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Thriving Ghost Town: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' both plays this straight and cleverly hides it. Towns are nearly always too small, but cities have plenty of buildings. It's just that the developers didn't model the insides of a great many of those buildings and locked the doors shut. This has the added bonus of creating walls where the players aren't supposed to go, ''and'' giving Blizzard a place to add buildings -- Stormwind's Auction House, or the barber shops, for example, were originally just those empty shell-buildings.
** Those empty buildings make cities look bigger than they actually are, but they're still quite a bit smaller than the lore or storyline would suggest. A census by counting [[NPC|NPCs]] would suggest that the population of Stormwind - the largest human city in the world - is probably around one to two hundred people, eighty percent of whom are guards. A census by counting houses and extrapolating from there, even assuming medieval population density, would suggest that the population is probably around two to four thousand, maybe as much as 10,000. But [[All There in the Manual|according to the RPG sourcebook]], there are about 140,000 people in Stormwind.
** Blizzard have also improved on this in the later expansions. Vanilla towns tend to only contain quest givers and merchants whereas towns in BC and WOTLK contain tons of flavor characters, sometimes named, just to give the appearance of a populated town. Heading back from Northrend to the old world can make players very aware of this trope. Until, however, ''Cataclysm'' came out and upgraded the towns.
** It also becomes obvious when looking at towns used as quest hubs and towns used as killing fields. Southshore, for example, is nearly empty compared to the nearby Hillsbrad Fields and Dun Garok, both of which contain quest mobs for horde players.
** Highlighted by a particular quest late in ''Cataclysm''. By this point, you're pretty used to the idea that the population you see is only representative of those who are working in the background and who aren't present due to the [[Law of Conservation of Detail]]. Then you get a quest to kill 1000 gnomes, probably more than all of the gnomes who exist anywhere else in the world combined.
* ''[[Guild Wars]]'' Zig-zags this. A couple places that are implied to be capitals or important towns actually look really ''really'' small. (Lion's Arch in particular) However, many of them have backgrounds that the player can't really access. ''Factions'' is probably the biggest aversion ever - Kaineng City takes up ''half the continent''. While the Kurzick locations play this straight, it's actually a little more justified with the Luxon areas (Luxons are a bit more nomadic.)
== Real Time Strategy ==
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* ''[[Jays Journey]]'' mostly has houses with locked doors, but the only actual house (as opposed to shop) in one town belongs to the [[Ms. Fanservice]] playable character... the [[Unfortunate Implications]] of which are ''not'' [[Lampshade Hanging|left unremarked.]]
* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' averts this in a big way with teaming cities, not many different faces but lots of people.
* Averted in ''[[Bully (video game)|Bully]]'', which basically keeps all the action within one town.
* Zig-zagged in ''[[Dragon Age]]''. Denerim and Amaranthine are implied to be ''much'' larger than you acutally show. It also helps that Denerim is so big that it requires its own map screen, and you don't explore every inch of the city, only the parts that are relevant. Likewise, Orzrammar does not have a map screen like Denerim, but it's implied that the action is just that close together, plus it looks a bit like they might have been tiered. Justified with the Dalish "towns" because it's a nomadic camp. However played entirely straight with Redcliffe and Lothering.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Settings]]
[[Category:Role Playing Game]]▼
[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]
[[Category:Thriving Ghost Town]]
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