Mapping out Eorzea

[geekgirl101]

Has anyone tried mapping out Eorzea using the ingame maps? I thought I'd try it to see what the other places were surrounding the main regions that don't show on the world map and how big an area was left unexplored when I noticed that the map backgrounds don't align right. For example the exits to The Black Shroud and Coerthas are clearly marked and the regions outside are drawn out in a darker shade, but if you try to align the map background the regions end up overlapping each other. According to this layout Ishgard is right on top of Gridania when the exits clearly show Gridania is much more futher south-east! Even further strange is when you view the world map The Black Shroud is even more further east away from the Strait of Merlthor than it appears when viewing The Black Shroud map itself and whilst Gridania is drawn almost above The Rothylt Sound in the world map it's even further north-west when viewing it on The Black Shroud map. It struck me rather odd that the map backgrounds are so badly misaligned.

[Cleretic]

This is definitely not really my field, but part of the reason the maps might seem a little off for ARR beyond just 'shortcutting of transit' is because there were a few 1.0 areas that just got cut from ARR; off the top of my head I know that the West Shroud was one of them (which I don't think had anything of tremendous note beyond a Mark of the Twelve that was moved), as well as the Coerthas Central Lowlands (which was in the space between the Central Highlands and Mor Dhona). So some of that weirdness might come from the fact the zones were allocated with the assumption that there was a couple more of them.

Might also be worth keeping in mind that it doesn't look like mainland Eorzea cared that much about the specifics of borders; we naturally approach this from an assumption that every part of the land must belong to exactly one nation (because at this point that's how Earth is), but that's not really true of FFXIV's world. The Shroud and Gyr Abania had to draw a hard line thanks to the Autumn War (and now have a big imperial wall delineating it), but beyond that? Coerthas is far more concerned about its border with Dravania than it is with whatever the specifics are of the border with the Shroud and Xelphatol, so it's probably not a plain line dividing them, and the Shroud and Thanalan might've just never really had to declare much of anything there. There's definitely some fuzziness with a few areas that no nation really stakes a claim to, as well; the Cartenau Flats and Mor Dhona famously belong to nobody, both for entirely different reasons.

[SannaR]

Don't we also play Shatter in a section of Coerthas that we can't travel to normally? As I want to say Clearwater and Camp Owls Nest aren't in either Coerthas Central Highlands or Western Coerthas.