I remade the map - this time, everything is perfect

Ratzkifal

Today I asked @ZOS_RichLambert about the map issue on stream. He didn't seem to be aware of the issue before but when other players chimed in and the issue was explained, he said "fair enough". So we have been heard at least, even if I am not sure something will be done about it just from this. The stream was 3hours long, I asked the question some time in the middle and I was by far not the only one giving feedback, suggesting features or asking questions.
But hey, just to be sure, maybe this forum tag might jog his memory and explain the actual issue a bit better than the stream chat without pictures could.

Vylaera

votan73 wrote: »

PS: Are you aware of https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info3023-HighlyDetailedWorldMap.html ?

it makes it more detailed, but that isn't the problem, the problem is that it's not the right shape. I like the paper map aesthetic the Tamriel world map has, but hate that the map itself is glaringly and painfully wrong.

Ashenkin

I don't think medieval maps should be this accurate :P

Vylaera

Ashenkin wrote: »

I don't think medieval maps should be this accurate :P

Bethesda seems to disagree with you, given that the world maps in previous games were accurate. And again, we've already belabored the point a dozen times over that the map being wrong affects future content releases and doesn't accurately represent the universe it portrays.

Oblivion:


Skyrim:

Vylaera

Today is my day off and Cyrodiil is unplayably laggy as always, so I decided to resume work on the map, and have gotten it to this finished form. There may be a few revisions between now and the addon's release, but this is about what it will look like.

I added the Niben river and cut Bravil out of Cyrodiil's zone highlight since it's inaccessible and the bridge into the city connects to the untouched land to the south, not in from the north. Not that there's anything to see in Bravil anyway, but this way I hope to impress upon ZOS that Bravil would be a good addition to the yet unannounced and (probably) unplanned Nibenay Chapter.

I also corrected the shape of Solstheim according to its interpretation in TES III Bloodmoon since that's the more accurate version as opposed to TES V Dragonborn's version which is shaped funny and the victim of a super-volcano's eruption.

Shadowfen has been moved to the south since that's where it's actually supposed to be, and Blackwood's border has been redrawn to resemble its zone map, which actually fits really nicely against the relocated Shadowfen - no fudging was done to make it work.

I also made more room in the area where a Jehanna DLC could fit, since the zone highlights here are deceptive and are much too generous in sizing these zones. I cut the border at the halfway point in these zones' mountain ranges, which freed up a bit more space, and is more accurate for where a zone border should be drawn. Furthermore, I went ahead and did this for a few other contentious zones such as Eastmarch and the space between Northern and Southern Elsweyr where a Tenmar Forest DLC could be (but lets be honest, does it look like there's space for a playable zone there?). I tried my best but it's still incredibly small.

And speaking of Eastmarch, I rescaled The Rift to line up with it more accurately, and to line up with where the Throat of the World would actually be. Now there's space to fit Helgen and Riverwood, whereas before, those would have been swallowed up by an unfortunately misplaced giant mountain.

And last but not least, I did some minor touchups across the map for visual consistency and to fix errors I'd made previously.

So without further ado, here it is:

NotaDaedraWorshipper

BroughBreaux wrote: »

So without further ado, here it is:

Just look at all that chapter and dlc space.

Sylvermynx

Awesome! Serious.

Vylaera

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Awesome! Serious.

Thank you!

Nord_Raseri

BroughBreaux wrote: »

Today is my day off and Cyrodiil is unplayably laggy as always, so I decided to resume work on the map, and have gotten it to this finished form. There may be a few revisions between now and the addon's release, but this is about what it will look like.

I added the Niben river and cut Bravil out of Cyrodiil's zone highlight since it's inaccessible and the bridge into the city connects to the untouched land to the south, not in from the north. Not that there's anything to see in Bravil anyway, but this way I hope to impress upon ZOS that Bravil would be a good addition to the yet unannounced and (probably) unplanned Nibenay Chapter.

I also corrected the shape of Solstheim according to its interpretation in TES III Bloodmoon since that's the more accurate version as opposed to TES V Dragonborn's version which is shaped funny and the victim of a super-volcano's eruption.

Shadowfen has been moved to the south since that's where it's actually supposed to be, and Blackwood's border has been redrawn to resemble its zone map, which actually fits really nicely against the relocated Shadowfen - no fudging was done to make it work.

I also made more room in the area where a Jehanna DLC could fit, since the zone highlights here are deceptive and are much too generous in sizing these zones. I cut the border at the halfway point in these zones' mountain ranges, which freed up a bit more space, and is more accurate for where a zone border should be drawn. Furthermore, I went ahead and did this for a few other contentious zones such as Eastmarch and the space between Northern and Southern Elsweyr where a Tenmar Forest DLC could be (but lets be honest, does it look like there's space for a playable zone there?). I tried my best but it's still incredibly small.

And speaking of Eastmarch, I rescaled The Rift to line up with it more accurately, and to line up with where the Throat of the World would actually be. Now there's space to fit Helgen and Riverwood, whereas before, those would have been swallowed up by an unfortunately misplaced giant mountain.

And last but not least, I did some minor touchups across the map for visual consistency and to fix errors I'd made previously.

So without further ado, here it is:

That's the best version of ESO's tamriel map to date. I sincerely hope the devs see this and act upon it.

Vylaera

Nord_Raseri wrote: »

That's the best version of ESO's tamriel map to date. I sincerely hope the devs see this and act upon it.

thanks!

Also, here it is in-game. Again, mind the reshade making it orangey.


And of course, once I get it in game, I remember that I forgot to put water under those islands to the west


EDIT:
added water. Easier than i thought it would be

Ratzkifal

BroughBreaux wrote: »

Today is my day off and Cyrodiil is unplayably laggy as always, so I decided to resume work on the map, and have gotten it to this finished form. There may be a few revisions between now and the addon's release, but this is about what it will look like.

I added the Niben river and cut Bravil out of Cyrodiil's zone highlight since it's inaccessible and the bridge into the city connects to the untouched land to the south, not in from the north. Not that there's anything to see in Bravil anyway, but this way I hope to impress upon ZOS that Bravil would be a good addition to the yet unannounced and (probably) unplanned Nibenay Chapter.

I also corrected the shape of Solstheim according to its interpretation in TES III Bloodmoon since that's the more accurate version as opposed to TES V Dragonborn's version which is shaped funny and the victim of a super-volcano's eruption.

Shadowfen has been moved to the south since that's where it's actually supposed to be, and Blackwood's border has been redrawn to resemble its zone map, which actually fits really nicely against the relocated Shadowfen - no fudging was done to make it work.

