how big did ff11 area grow before and after all the expansion?

[Renik]

snip

This may happen in the "new" ffxi, but back in the old times, using a reraise item, or sneak/invisible items was not usual, it supposed a great pain for your pocket, most people just evaded mobs with patience and skill, others by force and others escorted by mages with access to sneak/invisible, the danger was real, but the game started to introduce more convenience later.

Now more o topic, i think the OP is trying to guess how big the world will be taking his older brother as example, i think Hydaelyn will be bigger than Vana'diel, and even bigger if SE keep the plan to add swimming after flying they announced long time ago.

I just hope they give more importance to the open world with appropriate content to make it "feel" bigger as well.

[Aryalandi]

I miss the good old days when mobs never despawned no matter how far you ran and would linger in the zone line picking off anyone new that entered an area rather than going away... aaaah dunes goblins... how i miss thee... or the time when Vrtra went on a rampage and killed whole linkshells at zone after fallowing someone and they finally sent a gm to exicute it in godly combat amongst the bodies of fallen adventurers.. memories -daydreams-

And actually they did add alot of true-sight mobs to some places.. level 99 aggro ones at that but they are generally in out of the way places.

Places in XI were always fairly huge, I admittedly miss the long boat/airship rides where you could just sit back and watch the scenery (first time I noticed whales next to the ship that came to the surface.. wow <3 that was a moment..)

The tele and warp system makes travel so much easier and i like that but when I'm not in a hurry i still prefer to walk XD old fashioned that way...

[Arkenne]

Well, the opening movie does speak of 3 Great Continents, of which one is Eorzea and the 3 alliance nations are but less than half of it... given that Ishgard and Dravania zones will be even bigger...

Maybe in the future we will get to see the ruins of the Doman civilization and infiltrate the Empire's territory...

[Nalien]

I just hope they give more importance to the open world with appropriate content to make it "feel" bigger as well.

That really is the main thing I think, I'm kind of sad that so far all we seem to have is "You asked for bigger zones so here they are!". The zones need a better quality of content, not more size.

I'd absolutely love it if we had a force pop NM system in place. That would have improved a fair amount of content so far IMO (something like Atma farming (ignoring drop rate) would have been much more enjoyable if there was a NM at the end; Farm Atma, trade to spawn point, fight NM). Bigger zones will certainly help with that though, it means they can better balance out casual content with more hardcore content in a zone, but so far I've not really heard any mention of them implementing such stuff... New Hunts, Odin level FATEs and Treasure Map tiers sound nice on paper but in practice they're not great IMO.

[Conradus]

Beaucedine and Xarcabard/Castle Zvhal were non-expansion zones. The Shadow Lord was original non-expansion end boss, which is why it was level capped at 50. Much like XIV, the original level cap in XI was also 50. :P

Yes, I said they weren't expansion zones. But they weren't there in the beginning. The Shadow Lord is the original non-expansion end boss, but he wasn't there on release. I believe you could only get to rank 5 on release; the rest of the content wasn't there yet.

[kyuven]

XI is big. Too big. People say "Oh it's so nice and big with plenty of places to go and explore!"
Yeah.
That's great.
The first time.
What they don't tell you, is that many of those areas are locked using the most obtuse and annoying keying methods around. They actually added a bunch of Home Points and Survival Guides (think mini-aetherytes scattered around the world) because it was so incredibly tedious to get to a locked area and die, and have to run back through the locked doors AGAIN.
Moreover, many quests had you returning to the same place over and over. Delkfutt's tower was central to at least 3 different pieces of content, and if it weren't for the survival guides and elevator keys, it'd be a MAJOR chore to return to over and over and over and over and over again. Norg was equally monstrous to have to return to, and it was central to the Samurai and Ninja job quests.
The game is a perfect example of why having no fast travel was a horrible idea. The game with these options still feels very big, with lots of exploration you have to do, but at the same time it doesn't get tedious having to return to the same places over and over again.
It's also an example of why having a whole bunch of huge zones isn't necessarily a good idea. There are some zones in that game that get NO visitors except those passing through for other quests. Hell, there's at least one whole dungeon whose only real purpose is as a "gateway" to a couple of boss fights/raids! The vast majority were abandoned as soon as new content came around, with no concrete reason to ever return.
"Tons of big huge zones" sounds great on paper, but in practice WILL lead to waste-of-space abandoned content.

Yes, I said they weren't expansion zones. But they weren't there in the beginning. The Shadow Lord is the original non-expansion end boss, but he wasn't there on release. I believe you could only get to rank 5 on release; the rest of the content wasn't there yet.

This is all irrelevant as NA players didn't get the game until after RoZ :P

The teleport system had nothing to do with XI's size. XI was just... Plain massive. Even on a chocobo it took time running from one end of the map to another. Each zone had some unique flavors to it to boot (still remember that giant skeleton in that one zone, even if I don't know its name.) and there was danger in many zones that made you have to think before running through.

From a world building standpoint, XI was better. But XIV has good potential - and I'm excited to see if SE can do something amazing.

And danger that made running through the zone for the umpteenth time a tedious chore. "Challenge" is only "challenging" if you don't have to do it 40,000,000 times. Then it's tedious.
Now, Exploration is STILL a thing. You don't walk into a zone and instantly get all the HPs and SGs, you have to actually find them. It rewards exploration, but doesn't make it tedious.
Also you mention chocobos...Chocobos took the challenge out since mobs wouldn't attack you while riding. Though it took a MONTH in real time to raise one for your own use.

[Eidolon]

The teleport system had nothing to do with XI's size. XI was just... Plain massive. Even on a chocobo it took time running from one end of the map to another. Each zone had some unique flavors to it to boot (still remember that giant skeleton in that one zone, even if I don't know its name.) and there was danger in many zones that made you have to think before running through.

From a world building standpoint, XI was better. But XIV has good potential - and I'm excited to see if SE can do something amazing.

[Akuryu]

Getting past XI for a moment... In terms of pure explorable land-mass, XIV is probably the smallest MMO on the market. I don't really expect this to change in the expansion either. They put so much thought and care into crafting dungeons, raids and other instances. I wish they'd put even half that effort into making the open world interesting to explore.

[kyuven]

Getting past XI for a moment... In terms of pure explorable land-mass, XIV is probably the smallest MMO on the market. I don't really expect this to change in the expansion either. They put so much thought and care into crafting dungeons, raids and other instances. I wish they'd put even half that effort into making the open world interesting to explore.

Not even close. ARR just has less useless areas. Everything in the game has at least SOME value. They took a game that was oversized (FFXIV 1.0) and streamlined it.
Development 101: Don't make more than you'll actually use.

[Akuryu]

Not even close. ARR just has less useless areas. Everything in the game has at least SOME value. They took a game that was oversized (FFXIV 1.0) and streamlined it.
Development 101: Don't make more than you'll actually use.

Are you saying "not even close" as in it's not the smallest MMO on the market? Please tell me one that is smaller.

I spend 90% of my time sitting at my FC house, or sitting in The Gold Saucer, or sitting in Mor Dhona while I queue for instances. There is really no use to the open world outside of gathering and hunts. Even those activities are heavily scripted (you know where and when gathering nodes will appear... you know roughly when hunts will spawn, and even if you don't a hunt linkshell will inform you). There is no reason to get out there and explore.