The actual size of Nirm compared to the size of Earth.

Carlos93 · April 2023

I would like us to discuss this matter.

LunaFlora · April 2023

and how do you want to discuss it?

Carlos93 · April 2023

LunaFlora wrote: »

and how do you want to discuss it?

With the opinions and contributions of the community.
I open the discussion.

TaSheen · April 2023

Uh. I don't care. It's a game world, it doesn't need to have any comparison at all to the real world.

Baconlad · April 2023

Could test by walking across the zones from coast to coast. See how long it takes. Average the walk of a human IRL then see how far a human could walk given the same time.

I'd say it's the size of a small city in america.

vesselwiththepestle · April 2023

The diameter of Nirn would be about 116,460.00 km or 72,365 miles.

Soarora · April 2023

Baconlad wrote: »

Could test by walking across the zones from coast to coast. See how long it takes. Average the walk of a human IRL then see how far a human could walk given the same time.

I'd say it's the size of a small city in america.

The sizes of places in-game are smaller than in lore and that’s Tamriel, not Nirn.

I have no idea how big Nirn is or if there’s even a scale of reference for how big it is.

phaneub17_ESO · April 2023

Nirn is obviously flat.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · April 2023

Very large.

How large varies from reference to reference. Sometimes it's as big as Earth, sometimes it's as big as Africa, sometimes is as big as a small European town because you keep meeting familiar faces and travell back and forth across it in a day somehow.

fred4 · April 2023

Get on your sabre cat and cross every zone, then add that up. Next get on your horse in real life and try the same.

Tandor · April 2023

Carlos93 wrote: »

I would like us to discuss this matter.

I wouldn't. At best it's irrelevant to a fantasy game, at worst it's immersion-breaking so far as my enjoyment of the game is concerned.

ZOS_Phoenix · April 2023

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding.

isadoraisacat · April 2023

I try not to compare a fantasy escape to the real world. But from my perspective it feels like nirn is probably larger than the size of the earth in scale but … it doesn’t really matter and maybe I’m wrong.

Eiagra · April 2023

"Objects in an MMORPG may be smaller/larger than they appear."

MMORPGs tend to scale some aspects larger than one would expect IRL to account for things like third-person camera. It's uncommon, though not unheard of, to aim for a 1:1 scale on general measurements -- I seem to recall Mortal Online II giving accuracy some kind of try (but not sure how true their accuracy is).

For measurements studies, ESO provides the luxury of a home system with measurements as small as 1 cm, and I've used this to figure out the height of a max-slider orc... which is 240 cm or around 94.5". I don't have anything lore-based to reference, but I don't recall Orsimer being up to 7' 10.5" tall -- and that's not including examples like Abzag the Monster who stands taller than the sliders a player can access (or what I call "Undaunted Height").

In short, it's a game, scale is weird in games unless the developers make a pointed effort for 1:1 accuracy with Earth measurements, so Tamriel and Nirn are "as big as the developers feel like making it."

isadoraisacat · April 2023

Eiagra wrote: »

"Objects in an MMORPG may be smaller/larger than they appear."

MMORPGs tend to scale some aspects larger than one would expect IRL to account for things like third-person camera. It's uncommon, though not unheard of, to aim for a 1:1 scale on general measurements -- I seem to recall Mortal Online II giving accuracy some kind of try (but not sure how true their accuracy is).

For measurements studies, ESO provides the luxury of a home system with measurements as small as 1 cm, and I've used this to figure out the height of a max-slider orc... which is 240 cm or around 94.5". I don't have anything lore-based to reference, but I don't recall Orsimer being up to 7' 10.5" tall -- and that's not including examples like Abzag the Monster who stands taller than the sliders a player can access (or what I call "Undaunted Height").

In short, it's a game, scale is weird in games unless the developers make a pointed effort for 1:1 accuracy with Earth measurements, so Tamriel and Nirn are "as big as the developers feel like making it."

I mean look at the imperial city in tes4 it’s supposed to be the biggest city and scale wise that is not the case.

Look at every city and town in tes 5 they are all tiny little hamlets with like 15 people in them.

It’s game limitations but we have to imagine the scale ourselves like white run is a big city. Solitude is a very very big city and imperial city is massive. We just need ti imagine them as bustling in our minds and remember the gane limitations was just a representation. The same goes for eso. I think Todd Howard spoke about the scale before which would still apply to eso.

ghastley · April 2023

There isn’t even a fixed scale in ESO. The areas of High Isle and Summerset are vastly different, but similar when you go there.

Xarc · April 2023

Why should Nirn be compared to earth ?

And if nirn is flat, how about borders ?

we know there's a celestial vault and that nirn is a plan, not a planet.
I think the question of the size doesnt really matter

Lebkuchen · April 2023

Credible_Joe · April 2023

People have tried to extrapolate this using canon sources, such as specified distances between cities given in books, both in-game and published literature.

They've come to conclusions that Tamriel is either the size of Texas, or several times greater in surface area than all of earth's landmass combined.

TES writers have been anything but consistent with their cartography & geography, and for good reason. We don't need to visit every farming hovel on the map. The landmass is shrunk for player traversal, and that's all there is to it.

So, for my Tamriel D&D campaign, I took the easy way out. I overlayed Tamriel to a geographically accurate Eurasia and imported the distance scale.

This, of course, is also inaccurate. It would make the Imperial City the size of West Virginia, with the bridge crossing the Niben river / moat 20 - 30 miles long. Maybe this is feasible considering it's the locale of one of the Towers (not to mention it makes a great fantastical set piece), but a bridge that takes days to traverse is definitely a stretch.

So ultimately, there is no known, canon representation of Tamriel / Nirn's true geography. Some things are shrunk, others are balooned, all for player traversal. Maybe we'll never know.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · April 2023

I think someone from bethesda once said the size of tamriel is similar to the size of europe. After that we have little to no information on the size of the other continent or the actual dictance between them. So the best guess we can make is:
Bigger than europe

Amottica · April 2023

Xarc wrote: »

Why should Nirn be compared to earth ?

And if nirn is flat, how about borders ?

we know there's a celestial vault and that nirn is a plan, not a planet.
I think the question of the size doesnt really matter

Such wisdom and insight.

And yes, The size of Nirn and Earth unimportant and not truly comparable.

What is important is building the fence along the edge of nirn to prevent anyone from falling off.

Dr_Con · April 2023

Tamriel is probably smaller than Rhode Island given what we have in ESO. If you want to transpose the Elder Scrolls 2 map's size onto the ESO map you might be able to get a bigger size though.

Nirn's size we can never truly know due to mapping not being accurate and the game dramaticising certain parts. Borders between zones might not be apparent and may have more "space" between them. Then, there's the argument that maps are just tools for the map-makers, suggesting that the Tamriel map is mostly political rather than accurate-to-scale. We can traverse a lot of the "Tamriel" map on foot and it doesn't take long. The concepts of size that are missing is how long it takes to sail from continent to continent undisturbed as well as the size of the other continents. Figure out how fast the boats are and how long their journeys are from continent to continent and you can probably get a feel for the size.