I also made more room in the area where a Jehanna DLC could fit, since the zone highlights here are deceptive and are much too generous in sizing these zones. I cut the border at the halfway point in these zones' mountain ranges, which freed up a bit more space, and is more accurate for where a zone border should be drawn. Furthermore, I went ahead and did this for a few other contentious zones such as Eastmarch and the space between Northern and Southern Elsweyr where a Tenmar Forest DLC could be (but lets be honest, does it look like there's space for a playable zone there?). I tried my best but it's still incredibly small.

And speaking of Eastmarch, I rescaled The Rift to line up with it more accurately, and to line up with where the Throat of the World would actually be. Now there's space to fit Helgen and Riverwood, whereas before, those would have been swallowed up by an unfortunately misplaced giant mountain.

And last but not least, I did some minor touchups across the map for visual consistency and to fix errors I'd made previously.

So without further ado, here it is:

While I like what you did with the Niben Bay area, the width of the Niben river really is an eye-sore... but that is how it looks in ESO, so I can't really complain about that. One thing is for sure, those ships are not leaving the Waterfront district of the Imperial City...
Maybe we need some lore on a drought that has made the Niben have less water and we pretend the bridges are larger than they are? Maybe that would work, although then the maps would still show the normal water levels...

Also I will say that your older map placed Shadowfen better. Even if we ignore how close together Deshaan and Shadowfen are shown to be ingame, this latest version seems to have placed Shadowfen according to maps that placed Narsis quite a bit further south of Mournhold - in that newly created space you've made. However Narsis has already been added to ESO, underwhelming as it was, so whatever Morrowind area was just added here is more or less dead space at least according to our current knowledge of the world. I'm not sure adding this dead space has any merit beyond being "more accurate", especially considering how this will negatively affect future Blackmarsh content. Try adding Helstrom or the big lake at the heart of Blackmarsh to that map and you'll see what I mean. You've placed southern Shadowfen more or less on top of them.
Unless ESO redesigns its basegame zones, Stormhold has been moved further North and is there to stay. That's just the reality we've been dealt at this point.

Aside from that, I like what you did to the Rift and Eastmarch. Even if my brain is starting to have trouble recognizing their shapes, it does appear to be more accurate this way. Also am I seeing that right, that you have compressed the Rift? Was it not to scale? Eitherway, I like how the Jerall mountain range now looks larger because of it. I was always bothered by how thin that area is shown to be ever since the Dark Brotherhood questline briefly took us there.

Not sure why Solstheim was changed though. I guess it makes sense to take the outline of the Bloodmoon map since it's closer to our time period, but the old shape was clearly taking more after the Dragonborn shape, which I personally find more aesthetically pleasing to look at. So even if this is technically the more correct shape for our time, there was nothing wrong with the old one in my opinion. The way I see it, the Dragonborn design was meant as an update to the old Bloodmoon design, so I always saw it as a retcon to have always had the updated look. ESO certainly seems to have interpreted it that way. All the differences present in ESO's version compared to Dragonborn could be explained away with icebergs and glaciers looking different, which does tend to be the case even on shorter time scales and will probably cause changes to the Winterhold map as well once the official one eventually drops. I see Solstheim's current map as an "area of least concern" so to speak.

I think despite the improvements to some of the borders, due to the Shadowfen issue and the way this map draws attention to the laughably small Niben river when that would probably be best kept under wraps as long as we can't get an update to the Cyrodiil zone as well, I prefer the previous iteration still.

TX12001rwb17_ESO

There is one small problem, as the above poster pointed out Shadowfen is too far south, ingame we can see them physically touching, trying to correct the world map is going the wrong way about it, what you should do is try to fit the zone maps together, only then would you get an accurate map.

Ratzkifal

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

There is one small problem, as the above poster pointed out Shadowfen is too far south, ingame we can see them physically touching, trying to correct the world map is going the wrong way about it, what you should do is try to fit the zone maps together, only then would you get an accurate map.

In this instance you are right, but the principle isn't true for the issue of Stonefalls and the Rift. Those zones are touching as well, but that makes no sense at all so it's the map that needs fixing while the zones are mostly fine. The reason the map can't be fixed for Shadowfen is because of all the other circumstances surrounding it. Moving Shadowfen further south, at the size that it is now, will inevitably also move Helstrom, which defeats the purpose of moving Shadowfen in the first place as you simply traded one issue for another. But it also makes a future chapter at the center of Blackmarsh almost impossible unless we accept a giant, likely untraversible lake with no way around it, separating the chapter zone into two halves rather than the zone having a lake in the middle and letting us walk around it however we see fit. There just isn't any space left for that if Shadowfen is so far south and the location and size of that lake are accurate as well (which i want them to be).

The core idea behind this thread is to fix the map so that future content can be designed in such a way that is satisfying and consistent with previous knowledge of the world. So that Shadowfen and Deshaan aren't touching isn't actually as big of a deal in this context, rather the implications of that and the other circumstances surrounding it are.
The reason you can't separate them is that it would make future Argonian content objectively worse or introduce issues of the same nature as the one that's being fixed without adding anything of value in return, like the relocation of Eastmarch and the Rift did.

Vylaera

Ratzkifal wrote: »

While I like what you did with the Niben Bay area, the width of the Niben river really is an eye-sore... but that is how it looks in ESO, so I can't really complain about that. One thing is for sure, those ships are not leaving the Waterfront district of the Imperial City...
Maybe we need some lore on a drought that has made the Niben have less water and we pretend the bridges are larger than they are? Maybe that would work, although then the maps would still show the normal water levels...

Remember that Tamriel's actual lore scale is about the same size as continental Europe is in real life, so that thin little river is much wider in lore, so ships wouldn't have any trouble getting through there. The games are only meant to represent in a condensed form what is actually in the lore. In game, the Niben is plenty wide to fit big cargo ships through, but Cyrodiil and the Chapters are on a much larger scale than base game zones are, so it looks deceptive when you see a ship on the map that's from a base game zone, and compare it to the Niben river in Cyrodiil and Blackwood.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Also I will say that your older map placed Shadowfen better. Even if we ignore how close together Deshaan and Shadowfen are shown to be ingame, this latest version seems to have placed Shadowfen according to maps that placed Narsis quite a bit further south of Mournhold - in that newly created space you've made. However Narsis has already been added to ESO, underwhelming as it was, so whatever Morrowind area was just added here is more or less dead space at least according to our current knowledge of the world. I'm not sure adding this dead space has any merit beyond being "more accurate", especially considering how this will negatively affect future Blackmarsh content. Try adding Helstrom or the big lake at the heart of Blackmarsh to that map and you'll see what I mean. You've placed southern Shadowfen more or less on top of them.
Unless ESO redesigns its basegame zones, Stormhold has been moved further North and is there to stay. That's just the reality we've been dealt at this point.

