The World As We (Don't) Know It: Geography

People need to learn the difference between new coding and new content. Karl's recoding things for 1.2 - that doesn't mean you're actually getting new features. Sure, it's possible you might, but take into account that Karl has previously said that 1.2 was supposed to purely be a recode, and we wouldn't get any content until 1.3. Of course, he's probably changed his mind, but still... stop raving over all the new stuff you're going to get in 1.2 until you actually know you're going to get it.

For those of you who stalk the suggestions board, this thread contains a good example of how to shoot down a thread and the attached noob to the point where they'll probably never make a suggestion again. Which, when dealing with noobs, is the correct goal, because you really don't want them back. Whereas for an idea that might be feasible but isn't really useful, you wouldn't want to criticize the creator... too much.

Also on the forums, the Advanced RP board has officially gone to hell. Just on the first page, over half the RPs don't meet the rules for word count and/or grammar; quite a few belong in playful. Nothing's been done about it, either, so it's probably a lost cause. The sad part is now Intermediate RP has better average quality. (Pro tip: 99% of threads started by users with no capitalization in their names are breaking the rules. Seriously, it's that easy to tell).

Heck, RP in general is a lost cause on W-H; never been moderated much in the first place, and why would staff start now? We've got a huge noob population, some of them so dumb that they have to ask what a word minimum is (tell them it's minimum word length). Not to mention that with the messages actually showing what they reply to in 1.2, forum RPs will basically be outdated, at least for 1x1.

The chatbox also seems to have a noob infestation; seriously, I rarely go on without there being at least one noob or troll annoying everyone. Something needs to be done here... Like, say, actually enforcing that age rule, maybe. Did you know that there's never actually been a point someone was banned from chat for being under 16? I'm serious. We made the rule months ago, and have never enforced it once.

Anyway, I'm going to break from my usual pattern here, and write a series of entries. Yes, that's correct - I've got a topic that's so long even I can't fit it in one entry. Or rather, a series of connected topics.

I'm going to be covering our world of W-H in general, from the map to the quests to the enemies, analyzing them all. It's more of a 'why' thing than anything else. That, and I want to point out flaws in things... well, more than usual.

In this entry, we're going to concentrate primarily on the world of Wolf Haven itself. Actually, we don't even know what the world is called. The only quest to even mention it is Karl's introductory one, which, since it's breaking the fourth wall, is probably referring to the name of the site, and not the world. Besides, while W-H is a fine name for a site, it's hardly a name for a world. And we know we aren't on Earth, due to the geography and species spread. Oh, and the flying demon sparkledogs.

So, we've barely begun, and we've run into our first problem: we have no idea what this place is called. For convenience, I'm still going to call it W-H, but the truth is that it doesn't actually have a name. You wouldn't think a name would be that hard...

Now that we have entered the land of namelessness, let's look at what else we can find. Directions... oh, dammit, we don't have any cardinal directions either. No idea what way is north. Heck, since we're not on Earth... do we even have north? Are there magnetic poles? Does gravity even exist? I mean, seriously, on a 2D map it's hard to tell. Characters are never implied to not be able to fly. Maybe there are just geomagnetic storms above water and trees that prevent passage? It may sound ridiculous, but we don't know. These things need to be established, or at least implied. Like, if we saw characters sitting on the ground, it's implied gravity exists. Instead, we see them in odd positions... probably hovering 20 feet off the ground, for all we know.

However, for the sake of having something to go on, we're going to assume the following:

1: The map is oriented towards the cardinal directions, like all standard maps. Up = North, Down = South, Right = East, Left = West.
2: The laws of physics apply except whenever it's more 'cool' for them not to. Or just when it's easier to be lazy.

I make these assumptions because that is how real life tends to work, and unless told otherwise, everything is assumed to be like real life. If we're not specifically told that the map is actually upside down and up is actually south, then we have no reason to believe that. So, if we were actually supposed to believe anything else, we should have been informed of that somewhere.

So, with those assumptions, we go into geography. Yes, I know you hate geography. Most people do. Trust me, I won't dwell on it long before I get back to insulting things.

Alright, since the laws of physics apply here, we assume W-H-world exists on a planet. This planet presumably orbits a sun, at a precise range for habitable life blah blah blah. You get the point.

Now, climate is caused by how much heat from the sun you get (well, when you dumb it down a lot. You don't want the details). On Earth, the most sunlight goes to the tropical locations, and the least to the arctic ones.

So, we have basically three climates: tropical (island), temperate (forest), and arctic (snow). The desert doesn't really count, because deserts can exist even in sub-zero temperatures and can be formed by natural formations, like mountains.

The arctic area, logically, is basically the same as one of our poles. So, we have an East pole, instead of a north pole.

Now, we have two possibilities here. If this world follows the same patterns as Earth, then it goes East Pole - Temperate zone (forest) - Tropical zone (island) - temperate zone (unknown) - West Pole, and we just haven't seen anything past the tropical zone, since it would be in the far west. The second possibility is that the West Pole just doesn't exist, and there's only one snowy pole on the planet.

However, neither of those is actually possible. Why? Well, picture the planet orbiting its sun. If the second possibility is true, then the East Pole must never face the sun (not to mention we'd have a super-desert of constant day and heat in the west). That just doesn't work, period. You can't have only one pole that avoids the sun's light and still have a habitable planet. In the first case, the only possible scenario would be to have the planet orbit the sun sideways. I don't have a diagram, but imagine the Earth's orbit of the sun, and turn the entire thing 90 degrees.

