I know that this isn’t the first post online to deal with the size of Azeroth (World of Warcraft), but I believe my approach to the problem is unique insofar as I know. If this was a scientific publication, I believe I would call it:

Estimation of the Size of Azeroth, based on the extrapolation of known sizes of objects (and its implications).

So, basically I took the size of a Blood Elf which is relatively known (thanks to Wowwiki), and put that inside a moonwell.

After marking the size of a Blood Elf, we can use that information to develop a sort of constant for each picture, meters per pixel (written here as m / px). In the next step, I use the size of the moonwell from this picture on a minimap, which can be easily zoomed in and out of thanks to Map World of Warcraft. We can then reciprocate this process I’ve shown above as much as needed to get to the entire size of Azeroth. And I did.

Moonwell to Ashenvale

Ashenvale to the Barrens

Ashenvale-Barrens to northern Kalimdor

Northern Kalimdor to Azeroth!

This process has plenty of room for error, but the results generally match up with the consensus, and other methods also have lots of room for error, if not more.

So, as you can see from this Azeroth is tiny. Absolutely tiny! Naturally, I really think that this isn’t the size of Azeroth as it would be in ‘reality,’ and that Azeroth in World of Warcraft is just proportional, but it’s fun imaging the implications anyway. So here we go!

Obviously, if the entire map represented above was put onto a sphere and was all of Azeroth (even if you added Northrend), it wouldn’t be nearly enough to hold the Oceans to the surface, much less an atmosphere. So, Azeroth probably has a vast mass of oceans encircling the planet and the surface of Azeroth as we know it is only a small fraction of it. Another option is that Azeroth is really just tiny, and must have some sort of freaky super dense core. The former of the options is very simple, and more probable than the latter. However, the latter is cooler and therefore I will develop a hypothesis about it.

Probably the core would require so much mass to create the gravity needed to hold all this in, it would have to be composed of a heavy element like Plutonium or even a superheavy element on the theoretical “Island of Stability.” The gravity, however, probably isn’t as strong as it is here on Earth. This part of the hypothesis fits in nicely with the ‘research’ recently conducted by the folks at Manapotion, which shows how crazily endurant World of Warcraft characters would have to be to run as fast on Earth as they do on Azeroth. However, if we assume that it isn’t as hard to run on Azeroth as it is here, things start making sense! (As much as they can from a fantasy MMORPG to real life.) Thus I propose the “Super Dense but not Comparatively That Strong Azerothian Core Theory. (SDbnCTSAC Theory)” In one last gift to you, the reader, I have created a simple bullet point list of how to summarize the theory in a few words to your friends. If your friends want to hear about this, which they probably won’t.

• Azeroth is pretty small!
• To make up for it, it has a super dense core of a heavy element like Plutonium or Curium or something even heavier.
• This gives it enough gravity for an atmosphere and oceans and such, but the gravity still is pretty weak.
• This allows your characters in WoW to run a hell of a lot farther and faster than they could in real life!

This sums up this evening’s early morning’s (?) presentation on the Size o’ Azeroth, and I hope it’s provided some amusement to you.

Author’s note to the scientifically minded: Yes, if the core was made out of Plutonium, it would definitely reach a critical mass and cause crazy amounts of radiation to the things on the surface. However, I bet the Titans/Eternals wouldn’t stand for that and some sort of magic prevents a criticality! Or also, the Plutonium could just be in a compound (but where’s the fun in that?). Also, the Titans/Eternals could create elements not ocurring in nature and turn it into a  planet’s core because they are just that awesome. And probably bored too?