In the same way the locations of Skyrim's cities were changed for TES V (see Markarth and Whiterun on the Arena map), Narsis hasn't been in a singleplayer game since Arena, so its relocation in ESO doesn't negate where Stormhold is supposed to be and where the Black Marsh-Morrowind border should be. One city was moved to a different location within the same province, one was moved into a different province with essentially a shoulder shrug on what Morrowind's border looks like. Moving Shadowfen is necessary to maintain lore accuracy as best as I can salvage it. Ultimately, the problem was ZOS' faulty design to begin with, not my interpretive redesign to try to make it as close to lore as I can.

As far as Helstrom is concerned, there's still plenty of space for it, since it's in different spots on every map, though it's usually roughly directly east of Gideon, which is wide open on my map. Why Shadowfen has a mountain range on the southern border is beyond me, since Black Marsh isn't supposed to be that mountainous, but that notwithstanding, it still works for the spacing the rest of the province has. It just might need to be a tad further south.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Aside from that, I like what you did to the Rift and Eastmarch. Even if my brain is starting to have trouble recognizing their shapes, it does appear to be more accurate this way. Also am I seeing that right, that you have compressed the Rift? Was it not to scale? Eitherway, I like how the Jerall mountain range now looks larger because of it. I was always bothered by how thin that area is shown to be ever since the Dark Brotherhood questline briefly took us there.

It's another failing from ZOS actually. The zones are scaled wrong in game and they don't even line up properly within the same game. So I ignored the worldspace scale to put the zone where it should be relative to notable landmarks like Riften and the Throat of the World.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Not sure why Solstheim was changed though. I guess it makes sense to take the outline of the Bloodmoon map since it's closer to our time period, but the old shape was clearly taking more after the Dragonborn shape, which I personally find more aesthetically pleasing to look at. So even if this is technically the more correct shape for our time, there was nothing wrong with the old one in my opinion. The way I see it, the Dragonborn design was meant as an update to the old Bloodmoon design, so I always saw it as a retcon to have always had the updated look. ESO certainly seems to have interpreted it that way. All the differences present in ESO's version compared to Dragonborn could be explained away with icebergs and glaciers looking different, which does tend to be the case even on shorter time scales and will probably cause changes to the Winterhold map as well once the official one eventually drops. I see Solstheim's current map as an "area of least concern" so to speak.

You are alone in that opinion. I talked to a variety of people on which solstheim coastline shape was better and all the replies I got back favored Blodmoon over Dragonborn. I also have that opinion. Dragonborn's coastline looked really weird. And no, the ESO one and the Dragonborn one are not similar, they're more different than ESO is to Bloodmoon's. Here's an example with all the maps including mine, which is a middle ground between all three of them.

as you can see, the shaping is more similar to Bloodmoon, although it doesn't really look a lot like either one. And as a side note, ESO's Solstheim is too big.

When doing everything on this map, there's always been a bit of interpretation on my end to fit all of these things together, and I've tried to find middle grounds for all of the different interpretations of Tamriel over the years.

Vylaera

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

Ratzkifal

BroughBreaux wrote: »

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

I wrote a very long reply trying to explain the exact locations of things using relative locations only to see you making new maps of exactly what I'm talking about... Oh well.

Your overlay highlights the problem very well. Your reference for placing that lake is the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border, which is the parts you aligned. My point of reference is the inlet east of Murkmire, since that is causally connected to that lake, so that is obviously the part that must align when trying to determine the lake's location. Align those and you will have to push the whole overlay-thing both up and to the right, causing Stormhold to shift into what you think should be Morrowind.
Let's take a second point of reference - Gideon's relative position to Helstrom. In every map, from Arena to the Anthology map, Helstrom is located north-east (not east-north-east, north-east!) from Gideon. We can see Gideon on the Blackwood map quite clearly. Your location put Helstrom straight east of Gideon and the right direction, north-east, only has Shadowfen there. If Shadowfen was further north, like the inlet as a reference suggests, then there would be enough room for a city to be north-east of Gideon without being inside Shadowfen yet. Also moving that overlay up and to the right would not move Gideon outside of Blackmarsh's borders yet either, so it could be argued that the overlay aligns better with the map than you gave it credit for. You'd even have enough space to walk in circles around that lake and the mountains north of it.

This is why I am having so much of an issue with your suggestion. It all works out perfectly already and there is no need to fix anything as long as we accept that the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border has changed. And why wouldn't we? Narsis is certainly not going to move back to where it was just because we moved some zones around. It's trapped in Deshaan and will stay there unless we get some massive retcon that it never was Narsis to begin with (which i doubt will happen).
So a big empty chunk of extra Morrowind with nothing in it just for the sake of "accuracy" even though it's never going to be accurate without Narsis anyway while making other parts of the world less accurate for it?
And looking at the chapter zone in your proposal really doesn't bother you at all? Turning the entirety of the center of Blackmarsh into a zone roughly the size of a regular base game zone and then still blocking the entire middle of it with that huge lake, the mountains north of it shown in the anthology map and the river at the bottom being probably the only passible terrain there? Of course I am hoping there is something on that lake, but my guess is this is that chapter's Red Mountain or Eton Nir, just something to take up as much space as possible. If you moved the overlay the way I described and kept Shadowfen where it was, you could have a Blackwood-sized zone solely in the center of Blackmarsh to fully concentrate on the heart of Argonia and then still put a DLC on the east coast, which I think would be a smart thing to do. There just isn't that sort of space with what you have in mind.
Something I said in my first draft before I saw your second message was, it doesn't matter what the shape the border has as long as nothing crosses it. I don't see it as Stormhold crossing the border, because it also makes sense to be closer to Morrowind. Tear has been described as swampy due to its proximity to Blackmarsh and if Stormhold is on the same latitude as Tear, then it makes perfect sense to be that way. The formation story of the Ebonheart Pact is wild as it is. Moving Stormhold further south just makes it even more silly as the Argonian warriors would have went unnoticed for even longer when they could instead just enter Morrowind and almost be in Stonefalls at exactly the location they needed to be if they just cross Deshaan. Not to mention that being close to Blackmarsh is probably seen as a convenience for the Dunmer of Mournhold as it means that slaves are easily replaced. And it's not like the border to Blackmarsh is dangerous for the Dunmer when they are the ones making it unsafe.
Just as Markarth and Narsis have moved, so has the Morrowind border. Nothing has crossed it so no relevant information has been invalidated. We have never seen these areas before ESO. Now we have. This is how things are now until ZOS eventually reworks the base game zones after the rest of Tamriel has been filled in. That would be the right time to bring this issue up again, because unless you can go back to remove Narsis from Deshaan, there is nothing that needs to be done here.

