World Map

[Molic]

Dissecting the world map.

http://i.imgur.com/qYMg2XF.jpg

Doma Area:

http://i.imgur.com/qF0m97K.jpg

As you can see to the right there is genbu, suzaku, byakko, and Seiryu! I'm thinking these guys will either become ex trails or be bosses in the new lands of Eureka.

There is also a giant earth worm thing and more to the left lochy and a mermaid.


Garlean Area:

http://i.imgur.com/FPDMuNm.jpg

Kind of hard to tell what we got going on here from all the clouds, but looks like we got another tower, wonder if its a recreation of the crystal tower?

To the right is a giant monster, not sure who he could be from the FF summons, maybe someone brand new!

Got some airships, some little islands, a sea dragon in the upper right, and a bunch of floating rocks/base thing above the tower.

Eorzea:

https://i.imgur.com/6thiHRK.jpg

notice ala mihgo is reviled. There is a new island/nation ive never seen before north of eorzea.

Ship Graveyard to the bottom right, another sea dragon.

I think the cloudy area around the empire is probably gonna be the 5.0 expansion, but notice how we dont really see any other continents, i wonder where we are gonna go after that.

[Heliantheae]

Garlean Area:

First thing popped into my head on seeing the cloud whale.

[Ghastly]

All I hope is for an Old Sharlayan/Aerslaent expansion. But yes this new map is great, so many creatures and interesting sea names. After all the Garlean/Doma/Sharlayan stuff I think we'll go to the continent of Meracydia.
Another thing I want to point out is that people say those creatures/monsters on the map aren't that big. That's ok, but we saw how big Bismark, Nidhogg and Hrasvelgr were, if we get more giant creatures like that I'll be happy. Imagine fighting that walking giant near Garlemald or that giant sea dragon near Aerslaent.

[Rhuazie]

Eorzea really looks like North America or Africa and the Doma area looks like Asia.

[Yuyuka3]

Anyone else being reminded of Feng Shui looking at those animals and their positions to the right of the map, in the sea east of Othard? The turtle in the north, dragon in the east, phoenix/firebird in the south, and tiger (most likely coeurl in this setting) to the west?
I'm actually not sure if they are really future primals, they might just mark the cardinal directions, like in, as I said, Feng Shui. I really don't think that's a coincidence here.

[Rufalus]

I think the cloudy area around the empire is probably gonna be the 5.0 expansion, but notice how we dont really see any other continents, i wonder where we are gonna go after that.

Yes the continent currently hidden with clouds, Ilsabard, has been mentioned for the expansion after Stormblood. When asked about Doomtrain, Yoshida/Koji say you'll probably have to wait to go there (to Garlemald) to see it.

There are more places to go later because this isn't a world map, it's just a section of the world called The Three Great Continents. The most major landmasses we know existing outside of this area are Meracydia (far south) and The New World (far west).

[Anonymoose]

Eorzea really looks like North America or Africa and the Doma area looks like Asia.

This is a parallel we've been using in general discussion for a while now. It really is quite analogous to Earth.

The Three Great Continents are essentially "The Old World", the known world prior to the Age of Discovery.

Eorzea is slightly-broken Africa, but being the melting-pot Vanilla game world, the culture doesn't quite match up as well as the others. Ilsabard is essentially Europe but it got moved over and stretched out and England went to go hang out to the west as Sharlayan. The Near East is basically Arabia and surrounding lands that empires like Persia and the Ottomans conquered. (Except Arabia actually broke off, apparently.) The Fear East is Asia, including, as you can now see, Japan (Hingashi). You can see this even in the styles of gear and furnishings. This carries all the way to the New World, where the tapirs and tomatoes and avocados in the game come from. I wonder if Meracydia, then, is another part of "broken Africa" or if Australia just took a really long swim. I hope the latter; "The Land Hellbent on Killing You" holding out the longest against the Allagans tickles me.

The one thing I'd like to know is the map's age.

