Old and new Morrowind landmass map comparison with pictures

Vidarval · May 2017

Once the Morrowind expansion came out of closed beta I had a brainstorm to make some kind of a landmass map comparison of Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind and ESO Morrowind because I wanted to see how similar to the original Morrowind the terrain was and to be honest it is pretty much it. For the comparison I've used a high quality ESO Morrowind map datamined and put together by @Arko_Nam_La and a high resolution world map of ES III Morrowind.

So the red one is the old Morrowind map and the blue one is the ESO Morrowind map.

For the best result either download them or open the pictures in seperate tabs and switch them up quickly, you will notice the differences.

A few more notes:
I had to make a sharp contrast or the maps would blend together and red vs blue worked good enough to expose the differences.
I've used Sheogorad isles (the most northern isles) for the size match because they are almost copy/pasted from old Morrowind.
This is not a scale comparison, I don't really know how much larger/smaller the new map is or if they are even the same exact size. This is a landmass comparison and I wanted to see if islands and landmarks are similarly placed.

AzraelKrieg · May 2017

Slight differences but you can put that down to different cartography methods in the lore and a giant volcano.

dpencil1 · May 2017

There have been a few threads about this in the beta forum. Some people saying they're almost the same size, others saying that ESO's map, while true to the island topograpgy is massively scaled down.

One thing I found interesting I that, there's a side by side comparison video of a guy walking from Sayda Neen to Vivec in both ESIII and ESO, and at one point the character crosses the same bridge. It takes both characters exactly 25 steps to cross that bridge. Make of that what you will.

Vidarval · May 2017

Yea

dpencil1 wrote: »

There have been a few threads about this in the beta forum. Some people saying they're almost the same size, others saying that ESO's map, while true to the island topograpgy is massively scaled down.

One thing I found interesting I that, there's a side by side comparison video of a guy walking from Sayda Neen to Vivec in both ESIII and ESO, and at one point the character crosses the same bridge. It takes both characters exactly 25 steps to cross that bridge. Make of that what you will.

Yea but then you would have to consider different animations for walking or different movement speed since in morrowind there is no all around average movement speed, it depends of athletics skill and speed attribute and how much stuff you carry. All in all it is not that big of a difference if it is not really noticeable.

The important thing, for me at least, is that there is enough stuff to explore and that there are recognizable landmarks.

StormWylf · May 2017

@Vidarval Nice job posting the maps!

davey1107 · May 2017

What you did is basically how they built it, which was discussed on an ESO Live. They ported in the Morrowind map, then had to adjust scale and height and adapt it to the new engine, but the starting point was the actual game which is why they're so similar.

zaria · May 2017

Vidarval wrote: »

Yea

dpencil1 wrote: »

There have been a few threads about this in the beta forum. Some people saying they're almost the same size, others saying that ESO's map, while true to the island topograpgy is massively scaled down.

One thing I found interesting I that, there's a side by side comparison video of a guy walking from Sayda Neen to Vivec in both ESIII and ESO, and at one point the character crosses the same bridge. It takes both characters exactly 25 steps to cross that bridge. Make of that what you will.

Yea but then you would have to consider different animations for walking or different movement speed since in morrowind there is no all around average movement speed, it depends of athletics skill and speed attribute and how much stuff you carry. All in all it is not that big of a difference if it is not really noticeable.

The important thing, for me at least, is that there is enough stuff to explore and that there are recognizable landmarks.

Step length should still be the same, you can also compare step length with other stuff like character height. Use an average height character and messure how long steps are compared to height in both games.
Yes movement speed unless very buffed is lower in tes3 and no mounts.
The low visibility in TES3 also made the land feel larger.