Supreme_Atromancer

Fantastic work, @BroughBreaux , looking amazing.

Also, keep it going guys, this is good discussion!

phantasmalD

I'll always upvote map-fixing threads, I hope one day the devs will address some of these glaring issues.

BroughBreaux wrote: »

So without further ado, here it is:

Man, just adding Niben river to the map alone is such a huge improvement, makes it look 10 times better.

On the topic of Stormhold: My personal headcanon for years have been that the city that's called Stormhold in ESO is not the same city that's called Stormhold in Arena. Rather this area gets (re)conquered by the Dunmer after the EP falls apart, pushing the border down to the Hatching Pools/Weeping Wamasu Falls. And it remains that way until the 4th era, when argonians invade Morrowind.
So in that scenario Stormhold could have been reallocated to where White Rose Prison is. Or Arx Corinium or Hissmir could have been renamed.

There isn't much lore supporting this, but there isn't much Black Marsh lore, period. The main supporting facts is that on the Arena map, Stormhold was directly west from Alten Corimont and Thorn, while in ESO it's North-west from both. Furthermore, all 3 cities are near the border, while currently Alten Corimont is fairly deep in Black Marsh. (Also, I might be making things up, but i seem to remember there being dialogue about how in ESO Stormhold was a fairly recent addition to Black Marsh, a sort of peace gift to the argonians. Or it was liberated or something, but again, I might be remembering wrong.)

It's a fairly shaky reasoning, as the Arena maps are not exactly canon anymore. However, I think creating lore about the reallocation of Stormhold would be a far better solution than moving the entirety of Shadowfen south.

JobooAGS

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

I wrote a very long reply trying to explain the exact locations of things using relative locations only to see you making new maps of exactly what I'm talking about... Oh well.

Your overlay highlights the problem very well. Your reference for placing that lake is the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border, which is the parts you aligned. My point of reference is the inlet east of Murkmire, since that is causally connected to that lake, so that is obviously the part that must align when trying to determine the lake's location. Align those and you will have to push the whole overlay-thing both up and to the right, causing Stormhold to shift into what you think should be Morrowind.
Let's take a second point of reference - Gideon's relative position to Helstrom. In every map, from Arena to the Anthology map, Helstrom is located north-east (not east-north-east, north-east!) from Gideon. We can see Gideon on the Blackwood map quite clearly. Your location put Helstrom straight east of Gideon and the right direction, north-east, only has Shadowfen there. If Shadowfen was further north, like the inlet as a reference suggests, then there would be enough room for a city to be north-east of Gideon without being inside Shadowfen yet. Also moving that overlay up and to the right would not move Gideon outside of Blackmarsh's borders yet either, so it could be argued that the overlay aligns better with the map than you gave it credit for. You'd even have enough space to walk in circles around that lake and the mountains north of it.

This is why I am having so much of an issue with your suggestion. It all works out perfectly already and there is no need to fix anything as long as we accept that the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border has changed. And why wouldn't we? Narsis is certainly not going to move back to where it was just because we moved some zones around. It's trapped in Deshaan and will stay there unless we get some massive retcon that it never was Narsis to begin with (which i doubt will happen).
So a big empty chunk of extra Morrowind with nothing in it just for the sake of "accuracy" even though it's never going to be accurate without Narsis anyway while making other parts of the world less accurate for it?
And looking at the chapter zone in your proposal really doesn't bother you at all? Turning the entirety of the center of Blackmarsh into a zone roughly the size of a regular base game zone and then still blocking the entire middle of it with that huge lake, the mountains north of it shown in the anthology map and the river at the bottom being probably the only passible terrain there? Of course I am hoping there is something on that lake, but my guess is this is that chapter's Red Mountain or Eton Nir, just something to take up as much space as possible. If you moved the overlay the way I described and kept Shadowfen where it was, you could have a Blackwood-sized zone solely in the center of Blackmarsh to fully concentrate on the heart of Argonia and then still put a DLC on the east coast, which I think would be a smart thing to do. There just isn't that sort of space with what you have in mind.
Something I said in my first draft before I saw your second message was, it doesn't matter what the shape the border has as long as nothing crosses it. I don't see it as Stormhold crossing the border, because it also makes sense to be closer to Morrowind. Tear has been described as swampy due to its proximity to Blackmarsh and if Stormhold is on the same latitude as Tear, then it makes perfect sense to be that way. The formation story of the Ebonheart Pact is wild as it is. Moving Stormhold further south just makes it even more silly as the Argonian warriors would have went unnoticed for even longer when they could instead just enter Morrowind and almost be in Stonefalls at exactly the location they needed to be if they just cross Deshaan. Not to mention that being close to Blackmarsh is probably seen as a convenience for the Dunmer of Mournhold as it means that slaves are easily replaced. And it's not like the border to Blackmarsh is dangerous for the Dunmer when they are the ones making it unsafe.
Just as Markarth and Narsis have moved, so has the Morrowind border. Nothing has crossed it so no relevant information has been invalidated. We have never seen these areas before ESO. Now we have. This is how things are now until ZOS eventually reworks the base game zones after the rest of Tamriel has been filled in. That would be the right time to bring this issue up again, because unless you can go back to remove Narsis from Deshaan, there is nothing that needs to be done here.

The problem is that stormhold is literally south of tear, which is a problem of its own im the original map. Zos clearly messed up somewhere

Ratzkifal

JobooAGS wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

I wrote a very long reply trying to explain the exact locations of things using relative locations only to see you making new maps of exactly what I'm talking about... Oh well.

Your overlay highlights the problem very well. Your reference for placing that lake is the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border, which is the parts you aligned. My point of reference is the inlet east of Murkmire, since that is causally connected to that lake, so that is obviously the part that must align when trying to determine the lake's location. Align those and you will have to push the whole overlay-thing both up and to the right, causing Stormhold to shift into what you think should be Morrowind.
Let's take a second point of reference - Gideon's relative position to Helstrom. In every map, from Arena to the Anthology map, Helstrom is located north-east (not east-north-east, north-east!) from Gideon. We can see Gideon on the Blackwood map quite clearly. Your location put Helstrom straight east of Gideon and the right direction, north-east, only has Shadowfen there. If Shadowfen was further north, like the inlet as a reference suggests, then there would be enough room for a city to be north-east of Gideon without being inside Shadowfen yet. Also moving that overlay up and to the right would not move Gideon outside of Blackmarsh's borders yet either, so it could be argued that the overlay aligns better with the map than you gave it credit for. You'd even have enough space to walk in circles around that lake and the mountains north of it.

