Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know which area is supposed to be the one between Timberline Falls and Sparkfly Fen? What there is in there?

And all that glacial area, Shiverpeak Mountains, are they cold because they are high (mountains) or is it a kind of planet’s pole? (I’m supposing that Tyria is a sphere like Earth, or it’s not?)

Might not pay to think too much about MMO geography. Bonus points if you can justify it all, but MMO worlds focus on giving a variety of environments without much cause for geographical study.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shiverpeak_Mountains

With soaring peaks reaching high into the sky (up over ten-thousand feet above sea level), the ice of the Shiverpeaks never melts, and it snows year round. Because the majority of the lakes and rivers in and around the mountains are frozen most of the time, conventional ships find it impossible to traverse them, though the dwarven sled ships and the kodan sanctuaries can pass over them with ease.

Winding passes, sluggish glaciers, frozen forests, frosted plains, and snow fallen hills make up the majority of the terrain between the mountain peaks, and life can be encountered anywhere.

I have a vague memory of reading (many years ago) that GW1 was praised for it’s geographical accuracy – in particular understanding that a cold, snowy area (Shiverpeaks) could exist at the same latitude as temperate (Ascalon) or even tropical (Maguuma/Kryta) regions because the altitude actually has a bigger effect.

I can’t remember where I saw that or who might have said it but it’s true. For a real life example see the Andes in South America, which, at the northern end of their range, run alongside the Amazon rainforest but have a very different climate including some places with year-round snow because they’re much higher above sea level.

We don’t actually know a huge amount about Tyrian geography on the large scale. But we do know that Guild Wars 1 has taken place entirely in the continent of Tyria, and that the area to the south and slightly to the west is Elona which is a lot hotter and drier. We also know that if you go north of the currently accessible area of Tyria it gets colder (and that was the case even before the Elder Dragons woke up and Jormag took over this area).

So the assumption is that Tyria is in the Northern Hemisphere and the equator is either in or just south of Elona. I’m not sure whether we know exactly where Cantha is in relation to those two, other than across the ‘Unending’ Ocean. I have a fan-made map which shows it far to the south but I’m not sure what that’s based on.