Luthivar · May 2017

For the raw dimensions of the map, yes, it could be pretty much it. But you can't enter the large zones of Sheograth and the Red Mountain, you can't enter most of the deadric and dwemer ruins, caves and ancestral tombs, there are no underwater zones and even the cities are way smaller with a huge amount of closed doors inside and outside the houses. For me, there is not much reason to compare Eso to Morrowind. With so many closed areas, Eso: Morrowind feels a bit unready. The mixture between detailed textures (like in Vivec or Balmora) and other blurry ones (the exterior of Telvanni Towers; the textures back in 2001 had more details) just underline that impression. It would have taken maybe another year to "finish" Eso: Morrowind (or just to make it comparable to Morrowind).
Sorry guys, I'm really a bit upset with this expansion. I didn't expect too much, but for my taste, they promised and self-cuddled too much in advance. As with the whole announcement article for the Morag Tong. Man, it's one single (and pretty short) quest line!

Vidarval · May 2017

StormWylf wrote: »

@Vidarval Nice job posting the maps!

Thanks! I had fun doing this. Separating land from the water took most of the time

Sakiri · May 2017

davey1107 wrote: »

What you did is basically how they built it, which was discussed on an ESO Live. They ported in the Morrowind map, then had to adjust scale and height and adapt it to the new engine, but the starting point was the actual game which is why they're so similar.

Didn't they do that exact same thing for Cyrodiil?

Vidarval · May 2017

Just to be clear, this isn't a scale comparison. I have no idea how much larger/smaller the new map is compared to the singleplayer Morrowind map. This is mostly a landmass comparison. When I did this I had to adjust the new map onto the old map so this would match and I used Sheogorad isles for the reference.

Phubarrh · May 2017

Yes, basically, movement speed in TES3 was much, much slower; I was afraid the island would feel shrunken when I heard the devs were porting the Morrowind map straight into the MMO. I didn't realize how disappointed I would be until I walked a minute east out of Seyda Neen, crossed a river, and found myself practically in Vivec City...that was something of an epic journey in the original game, but now it's barely a stroll.

Still looking forward to the Skywind mod for TES5, where I gather they're redoing the Vvardenfell map to make it feel as big as it did in the original game.

Vidarval · May 2017

I still wish we had the ability to explore Sheogorad isles and Dagon Fel. I got really annoyed when I started swimming through the water only to get munched from slaughterfish in mostly shallow water. Some buildings are teasing us from the distance.

newtinmpls · June 2017

Size wise....when I can walk from Seeyda Neen to Vivec in less than a minute.

I have to ask, did Morrowind get stuck in the dryer and shrunk?

Compared to the walk-to-wherever in TESIII it's tiny.

That is my one disappointment.

Pallmor · June 2017

Luthivar wrote: »

Sorry guys, I'm really a bit upset with this expansion. I didn't expect too much, but for my taste, they promised and self-cuddled too much in advance. As with the whole announcement article for the Morag Tong. Man, it's one single (and pretty short) quest line!

Yeah, content-wise, I would say it's smaller than the Orsinium DLC. Sure the map looks big. But the northern and eastern parts of it especially are very thin on actual content. With the exception of Balmora and Ald'ruhn, most cities and towns have maybe one or two simple quests that are of the pretty dull "go here and kill this person" or "go here and fetch that" variety. And there are very, very few random quests that you'll encounter outside of cities, towns, and delves. And most of the delves and dungeons are pretty small and basic, some laughably so.

And yeah, the Morag Tong questline was a huge letdown, after all their hype. I actually thought it was some side-mission to the main Morag Tong questline when I completed it. Later on I realized that that WAS the main Morag Tong questline.

And way too many missions that require sneaking. It's as bad as the Thieves Guild DLC on that front, only at least it made sense with that DLC.

Definitely not worth $40, or all the hype. It's a DLC, and not even the biggest or best one at that.

gchunt21 · June 2017

Enjoyable so far and fun to see some nods to Morrowind the game. I was immediately dissapointed in the physical scale. I get buildings and forts may not be built yet but I was able to run halfway across the map in maybe 10 minutes. That took hours in ES3. Friggin hours......
Balmora always felt like home, even way I played Telvanni or Redoran but the layout of the city seems far different. Granted who knows what transpires between timelines. The temple was a very wrong layout for sure. lol.