This is why I am having so much of an issue with your suggestion. It all works out perfectly already and there is no need to fix anything as long as we accept that the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border has changed. And why wouldn't we? Narsis is certainly not going to move back to where it was just because we moved some zones around. It's trapped in Deshaan and will stay there unless we get some massive retcon that it never was Narsis to begin with (which i doubt will happen).
So a big empty chunk of extra Morrowind with nothing in it just for the sake of "accuracy" even though it's never going to be accurate without Narsis anyway while making other parts of the world less accurate for it?
And looking at the chapter zone in your proposal really doesn't bother you at all? Turning the entirety of the center of Blackmarsh into a zone roughly the size of a regular base game zone and then still blocking the entire middle of it with that huge lake, the mountains north of it shown in the anthology map and the river at the bottom being probably the only passible terrain there? Of course I am hoping there is something on that lake, but my guess is this is that chapter's Red Mountain or Eton Nir, just something to take up as much space as possible. If you moved the overlay the way I described and kept Shadowfen where it was, you could have a Blackwood-sized zone solely in the center of Blackmarsh to fully concentrate on the heart of Argonia and then still put a DLC on the east coast, which I think would be a smart thing to do. There just isn't that sort of space with what you have in mind.
Something I said in my first draft before I saw your second message was, it doesn't matter what the shape the border has as long as nothing crosses it. I don't see it as Stormhold crossing the border, because it also makes sense to be closer to Morrowind. Tear has been described as swampy due to its proximity to Blackmarsh and if Stormhold is on the same latitude as Tear, then it makes perfect sense to be that way. The formation story of the Ebonheart Pact is wild as it is. Moving Stormhold further south just makes it even more silly as the Argonian warriors would have went unnoticed for even longer when they could instead just enter Morrowind and almost be in Stonefalls at exactly the location they needed to be if they just cross Deshaan. Not to mention that being close to Blackmarsh is probably seen as a convenience for the Dunmer of Mournhold as it means that slaves are easily replaced. And it's not like the border to Blackmarsh is dangerous for the Dunmer when they are the ones making it unsafe.
Just as Markarth and Narsis have moved, so has the Morrowind border. Nothing has crossed it so no relevant information has been invalidated. We have never seen these areas before ESO. Now we have. This is how things are now until ZOS eventually reworks the base game zones after the rest of Tamriel has been filled in. That would be the right time to bring this issue up again, because unless you can go back to remove Narsis from Deshaan, there is nothing that needs to be done here.

The problem is that stormhold is literally south of tear, which is a problem of its own im the original map. Zos clearly messed up somewhere

Oh, believe me, I understand the problem. I just don't see how the location of Stormhold is any priority anymore when fixing it would requite the relocation of several cities just to make it work with the older maps.
Also, I'm just gonna assume when you say "south of Tear" you mean "west-south-west of Tear", because the city that's more or less straight south from Tear is Thorn, not Stormhold.

JobooAGS

Ratzkifal wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

I wrote a very long reply trying to explain the exact locations of things using relative locations only to see you making new maps of exactly what I'm talking about... Oh well.

Your overlay highlights the problem very well. Your reference for placing that lake is the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border, which is the parts you aligned. My point of reference is the inlet east of Murkmire, since that is causally connected to that lake, so that is obviously the part that must align when trying to determine the lake's location. Align those and you will have to push the whole overlay-thing both up and to the right, causing Stormhold to shift into what you think should be Morrowind.
Let's take a second point of reference - Gideon's relative position to Helstrom. In every map, from Arena to the Anthology map, Helstrom is located north-east (not east-north-east, north-east!) from Gideon. We can see Gideon on the Blackwood map quite clearly. Your location put Helstrom straight east of Gideon and the right direction, north-east, only has Shadowfen there. If Shadowfen was further north, like the inlet as a reference suggests, then there would be enough room for a city to be north-east of Gideon without being inside Shadowfen yet. Also moving that overlay up and to the right would not move Gideon outside of Blackmarsh's borders yet either, so it could be argued that the overlay aligns better with the map than you gave it credit for. You'd even have enough space to walk in circles around that lake and the mountains north of it.

This is why I am having so much of an issue with your suggestion. It all works out perfectly already and there is no need to fix anything as long as we accept that the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border has changed. And why wouldn't we? Narsis is certainly not going to move back to where it was just because we moved some zones around. It's trapped in Deshaan and will stay there unless we get some massive retcon that it never was Narsis to begin with (which i doubt will happen).
So a big empty chunk of extra Morrowind with nothing in it just for the sake of "accuracy" even though it's never going to be accurate without Narsis anyway while making other parts of the world less accurate for it?
And looking at the chapter zone in your proposal really doesn't bother you at all? Turning the entirety of the center of Blackmarsh into a zone roughly the size of a regular base game zone and then still blocking the entire middle of it with that huge lake, the mountains north of it shown in the anthology map and the river at the bottom being probably the only passible terrain there? Of course I am hoping there is something on that lake, but my guess is this is that chapter's Red Mountain or Eton Nir, just something to take up as much space as possible. If you moved the overlay the way I described and kept Shadowfen where it was, you could have a Blackwood-sized zone solely in the center of Blackmarsh to fully concentrate on the heart of Argonia and then still put a DLC on the east coast, which I think would be a smart thing to do. There just isn't that sort of space with what you have in mind.
Something I said in my first draft before I saw your second message was, it doesn't matter what the shape the border has as long as nothing crosses it. I don't see it as Stormhold crossing the border, because it also makes sense to be closer to Morrowind. Tear has been described as swampy due to its proximity to Blackmarsh and if Stormhold is on the same latitude as Tear, then it makes perfect sense to be that way. The formation story of the Ebonheart Pact is wild as it is. Moving Stormhold further south just makes it even more silly as the Argonian warriors would have went unnoticed for even longer when they could instead just enter Morrowind and almost be in Stonefalls at exactly the location they needed to be if they just cross Deshaan. Not to mention that being close to Blackmarsh is probably seen as a convenience for the Dunmer of Mournhold as it means that slaves are easily replaced. And it's not like the border to Blackmarsh is dangerous for the Dunmer when they are the ones making it unsafe.
Just as Markarth and Narsis have moved, so has the Morrowind border. Nothing has crossed it so no relevant information has been invalidated. We have never seen these areas before ESO. Now we have. This is how things are now until ZOS eventually reworks the base game zones after the rest of Tamriel has been filled in. That would be the right time to bring this issue up again, because unless you can go back to remove Narsis from Deshaan, there is nothing that needs to be done here.

