for "no reason." Humans are visual creatures. We see the boundaries of the united states against something else, we don't think of it as that yellow line. The yellow against whatever other color helps define that boundary. Large masses of such colored area help us define size without a scale. There's an entire host of reasons to color a map. The most simple being the first part - defining boundaries in a way a toddler could understand. A map of eastern europe or central america is a lot easier to read if it's colored than if it's a big mess of tangled wires (black lines on a white background).

Europe. Some old encyclopedia.

Here's a good one. Who knows what year it's from.

So, yea, another one.

Personally, I like this one. Africa, who knows when.

Just putting that out there, that's all.

Edit: Also, you want wasted space. Look at world maps of Star Wars Galaxies. If it weren't for player cities, they'd be goddamn devoid of any content. At least 60% of that game is just barren land. Back in my day we had to cross Endor on foot. You know what we found at the other end? NOTHING. ^_^;

[SurfD]

I understand the concept behind colouring the countries of a world map Schild.  This is not the same.  We colourize maps on globes and such because we are trying to emphasize where one territory begins and anothere ends.  We are using colour to define a human concept superimposed ontop of a natural landmass.

The wow map is different, it represents a direct aireal view of the world.  Immagine if you took a snapshot of the united states from space and it literallty looked like someone had coloured every state with a different crayola crayon.

That is what is odd about WoW.  One area is bright orange, the area directly geographically beside it is green.  To the north is a large chunk of total white.  It would be like looking out your window at the border between Canada and the US and seeing a drastic change of colour where the invisible border is.

As to barren land in SWG, again, not the same.  From the way you descrie it, it is still easily recognisable a "barren land". When i talk about unused space in WoW, I literally mean large chunks of empty, blank polygons.  Just a big mass of grey or brown or white nothing.  No textures or anything on them at all.

[Merusk]

If the error you are getting is "We are sorry, but we dont have maps at this zoom level for this region", try messing with the zoom settings (sliders / arrow keys) in the upper right hand corner of the window.

For some odd reason, everything in the bottom left of the "map" should you go too far below or to the left of the "world' just consists of empty plates with that error on them.

Alternately, you could try clicking on one of the navigaton links on the right hand side (under common lotacions).

As a last resort, it could be your browser?  Im using vanilla netscape 1.8, and it works ok.

It's working now, at all zoom levels. May have just been load on the server or something odd at the time I tried before.

[Paelos]

I used the die/run through gate trick to check out the Hyjal zone a few months ago. It's a neat looking place, and it didn't have any mobs in it at the time. Very stark changes from the entrance to the world tree crater which would only be associated with the destroyed camps that were protecting it at the end of WC3. There is also a cave shaped much like Onyxia's Lair entrance which I can only assume will house another large dragon when it is opened.