Guild Wars 2

This topic is about the globe of Tyria in the Chantry of Secrets, the associated map and how bad they are. But it is not about the (in)accuracy of the map (so no Frostgorge Sound, Isles of Janthir,… stuff).

So first of all, you can find the map and a picture of the globe here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyria_%28world%29

About the map: The first thing you should notice is, that the left side connects with the right side (obviously) but also the top connects with the bottom.
Here is the map with highlighted borders
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/93/tyria1.jpg!
and here it is translated
!http://imageshack.us/a/img827/5418/tyria2.jpg!
And on the model the top and bottom of the texture actually connect.
In a map, where the top and the bottom represent poles, this would not make sense.
Also if the top was a pole, then the entire top would have to be either land or water, because it all represents the same point, and not some parts water and some parts land. For comparison, look at a real world map.
You will later see, that the globe is too messed up for poles anyway…
In fact, a map with these properties dose not represent a sphere at all but a torus.
I know, that mapping textures to models is not exactly like charts in maths, but if you start like that, you can only fail!
But this chart of a torus gets forced onto a sphere (the globe in the chantry) and the result is pretty bad.
So to identify parts I translated the map a bit, so that no land mass is cut and colored some parts, so we get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img607/2835/tyria4.jpg!

Now we look at the globe. The first thing to notice are the blue lines and discs, wich we later need to identify places.

Lets start with this picture to highlight the problems with the globe
!http://imageshack.us/a/img834/3332/gw011gx.jpg!
In this picture you can see two islands which are on there twice. If you cannot see them, here they are highlighted
!http://imageshack.us/a/img248/8845/gw011h.jpg!.

But lets look at that at a bigger scale.
In this picture
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/2871/gw012h.jpg!
you can see Istan in red, below that Cantha and some other stuff, all colored like in the texture above. We especially see the top part of the texture at the bottom.
Now we go in the direction, the arrow points, and get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img11/5608/gw013hc.jpg!
Now we see the top part of the texture at the top and when we go down from there, we get, as it is in the texture, to Tyria, Elona and… Istan again. But we obviously did not go around the globe. You can especially see this on the blue lines and discs, which are fixed on the globe, but are obviously in other places in relation to Istan, so this is another copy of Istan on this globe.
In fact, there is at least a third copy of Istan (and Tyria) on that globe, as seen here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img703/2551/gw014h.jpg!
(again look at the blue stuff)

But there is more. Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.
Lets take a look at the picture of the globe from the wiki. There are some parts that look smoother than others, highlighted here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img42/2116/chantryofsecrets1.jpg!
On first glance, they also do not fit the texture.
So here is this picture colored in as above with the smooth parts left out
!http://imageshack.us/a/img842/6782/chantryofsecrets2.jpg!
You can also see Istan there twice.
But the smooth parts are actually on the texture too, and here they are colored
!http://imageshack.us/a/img850/1930/chantryofsecrets3.jpg!
But they seem different than the other parts and that is because the texture is scaled up and moved like this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img811/4251/tyria5.jpg!
Apparently the texture is overlayed on itself, moved and sacaled up, thus losing detail and gaining “smoothness”.
When both is colored, you can see the purple islands are rotated about 90° and scaled up and distorted a bit
!http://imageshack.us/a/img252/2803/chantryofsecrets4.jpg!

Now you could explain all this with magic, which creates copys of places all over the planet, or that this globe is not actually a globe at all, but some kind of other representation of the world.
But it seems more like someone had no idea, what they were doing, when they created this map and globe.
So are there any explanations lorewise, or are the map and globe simply useless?

I always assumed the globe was either:

1 – older than the recent changes to Tyria.
2 – modern art masquerading as something useful.

The top and bottom of the map connecting doesn’t make real-world sense, but is a fairly common thing to see in games. (ex: every Final Fantasy game ever with a free-travel world map)

Well, keep in mind that this is a texture, and not a printed world map unlike the standard real-world maps you get.

In other words, that “world map” has to stretch over the entire globe, and isn’t a flattened representation of it. So you shouldn’t look at the texture like a “real world map” – the poles can be literally anywhere on the map, especially since we don’t know where on the globe the texture’s ends go (and a square cannot properly cover a sphere).

“Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.”

That’s because there isn’t – I’m sure you noticed how there’s a full continent connected to Cantha via Shing Jea – making Shing Jea Island a landbridge to a non-existent continent. The in-game model of the globe is very poor and overlaps its own texture.

So yeah, I agree there are issues with it – it seems like Anet were making a flat texture to go atop a globe and messed up by making it a square.

The globe is, imo, useless, but the map may not be so.

As said before, this is not about the accuracy of the map (and thus not about which time it represents). It is more about the technical aspects of it, and how they do not fit.

Yes, many games create worlds, where the bottom and top also connect. The obvious reason for this is, that you get a flat (as in uncurved) world, which has no borders, when you do this. This is fine, if you do not represent the whole world as a sphere, but that is not what happened here.
Here we have a texture, that tiles in both directions and it does not make sense to create such a texture for a sphere.
And as I have pointed out, the texture actually repeats on the sphere, it is not just stretched above it.

And the point of
“Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.”
was to say, that actually, all parts of the globe, exept for the blue stuff, is on the texture. This texture is actually the texture used on the globe, you just have to look at it the right way.

I have heard the claim before, that there is some continent connectet to Cantha, but I have stared at that globe for a while, and I am unable to find this continent.
As I have said, several parts of the map are on the globe several times, so the question also is, which Cantha on the globe do you mean?
I was abel to match every part of the globe to a part of the texture, but I may not have seen the entier globe, so if you have a picure of the globe with something, that does not seem to be on the texture, please show it to me, so I can see, if I can match it to the texture.

But the map itself does not represent a spherical world, so under the assumption, that Tyria is spherical, the map is nonsense. The map clearly has the properties of a torus, and in dimension > 1 tori and spheres are not homeomorphic.

Best thread ever.

P.S. Sry for necrothreading, it was necessary.

I agree that this does deserve some more attention. Especially by the cartography freaks out there.

Totally agree, shameless bump

Can you elaborate on how it’s a torus not a sphere if it was shown on a globe in the Chantry of Secrets?

I think it was elaborated upon already.

When globes are placed out flat, the north and southern edges are to be curled into a fine point – the very top and bottom are, quite literally, a single place. As such, the entire top and the entire bottom is all one geological formation. However, the texture we have not only has land stopping along that northern and southern edge, but the top and bottom of the texture match – as do, as one would expect, the east and west sides.

In other words, the texture wouldn’t fit a globe. However, it would fit a torus shape.

Furthermore, as pointed out in the OP, the globe in the Chantry of Secrets doesn’t match the texture – and from my own observations, Cantha was misshapen, and as the OP shows, Elona is. And there’s even duplication, it seems from the images upon the globe.

In other words, that globe is “false” – and whether the texture for it the globe is or not is questioned.

Maybe the planet of Tyria IS a torus, and the Order of Whispers was just mistakenly putting the map on a globe!?

MIND BLOWN

DaMunky.6302:

Maybe the planet of Tyria IS a torus, and the Order of Whispers was just mistakenly putting the map on a globe!?

MIND BLOWN

Exactly my point. It might be something different too. Like flat but connected through the edges or other crazy things.
We don’t know for certain that Tyria is a globe, that’s just one possibility.

Ludovicus.7980:

It might be something different too. Like flat but connected through the edges

Haha, I like this theory. I like the idea of Tyrian space operating on Pacman logic.

Except torus shaped planets aren’t stable and couldn’t exist without collapsing into a spheric planet. To be totally accurate, it COULD be possibly stable but it would recquires the general radius (the one the planet would have if it were a sphere, which is the distance between the outer extremity and the inner center which is the center of mass btw) to be VERY much larger than the radius of the “donuts band” resulting in a circle-shaped planet which would have so few matter that it could barely be called a planet.

Or, it could be a magical intervention but that’s cheating, you can explain everything with magic. My guess is it is simply a traditional spherical planet and the map/sphere errors are an overlook from ArenaNet.

Im sure something in tyrian physics could explain a torus shaped planet being stable. We have floating rocks, so a torus shaped planet doesnt really seem like that far of a stretch.