The problem is that stormhold is literally south of tear, which is a problem of its own im the original map. Zos clearly messed up somewhere

Oh, believe me, I understand the problem. I just don't see how the location of Stormhold is any priority anymore when fixing it would requite the relocation of several cities just to make it work with the older maps.
Also, I'm just gonna assume when you say "south of Tear" you mean "west-south-west of Tear", because the city that's more or less straight south from Tear is Thorn, not Stormhold.

yeah that is what I meant, west-southwest. The whole zos map needs some revamping because it is a bit annoying that stormhold is in what we know as morrowind on the map rather than blackmarsh where it belongs or rather, that and the fact that blackmarsh extends into parts of morrowind.

Edit. If we take shadowfen in a vaccum, stormhold is where it should be. But if we take shadowfen on a map, it is too far north. But moving it may cause other complications (thanks zos)

Ratzkifal

phantasmalD wrote: »

I'll always upvote map-fixing threads, I hope one day the devs will address some of these glaring issues.

BroughBreaux wrote: »

So without further ado, here it is:

Man, just adding Niben river to the map alone is such a huge improvement, makes it look 10 times better.

On the topic of Stormhold: My personal headcanon for years have been that the city that's called Stormhold in ESO is not the same city that's called Stormhold in Arena. Rather this area gets (re)conquered by the Dunmer after the EP falls apart, pushing the border down to the Hatching Pools/Weeping Wamasu Falls. And it remains that way until the 4th era, when argonians invade Morrowind.
So in that scenario Stormhold could have been reallocated to where White Rose Prison is. Or Arx Corinium or Hissmir could have been renamed.

There isn't much lore supporting this, but there isn't much Black Marsh lore, period. The main supporting facts is that on the Arena map, Stormhold was directly west from Alten Corimont and Thorn, while in ESO it's North-west from both. Furthermore, all 3 cities are near the border, while currently Alten Corimont is fairly deep in Black Marsh. (Also, I might be making things up, but i seem to remember there being dialogue about how in ESO Stormhold was a fairly recent addition to Black Marsh, a sort of peace gift to the argonians. Or it was liberated or something, but again, I might be remembering wrong.)

It's a fairly shaky reasoning, as the Arena maps are not exactly canon anymore. However, I think creating lore about the reallocation of Stormhold would be a far better solution than moving the entirety of Shadowfen south.

I like that headcanon and I agree that making new lore is far easier to justify to the devs than having them redo the whole thing. It's what they did with (Old) Ebonheart too.
Yes, you are also right on Stormhold being a Dunmer city until very recently as can be seen by the architecture there being mainly Dunmeri still. The lack of lore on Blackmarsh is exactly why I think trying to fix this now after Deshaan has already been done is a problem. I'd rather compromise in the existing zones and accept that Narsis was moved and Morrowind made smaller than reducing potential area in future zones.

Elsonso

phantasmalD wrote: »

It's a fairly shaky reasoning, as the Arena maps are not exactly canon anymore. However, I think creating lore about the reallocation of Stormhold would be a far better solution than moving the entirety of Shadowfen south.

It is reasonable to make the story of how Stormhold was relocated if you want it to be somewhere else. If you don't like where it is, you pretty much have to come up with something because the current ESO layout is Tamriel during the Second Era. We know that 2nd Era Deshaan and Shadowfen touch because we can go look and see that they touch, and we know where Stormhold is within Shadowfen because we can go there. The Deshaan-Shadowfen border is one of the borders with no ambiguities. That supersedes all maps and paper lore for this Era.

tomofhyrule

I did prefer the Deshaan-Shadowfen border to be touching.

The Rift/Stonefalls border not touching does make in-game sense. Both zones only 'touch' due to a mountain pass, so we don't know precisely what's going on there. We also know that Trolhetta is somewhere in the mountains south of the Rift (and based on the architecture and flora, it definitely feels more Morrowind than Skyrim), and the the Blessed Crucible is also in that same mountain pass (and we get a quick view of that if you walk past the final boss and head out that way).

It's sensible that there's some unsaid mountain pass through the Velothis that's not shown in-game. I can buy it.

However, most of the Shadowfen/Deshaan border is a wall, which we can clearly see in game running around Hlanii's Hovel and has elements all the way to Muth Gnaar. These same elements are seen in Shadowfen from the Shrine of the Black Maw to the passage. Even the in-game maps overlay the river almost perfectly.

Sure, it makes Morrowind have a very shallow land border there, but Deshaan/Shadowfen touching makes sense. If anything, I'd say that Stonefalls/Deshaan has some unsaid mountains in the center rather than Deshaan/Shadowfen has a wall a few miles thick.

EDIT:

JobooAGS wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

JobooAGS wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

More on Shadowfen:

We know that Helstrom is usually located northwest of that lake, I'd imagine probably right on that river that leads into it for trade reasons, so as you can see here, there's plenty of space for Hesltrom to be sitting on top of that river.

And to reiterate, ESO's map is barely salvageable, and nothing lines up with anything. But this works, so I'm going with it. This border overlay is the same one from my old thread which is lined up as best as I can get it relative to the rest of Tamriel. If I were to add that lake in my map, it would actually fit even better and there'd be even more room for Helstrom to be on it.

It would look something like this:

For navigation here, there's wayshrines as always, and I'm sure there'd be a bridge on the southern half over the river, and you could navigate north of Helstrom and through Helstrom itself to get to the other side.

I wrote a very long reply trying to explain the exact locations of things using relative locations only to see you making new maps of exactly what I'm talking about... Oh well.

Your overlay highlights the problem very well. Your reference for placing that lake is the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border, which is the parts you aligned. My point of reference is the inlet east of Murkmire, since that is causally connected to that lake, so that is obviously the part that must align when trying to determine the lake's location. Align those and you will have to push the whole overlay-thing both up and to the right, causing Stormhold to shift into what you think should be Morrowind.
Let's take a second point of reference - Gideon's relative position to Helstrom. In every map, from Arena to the Anthology map, Helstrom is located north-east (not east-north-east, north-east!) from Gideon. We can see Gideon on the Blackwood map quite clearly. Your location put Helstrom straight east of Gideon and the right direction, north-east, only has Shadowfen there. If Shadowfen was further north, like the inlet as a reference suggests, then there would be enough room for a city to be north-east of Gideon without being inside Shadowfen yet. Also moving that overlay up and to the right would not move Gideon outside of Blackmarsh's borders yet either, so it could be argued that the overlay aligns better with the map than you gave it credit for. You'd even have enough space to walk in circles around that lake and the mountains north of it.

