Population of Tamriel

SilverIce58

I had this thought while playing on my main the other night: If you think about it, you've effectively reduced the population of Tamriel's people, and fauna (whether it be beasts, monsters, or anything in-between) by a very large percentage. There's all the people killed on the DC side, on the AD side, and on the EP side. All the people killed on the Gold Coast, the Legionnaires of the IC, the people of Orsinium, Hew's Bane, and Vvardenfell. It's just...there's just so many people.

dpencil1

We're talking about a world where people are resurrected by Soul Gems, or in the case of npcs, automatically resurrect oblivious to their previous demise, carrying on the same routine endlessly...I don't think they even eat or sleep...or poop!

What kind of madness is this?!?!?!





Oh right. It's a video game.

EttinTheBreton

Interesting thoughts, OP. I've often thought about how huge Tamriel is, and I wonder about things like average population density. Does the current population of NPCs and real players around towns have similar population densities to real villages? What's a good estimate for the entire population? Many questions can be asked.

@dpencil1, this is true! But also remember those that can be resurrected by Soul Gems "currently" have had their souls stolen by the big Molag Bal, so they are allowed to be resurrected like that

SilverIce58

Obviously it's a video game, and in terms of gameplay it doesn't matter, but I'm not talking in terms of gameplay

@EttinTheBreton population density becomes an even greater question if you take into account that some of the more bestial races like Goblins who also have little village tribes that don't have a real world equivalency.

Tasear

SilverIce58 wrote: »

Obviously it's a video game, and in terms of gameplay it doesn't matter, but I'm not talking in terms of gameplay

@EttinTheBreton population density becomes an even greater question if you take into account that some of the more bestial races like Goblins who also have little village tribes that don't have a real world equivalency.

I blame the food prices... have you seen the price of an apple. How can an average family afford it?

Kurkikohtaus

If you forget about the killing for a second and just look at the NPC population of towns and villages, it becomes quickly apparent that Tamriel is more or less empty of people.

victoriana-blue

Keep in mind that soul gems contain literal souls: every time you charge your weapon or res an ally, you are spending the animus of a creature/person/daedra - their soul, their person-ness, the part of them that can return.

Isn't Tamriel wonderful? And that's not even getting into things like black soul gems or relative tiers. Who needs equivalent exchange when we can use a failed incarnate to power our weapon damage enchants?

Axoinus

If you are really killing them, where are all the dead bodies?

Fishoscandi

2 things: respawn and IT'S A VIDEO GAME.

SilverIce58

Fishoscandi wrote: »

2 things: respawn and IT'S A VIDEO GAME.

I've already said that I know it's a video game, which wasn't the point I was making.

SilverIce58

SilverIce58 wrote: »

Fishoscandi wrote: »

2 things: respawn and IT'S A VIDEO GAME.

I've already said that I know it's a video game, which wasn't the point I was making.

The point I was making was just an observation I had while playing. It's not meant to be taken so literally.
(whoops double post)

Pele

Axoinus wrote: »

If you are really killing them, where are all the dead bodies?

Lying in the streets of Kvatch.

ArchMikem

For a single continent at this kind of technological level, thats in an almost continuous state of War with itself other continents, and the Daedra, i'd say tens of millions, at most. For comparison Earth didnt have its first billion till the 1800s.

Loralai_907

Holy crap, I thought I was going into a thread about the number of actual active players. Was not prepared for the real topic of this thread.

Integral1900

It's a game, therefore it's an extrapolation, just as skyrim only showed a handful of villages and towns where as in reality there would possibly be thousands, from hamlets on upwards

Elder Scrolls is a world that effectively exists within a series of legends and stories and so it's physical size and contents will change over time just as stories change when they are retold, however given the number of climates and more importantly their locations relative to each other it is reasonable to assume we may be dealing with an area at least as big as euroasia extrapolated down to less than 1 percent of its actual size. An area that size in, let's say, the roman period could have had a population between one hundred and two hundred million. Very sparse by our standards but still a huge number. However, unless you have an AI handy to crunch the data there is no reasonable way to show this and so like a movie the whole is condensed into just the bits we require in order to tell the story.

AlienSlof

dpencil1 wrote: »

We're talking about a world where people are resurrected by Soul Gems, or in the case of npcs, automatically resurrect oblivious to their previous demise, carrying on the same routine endlessly...I don't think they even eat or sleep...or poop!

What kind of madness is this?!?!?!

Oh right. It's a video game.

They're clearly immortal aliens with a phoenix-like ability to respawn - this is why there are no children. They don't need them!

Even those who don't respawn turn up later as ghosts, zombies, vampires or end up soulless in Oblivion.

Kaktus

ESO (and almost all Elder Scrolls games) are scaled down, and the size of even major settlements changes between games. It's a good guess that the full-size Tamriel has a couple hundred million people on a continent many times bigger than we've yet seen represented in 3D. I don't think a capital city like Mournhold realistically has less than 100 residents that share 30 beds, so don't worry about your adventures in bandit slaying causing a significant drop in world population