Minos, you presume that the laws of the Guild Wars universe function the same as the real universe. For all we know, this thing called a “solar system” doesn’t exist in Tyria and the planetarium in The Upper City of DR is just a bunch of silly human thoughts that don’t reflect the world properly at all. Nothing really prevents Tyria from being some planet merely floating in the Mists.

Or maybe Tyria’s a “ring world” that is the ring of another larger world, and we just don’t see that world because it’s only viewable on the inside of the Tyrian Ring. o.O

If we assume the top and bottom dont connect, can you map it correctly to a sphere? Would be great if someone who does 3d Modelling could try this and see what it looks like. Obviously the texture would be distorted slighty, just like you distort a real world square map to fit a sphere.

http://i1-mac.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/Spherical-Texture-Mapping_1.png

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Minos, you presume that the laws of the Guild Wars universe function the same as the real universe. For all we know, this thing called a “solar system” doesn’t exist in Tyria and the planetarium in The Upper City of DR is just a bunch of silly human thoughts that don’t reflect the world properly at all. Nothing really prevents Tyria from being some planet merely floating in the Mists.

Or maybe Tyria’s a “ring world” that is the ring of another larger world, and we just don’t see that world because it’s only viewable on the inside of the Tyrian Ring. o.O

While I agree we can’t assume the laws are still the same, the fact my charr get the same shape than a pancake when he jumps off a cliff makes me think gravitanional force is still at work in Tyria (yeah I’m aware of floating stones in Asuran territory but they are probably the result of an intense magic activity from the past and cannot be erected as a common law for the whole planet).

About solar system, Tyria has a day/night cycle (indicating both the presence of a sun and the fact either Tyria, the sun or both are rotating) and a moon (which once again confirms that gravitational forces are more or less the same than the ones in our world) so the Upper City planetarium is probably more than human gibberings (and that comes from a Charr, believe me it wasn’t easy to spit it out^^).

Course it could be that the “flat earth” society was RIGHT after all!!———-and we’re just looking at the backside of the front side!!

One could simply say that Planet Tyria is engulfed in some magical barrier making the North and South connects, and the West and East as well.

Forget not that NCsoft also have other MMOs with magical planets like Aion. Planet Tyria was probably influenced by the idea behind Aion, at least for GW2. Then again, even during GW1, we could argue that they also had an influence from Richard “Lord British” Garriott and Starr “Lord Blackthorn” Long. The world of Ultima after Ultima 1 was centered only on Britannia, one of the four original continents of the planet originally known as “(Planet) Sosaria”.

For every Ultima release, there were changes in the world. In one release, all eight directions are connected. In another, they are not connected but a barrier is blocking. In yet another release, later releases, it was revealed that the continent of Britannia itself became a Planet on its own!

How’s that possible? Magic.

Planet Tyria couldn’t be any different especially since it is a world deeply influenced by magic as well. Just how much the world of Aion and the Ultima series were deeply rooted in magic too – side-by-side technology.

IMO, don’t try to explain the world of Tyria. It just is. If you actually live in their world, you wouldn’t even know the world is being messed up my magic. What with the North connecting South, West connecting East. They probably do not even know there are more lands beyond their “observable” world – or probably just pure water or interstellar space.

Just like how it is in the real-world, we only know the “observable” universe. There were even theories that what we are seeing West or North of interstellar space is the same as what we see in the East or South. A mirror. What we think as different galaxies are actually the same!

Although that theory is not popular since there is a lack of observable evidence – people tried to see if the galaxies were actually just mirrors but they did not match up – the theory was still not dismissed, why? Because we can only see as much.

But what if the theory is true? What we think as a huge universe is actually just small? The galaxies we see in one direction is just a mirror in another direction? Would we know it? Would we be able to explain it? What is beyond it? Could it be that we are being protected from whatever is beyond?

I think you all lack a basic understanding of how spheres work…

Also Shael NCSoft is the distributor, Arenanet is the developer. GW1 existed long before Aion, there is no influence… Aion exists on the interior of a sphere rather than the traditional exterior – it’s not dissimilar to a Dyson sphere so it’s hardly an original idea.
Tyria is a sphere and from what we can observe there isn’t anything particularly odd about it.