This is why I am having so much of an issue with your suggestion. It all works out perfectly already and there is no need to fix anything as long as we accept that the Blackmarsh-Morrowind border has changed. And why wouldn't we? Narsis is certainly not going to move back to where it was just because we moved some zones around. It's trapped in Deshaan and will stay there unless we get some massive retcon that it never was Narsis to begin with (which i doubt will happen).
So a big empty chunk of extra Morrowind with nothing in it just for the sake of "accuracy" even though it's never going to be accurate without Narsis anyway while making other parts of the world less accurate for it?
And looking at the chapter zone in your proposal really doesn't bother you at all? Turning the entirety of the center of Blackmarsh into a zone roughly the size of a regular base game zone and then still blocking the entire middle of it with that huge lake, the mountains north of it shown in the anthology map and the river at the bottom being probably the only passible terrain there? Of course I am hoping there is something on that lake, but my guess is this is that chapter's Red Mountain or Eton Nir, just something to take up as much space as possible. If you moved the overlay the way I described and kept Shadowfen where it was, you could have a Blackwood-sized zone solely in the center of Blackmarsh to fully concentrate on the heart of Argonia and then still put a DLC on the east coast, which I think would be a smart thing to do. There just isn't that sort of space with what you have in mind.
Something I said in my first draft before I saw your second message was, it doesn't matter what the shape the border has as long as nothing crosses it. I don't see it as Stormhold crossing the border, because it also makes sense to be closer to Morrowind. Tear has been described as swampy due to its proximity to Blackmarsh and if Stormhold is on the same latitude as Tear, then it makes perfect sense to be that way. The formation story of the Ebonheart Pact is wild as it is. Moving Stormhold further south just makes it even more silly as the Argonian warriors would have went unnoticed for even longer when they could instead just enter Morrowind and almost be in Stonefalls at exactly the location they needed to be if they just cross Deshaan. Not to mention that being close to Blackmarsh is probably seen as a convenience for the Dunmer of Mournhold as it means that slaves are easily replaced. And it's not like the border to Blackmarsh is dangerous for the Dunmer when they are the ones making it unsafe.
Just as Markarth and Narsis have moved, so has the Morrowind border. Nothing has crossed it so no relevant information has been invalidated. We have never seen these areas before ESO. Now we have. This is how things are now until ZOS eventually reworks the base game zones after the rest of Tamriel has been filled in. That would be the right time to bring this issue up again, because unless you can go back to remove Narsis from Deshaan, there is nothing that needs to be done here.

The problem is that stormhold is literally south of tear, which is a problem of its own im the original map. Zos clearly messed up somewhere

Oh, believe me, I understand the problem. I just don't see how the location of Stormhold is any priority anymore when fixing it would requite the relocation of several cities just to make it work with the older maps.
Also, I'm just gonna assume when you say "south of Tear" you mean "west-south-west of Tear", because the city that's more or less straight south from Tear is Thorn, not Stormhold.

yeah that is what I meant, west-southwest. The whole zos map needs some revamping because it is a bit annoying that stormhold is in what we know as morrowind on the map rather than blackmarsh where it belongs or rather, that and the fact that blackmarsh extends into parts of morrowind.

Edit. If we take shadowfen in a vaccum, stormhold is where it should be. But if we take shadowfen on a map, it is too far north. But moving it may cause other complications (thanks zos)

Considering there are some zones that cover multiple provinces (Bangkorai is High Rock/Hammerfell, Reaper's March is Valenwood/Elsweyr, Blackwood is Cyrodiil/Balck Marsh), I'm not seeing a problem with Shadowfen as we have in ESO actually being modern day southern Morrowind/northern Black Marsh. Especially if we're considering Stormhold could move a la Orsinium (being constantly sacked and rebuilt will do that), it may also fix some other issues.

Based on the Arena map (which is outdated and has been changed by other TES games anyway), Alten Corimont should be in the north of Black Marsh, not in the center. That still leaves the potential for Helstrom south of the Percolating Mire

Ratzkifal

Elsonso wrote: »

phantasmalD wrote: »

It's a fairly shaky reasoning, as the Arena maps are not exactly canon anymore. However, I think creating lore about the reallocation of Stormhold would be a far better solution than moving the entirety of Shadowfen south.

It is reasonable to make the story of how Stormhold was relocated if you want it to be somewhere else. If you don't like where it is, you pretty much have to come up with something because the current ESO layout is Tamriel during the Second Era. We know that 2nd Era Deshaan and Shadowfen touch because we can go look and see that they touch, and we know where Stormhold is within Shadowfen because we can go there. The Deshaan-Shadowfen border is one of the borders with no ambiguities. That supersedes all maps and paper lore for this Era.

@Elsonso The premise of the thread is more or less that bad maps cause bad content to be made so the map needs to be fixed first. The reason I am explaining that is because of the situation of Eastmarch, the Rift and Stonefalls. Eastmarch and the Rift are intimately connected with no ambiguities (thanks for TES5) so moving one means moving the other. ESO shows us that the Rift and Stonefalls are touching as evidenced by the path from the Rift leading to Morrowind as well as the Blessed Crucible taking us from the Rift straight to Stonefalls. The issue there is that Eastmarch's location is wrong. It was placed on top of the city of Blacklight and doesn't connect well to Winterhold at all. That means in order to move Eastmarch to the right location, the Rift and Stonefalls need to be separated despite everything we've been shown. It just has to be done. There is no way around it other than retconning the land Blacklight, the capital of Morrowind in the 4th era, is located on from ever existing in the first place. I don't consider that an option.
This is an example for how bad maps have made bad content that is potentially blocking salvagable future content (Blacklight and the Redoran coast). Following that reasoning the Stormhold situation cannot be solved by just looking at Deshaan and Shadowfen ingame, because it could just be another situation like in Stonefalls. Now if ZOS had ignored Narsis, then I would argue that is very much the same situation, but since ZOS added Narsis, underwhelming as it was, there is no Dunmer content being left out here and assuming the border just curves now instead of having moved north everywhere it also doesn't affect future House Dres content either.
Moving Stormhold south however, due to the sheer size of Shadowfen and Stormhold being fixed to its location in Shadowfen, cuts deep into future Argonian content to the point where traversing that Argonian chapter at the heart of Blackmarsh would be a lot less fun with that huge lake cutting the entire zone in two instead of a donut shaped zone around the lake.
That is the reason that it cannot be moved. That the zones show to be touching just adds on top of that but that cannot be the only justification.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

BroughBreaux wrote: »

Remember that Tamriel's actual lore scale is about the same size as continental Europe is in real life,.