The 2010 website suggested that Roddard Ironheart only mapped Eorzea around 1500, and it didn't give him credit for the rest of the world. Either he carried on his work after that and made this map, or someone else (perhaps his children) carried on, as his grandchildren are doing now.

The map still shows the Isle of Val (perhaps in the wrong place going by text in the Encyclopaedia Eorzea, or that might be worded wrong? Idk.), it still shows Idyllshire as Sharlayan, and there is no presence of Garlemald in Gyr Abania (including the absence of Baelsar's Wall).

This suggests somewhere between 1510 and 1557, I'd say?

[Mysterysword]

The one thing I'd like to know is the map's age.

Speaking of old maps, is there any reason why we haven't found any maps of the world from the Allagans yet? Because I'm finding it really difficult to believe that a world-spanning empire could invent space-travel without having a complete map of the world. Why bother expanding towards space if there's land next to you that you haven't yet explored/conquered?

Also, is Hydaelyn a round world? There's a reference to an equatorial line in a mention of Meracydia that I vaguely remember, but then nobody seems to have a globe of the planet, and the only "globe" there is in-game is a map of the stars.

[Enkidoh]

Speaking of old maps, is there any reason why we haven't found any maps of the world from the Allagans yet? Because I'm finding it really difficult to believe that a world-spanning empire could invent space-travel without having a complete map of the world. Why bother expanding towards space if there's land next to you that you haven't yet explored/conquered?

I am going to say a very guarded and reserved 'probably', because we know vast amounts of Allagan data still exists within their tomestones, however because of the constant geographical upheavals successive Calamities have wrought on the landscape, Allagan maps most likely would no longer be relevant - for that matter, it was stated early on in a low lvl Gridanian quest that maps made mere decades before were now obsolete and unusable because of the Calamity.

If the most recent Calamity was enough to warp the landscape so much that existing maps were unusable, imagine what three Calamities (apparently far more destructive than the Seventh Calamity was, which involved a global Flood, planet-scale earthquakes and apparently a worldwide blizzard), 5000+ years of geographical changes and shifting coastlines all would do to the geography of the world in general and Eorzea specifically? Thus if an Allagan map did exist, it would be nice for reference to see how things were once... but as a tool for filling in our collective knowledge of the planet? Not possible sadly...

Also, is Hydaelyn a round world? There's a reference to an equatorial line in a mention of Meracydia that I vaguely remember, but then nobody seems to have a globe of the planet, and the only "globe" there is in-game is a map of the stars.

Hydaelyn is confirmed through multiple sources to be a round planet - the very opening of the game after all shows it from space and it is clearly a spherical planet, this scene was also used in a pre-release trailer, a still from which is below:



Then there was the shot of the planet from the final moments of the 3.0 storyline in Heavensward,

when Elidibus is conversing with Evil!Derplander on Menphina (the primary moon) and you can see Hydaelyn clearly rising above the moon's surface, and it's again a spherical planet.

And finally the Astrolabe THM/BLM weapon (and it's lvl 50-60 clones) feature a model of Hydaelyn as it's 'gem' with tiny models of Menphina and Dalamud orbiting it, and again, it is round.

So that is pretty conclusive Hydaelyn is a spherical world like our own Earth (yes I know Earth isn't a perfect sphere, but to the untrained eye that isn't really noticeable ).

[Anonymoose]

Speaking of old maps, is there any reason why we haven't found any maps of the world from the Allagans yet?

As much as I try to keep things in-world unless there's overwhelming reason not to... there's overwhelming reason not to. For the dev. team to show us a world map would commit them to staying true to that world map. The less they show us, the less likely people are to cry retcon if game development happens and as they flesh things out they realize that they'd like to make some adjustments. We know the vague idea of the world map, Square Enix knows the vague idea of the world map, but the chance that it won't change at all is quite low. The Allagans probably have beautiful and thorough maps of what the world was like 5,000 years ago ... as far as our visible in-world experience goes, however, it's mysteriously never come up.