World Map

[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.

[LineageRazor]

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.

Also worth considering is that there's been a couple of Calamities since the Allagans (including the one that ended the Allagans). While Bahamut's pansy rampage may have colored our expectations a bit, Calamities are SUPPOSED to be pretty serious affairs, and may have actually caused some significant changes to the world map. Allagan maps may now be too wildly inaccurate to be useful.

Allagan maps may be a common collector's item - and utterly useless for any practical purpose. So, no one bothers to mention them. Rowena probably has a few stashed away.

[Anonymoose]

Let me extend that metaphor further with my personal pet theory: Eorzea is the cradle of all intelligent life in Hydaelyn, the way Africa is the cradle of humanity on Earth.

Well, you've got me on board!

I'm also not ready to accept it as coincidence that Silvertear Lake is not far from the area of Africa we'd call the Cradle of Life.

[washbrook45]

What is the town to the East of Kugane? Cuyyo? Something like that? Anything about that place in the current lore?

[TinyRedLeaf]

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.

Let me extend that metaphor further with my personal pet theory: Eorzea is the cradle of all intelligent life in Hydaelyn, the way Africa is the cradle of humanity on Earth.

At the very least, Eorzea would be the "source" of all life in Hydaelyn, being as it is the wellspring of the planet's aether. I like to think of Lake Silvertear as this planet's equivalent of Lake Victoria, one of Earth's largest freshwater lakes.

Which makes me wonder how ecosytems change, in lands so far away from Eorzea. We know that foreigners to Eorzea experience aether sickness when they first arrive to the realm, as their bodies take time to adjust to the higher concentrations of aether in the environment. While the breaking of the seal of Silvertear may well have caused vast amounts of aether to spill over, into lands as far away as Hingashi, it would still be common sense to assume that the levels of aether in these realms would be lower than those of Eorzea.

How does that affect magic, let alone all the fantastical beasts and beast tribes that roam these parts of the world?

[Caitlyn]

I made a quick "translation" of the current world map, but I m not finished yet. If someone find some errors or new names, please let me know ^^.

[DarthSanguine]

I made a quick "translation" of the current world map, but I m not finished yet. If someone find some errors or new names, please let me know ^^.

Only mistake I can see right now, is that you put Corvos instead of Dorvos.