No it's not. The lore about Tamriel's size is extremely vague with contradicting and varying references everywhere. We have no clue how big Tamriel actually is besides that it's much larger than it appears in games.

Vylaera

Instead of making a dozen different replies to specific sentences, I'll just write a full reply to everything.

Making new lore (retconning old lore) for Stormhold to make it in Morrowind, which was gifted to the Argonians when they joined the Pact, giving an historical pretense to the Accession War in the 4th era, sounds great, but what you're all forgetting is House Dres, one of the Great Houses of Morrowind, which has its territory where north Shadowfen is currently on the ESO map.

If we keep Shadowfen where it is now, this ignores House Dres, which produces the food for the entire rest of the province, which in-lore would equal millions of mouths to feed. Somehow Dres does this with one farmstead south of Mournhold, which is Indoril Territory and not Dres? No. We know that Dres controls all of Southern Morrowind from the Padomaic Ocean to Cyrodiil's border. They use most of this territory for plantations which grow crops which are then shipped all over Morrowind.

It doesn't make any sense for Dres to be narrowed down to a single farmstead and an unknown amount of farms on the small peninsula east of Shadowfen which hasn't been given a DLC/Chapter yet.

Another thing you've not considered is that that space south of Deshaan wouldn't be vacant space like you claim it would. Take a look at a map of Skyrim and it appears there's a ton of vacant space between Whiterun and Markarth, but in reality (or I guess in universe) there isn't. That allegedly vacant space includes Rorikstead and its farms, which is an integral part of what makes Whiterun the breadbasket of Skyrim. There's also Giant camps and forts/caves/misc POI to the east of Rorikstead, and Reachman/Forsworn camps and forts/POI west of Rorikstead. South of Deshaan, there would be a multitude of settlements that act in the same way Rorikstead does, which is to provide food for the whole province. And this is speculative on my part, but I don't believe Morrowind is involved in trans-Tamrielic trade like Imperial influenced provinces are. Morrowind has to be self sufficient as best as it can be.

Furthermore, Dres being so geographically vulnerable that a small force of lizards could cut them off from the rest of Morrowind is just bad world building, And since we know that hasn't happened, the lizards are either inept, or ZOS got the map wrong, and we all know that ZOS got the map wrong basically everywhere else, so it's far more likely the the latter of the two options is true. Here's an image of what an Argonian blockade would look like to cut off food from all of Morrowind. This is, frankly, ridiculous. (credit to Highly Detailed World Map for the map section). I will note in passing that Mournhold is the current Capitol of Morrowind because that bit of information is highly relevant to this topic.

This is to demonstrate that there's more thought on my part than simply "Stormhold shouldn't be here so I'm moving Shadowfen."

Also it's worth noting that my primary goal with this redesign was lore accuracy, not to facilitate future content releases. Future content being affected was a secondary issue. I'm more concerned with lore accuracy. Future content is of course a concern and I have made changes to the map for that explicit purpose, but it's not my primary goal.

Additionally, who's to say that that "lake" south of Helstrom isn't swampland with shallow traversable waters like what most of Shadowfen is? There's a lake on both the PEG3 and Anthology map where Murkmire is in ESO and that lake was transformed into wetland, so there's already an in-game precedent to do that with the Helstrom lake. In any case, you could make the lake smaller like what it is on the PGE3 map. I used the Anthology map because that's the one I prefer. Also, this is an adjacent point, but have you played the Blackwood main quest without using wayshrines? I have, and Blackwood lake is a giant pain in the behind when you get to the part of the questline where you have to travel to the cave in the northeast section of blackwood searching for the [antagonist] (bracketed for spoilers). This is to say that giant annoying-to-traverse lakes aren't unheard of in ESO

Also, Helstrom is accurately placed on my mockup map. You've misremembered where it's located. I checked both maps before making that mockup to verify I was correct. Every map has Helstrom East-Northeast of Gideon. And to reiterate, Helstrom hasn't been in a game since Arena, it can be moved a tad bit further south if they need to. Like in my mockup, I'd put it on that lake for trade purposes if I were designing the zone.


and one final thing to say. I seriously doubt ZOS will actually redo the base game zones despite saying they would. I just really don't. You see how they handle the rest of the game. I'd love to be proven wrong though. So I'm going to make them as accurate as I can under the assumption that they're not going to be changed in the future.

Vylaera

I'll make a new comment here to amend a mistake made. Dres doesn't own all the land between the Padomaic Ocean and Cyrodiil's border. Hlaalu controls the section of Morrowind along Cyrodiil's border, but Dres still controls most of the portion of Morrowind that Shadowfen was inaccurately placed on.

My points still stand.

Vylaera

This doesn't add any to the discussion but I thought I'd share these two additional maps I made tonight using my map as a base.

A political map of Tamriel with accurate province borders and major cities marked (the only city that didn't line up right was Arenthia because Reaper's March messed it up in game, so I moved it to where it should be on this map).


And my map with the province borders laid over as a replacement reference for the Anthology map overlay which didn't line up right

phantasmalD

BroughBreaux wrote: »

If we keep Shadowfen where it is now, this ignores House Dres, which produces the food for the entire rest of the province, which in-lore would equal millions of mouths to feed. Somehow Dres does this with one farmstead south of Mournhold, which is Indoril Territory and not Dres? No. We know that Dres controls all of Southern Morrowind from the Padomaic Ocean to Cyrodiil's border. They use most of this territory for plantations which grow crops which are then shipped all over Morrowind.

It doesn't make any sense for Dres to be narrowed down to a single farmstead and an unknown amount of farms on the small peninsula east of Shadowfen which hasn't been given a DLC/Chapter yet.

House Dres controls a good portion of Stonefalls, Kragenmoor and Ebonheart + the surrounding fields. Several of the ruined settlements, like Senie, and currently argonian controlled territories, like Lukiul Uxith, could also be Dres territories. That goes for Deshaan as well.

Dres and Indoril territory being intertwinned is not surprising at all, the two houses are ancient allies, both of them being staunch traditionalists.

House Dres is also not the only breadwinner of Morrowind, House Hlaalu also has many plantations (mainly on Vvardenfell) and also exports goods from all over Tamriel.