In that case, it's entirely possible for there to be two poles at the east and west. However, I think this is just stretching the Willful Suspension of Disbelief a bit too far. Although I'm not a scientist, common sense just says that shouldn't be gravitationally possible while maintaining a habitable planet. Not my field of expertise, though.

So, basically, we've got a physically impossible planet that namelessness land exist on. Again, we are assuming the laws of physics apply. It's entirely possible W-H is in a different universe and this works fine. But we have to be told if that's the case. Otherwise, it doesn't work.

Let's go to the forest itself. We've got grass, trees, what appear to be rivers, paths, and bridges. You might expect me to start my criticism on the paths/bridges, but I'm going to give those a pass. We'll assume bridges represent any form of crossing, be it a beaver dam or a ford, and just are placeholder tiles because making extra tiles for different crossings would be overkill. And paths exist so that we, as human players, have a direction to go.

So how large is a tile, anyway? How much does it represent? Let's make some assumptions here, since we have no data and have to make logical guesses.

A tile must be large enough for several animals to forage/hunt without stepping on each other. They must also be large enough that a wolf attacking an animal would not cause any panic in another tile, since nothing ever runs away when we attack something next to it. Thus, the tiles must be enough space that a creature in another tile either can't hear it or is not worried about it.

My parents own a 5 acre piece of property. Looking at it, it would have the space, although animal senses could probably hear out of it. Still, we'll be conservative, and say that each tile is 5 acres.

This brings up the obvious issue of scale. You cannot have a transition between terrain over 5 acres. It just doesn't happen, period. Terrain doesn't just drop off at one point.

Not to mention how small it would make the explorable map, when you size it up. But then, what am I supposed to assume? Each tile is a square mile? That seems way too large, not to mention the infeasibility of rivers a mile wide all over. This is, once again, an example of something we need to be informed of. If we actually knew how far our wolf moved with each key press, at least we could relate. Instead, we're stuck judging by tiles. So much for any sense of actually being in the game. Let's just have all the questgivers break the fourth wall and talk about XP, too, while we're at it. Yeah...

Then we've got rivers. Rivers always have sources, and they always go somewhere. This is due to gravity. Unless we don't have gravity, and they're just bodies of water floating there. Which raises the question of why they don't get drained or anything. But still, it's actually more feasible than our current situation. Rivers come from nowhere, and go nowhere. They should come from either springs or mountains, and either merge together, or head towards the ocean. If we have an ocean, since we don't know if the island is actually in the middle of a large lake or not. Although a tropical island in the middle of a lake... would actually be completely consistent with everything else we've found so far. Sensing a problem here yet?

So, instead of actually being interesting, or at least believable, rivers come off as basically trees v2. Another random barrier thrown in because all trees was just too boring. Yeah, that works well.

Of course, a common argument is that we don't care about realism. Technically, this isn't entirely correct. We're not interested in copying Earth. However, we are not willing to throw logic completely out the window and believe completely illogical things (well, I'm not, at least. Those of you who are willing to believe illogical things may start building me a shrine now). If the entire world functions differently in W-H, that's fine! But we have to be told that. Otherwise, it just makes no sense at all. And by told, I mean with a better reason than 'a wizard did it.'

We haven't covered the desert much. Let's move there.

Why does the desert exist? Is there a magic artifact of doom that radiates intense heat? Is there a mountain range blocking rainfall (I sure don't see one)? Was a bowl of spicy chili poured on the land and turned it into an eternal wasteland? Again, we don't know. The chili is just as feasible as the mountain range (maybe more so).

There's no logical reason for a desert to exist there. If things worked differently, we should have been told. Otherwise, we should get a reasonable explanation. How hard is it to stick some mountain tiles around somewhere and claim they cause a rain shadow? Or to say it's a result of some event in history (ooh, history... there's something that we don't have anything of at all). Or make it a result of some artifact, as said; could get a quest out of that too...

On to the island. First off, it's not much of an island if there's a giant bridge leading to it. But we'll chalk that off to accessibility.

Alright, we have a tropical island that is basically a replica of the Galapagos Islands with a few more things thrown in (they're island in South America with a variety of odd creatures). And we still don't know if it exists on the ocean or a lake. Or even why it exists, and what it's doing there. And if it's the ocean, what's stopping it from flooding the rest of the map? Sure, it's hard to portray height on a 2D map, but hey, you could, like, throw some mountain or hill tiles around to demonstrate that the land is higher or something.

Not to mention tide. Seriously, just by looking at that island, like half of it should be submerged half the time. And if we throw in a tsunami for good measure... why the heck is it above sea level, anyway?

But we're getting into more technical aspects here, so I think I'll end this part now. As a recap, we've established that namelessness land exists on a physically impossible planet, which may or may not have gravity, with absurd climates and no reason for them to exist. And basically life should be impossible and everything on this place should be dead.

Unless we're all zombies. With some sort of particle field keeping our flesh from decaying. You know, that could explain a lot... which is why it's so sad. I mean, seriously, if I can realistically theorize the planet is inhabited by zombies, something is very wrong.

Next up: Quests!