Is the world of Tyria flat or spherical?

I think u mean they will add a Z axis we already have x and y

I just want to throw in why i think tyria is a sphere.. With the new GW:EN login screen you can easily see a beautiful light display in the sky, much reminiscent of an Aurora Borealis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy) And these are created due to a magnotsphere, thus leaving me with the idea that tyria is a sphere. Oh, and gravity. And curvature of some view distances. And it would be absolutely retarded if Anet made it anything but sphere. :P Just my 2 cents.

If the OP is looking on how the world is made in terms of graphics I think it's something like this:



Also the world of GW is made of small maps judging from some glitches that allowed you to go the edge of the map.

My 2 cents.

Flat.

1) It's a magical world. While obviously, some natural laws apply (gravity, wind, night and day), others simply do not (summoning meteors out of the sky, walking dead, teleportation gates). Unfortunately, this means that we don't have a clear picture of what is and is not natural law in Tyria. We cannot make assumptions about Tyria based on observations of our own world, as they are simply not the same. Our fundamental rules do not apply.

2) I think you can actually find the edge of the world in GW:EN. There was some place we wandered up to one night on the north end of Jaga Moraine (or maybe the Bjora Marches) that pretty much ended in a giant cliff and an endless sea of fog far below. I'm not talking about the black pit, and I'm not talking about the end of the world graphics bug either. I mean an actual, physical, crafted, in-game edge of the world. I could be smoking crack (it was pretty late) but I'm pretty sure that's what we bumpped into. I'll poke around tonight and see if I can't find my screenshots, or maybe go take some more.

3) The GW2 logo is merely a decorative emblem, and isn't a valid argument for a sphere. Yes, it looks like a sphere, and may very well be. There is a fundamental problem with that line of thought and that is that it is not big enough. If you took a sphere of that size, and wrapped the main continent onto it, with the new Far Shiverpeaks extention, it would probably just about wrap completely around and touch in the back. Then there is Elona to the south of it. No room for it on the back of a sphere that size. Not to mention Cantha. The GW2 logo is an abstraction, a decorative device, and an attractive one, but not really helpful for this discussion.

Here's my 2c contribution...

On the Canthan astrolabes, and the relative sizes of the sun: This is actually a reasonably accurate depiction of Ptomelean cosmology, which had the Earth at the centre of the universe and the Sun, moon, and other planets all being smaller than the Earth and orbiting it - which was the dominant non-flat-earth theory before Copernicus.

On the gravity question: The gravity of an infinite plane would be difficult to distinguish from the gravity of a sphere by an observer on the surface. On a finite plane you'd get strange things on the edges, but if you're reasonably close to the centre you wouldn't notice them - and who knows, maybe there are places out in the furthest reaches of the land where the gravity is pulling slightly towards the centre rather than just straight down.

On the map and climate thing: It's worth mentioning that latitude isn't the only thing that affects climate - altitude and prevailing wind and wave currents also play a role (consider the Gulf Stream and the effect it has on Europe's climate compared to the rest of the world at Europe's latitude). With these things considered, I would probably explain Tyria's climate in the following way:

1) The equator is somewhere in northern Elona. This puts Elona bang on the equator, Tyria close to but just north of the equator, and Cantha furthest from the equator. The entire game is in the tropical or subtropical, or, at the coolest, warm temperate regions.

2) The Shiverpeaks are basically the Himalayas of Tyria - while close to the equator, they are still cold by means of their altitude. While the in-game altitude may not seem that high, this may be explained by Tyria having a thinner atmosphere than Earth. Since Cantha is further away from the equator, the mountains on Shing Jea do not need to be as high to have snow.

3) Ascalon, and, presumably, the neighbouring Charr homelands are described in at least one of the manuals as "highlands". Ergo, the climate on that side of the Shiverpeaks is shifted from subtropical or tropical to temperate by altitude. There may even be (or have been, pre-Searing) winds blowing down from the Shiverpeaks, pushing the temperature down even further.

4) Kryta, by contrast, is much closer to sea level (evidenced in part by the large lakes in the area, some of which may be close to inland sea status. They'd probably prefer to be lakes, considering what usually happens to inland seas in this world...), explaining its tropical climate compared to the Shiverpeaks and the locales inland of the Shiverpeaks (Ascalon and the Charr homelands). Furthermore, it is possible that there may be a water current similar to the Gulf Stream that is bringing warm water to Kryta and the west coast of Tyria that is warming the area further.

I say its round and cercomvents more then one sun or has stars that are close enough to act as suns and as for the climents I say there is magic a foot.

According to the picture on PC Gamer's cover (the one where they uncovered GW2 and GWEN) it looks like a globe.

And also the Tyria insignia for cartographer monuments is actually a globe.

Yeah, I said that on the first page, like 3 months ago.

I say it's round, but half the world is missing from the playable game.

I imagine they were planning to complete the world with the campaigns, but then GW 2 came along and will make us wait longer to see the completed globe. >.<

im saying if it will be a completed globe then the world will be one big box hurray!!!

probably spherical but i doubt that they'd tell us because if they filled in the whole globe they wouldn't be able to add new expansion islands

Id personally tend to a globe myself purely out of the known facts of this world... but for all you people saying it has to be a globe because of gravity alone....


It is theoretically possible to have gravity on a flat world. Only the surface needs to be flat, underneath you would need an apropriately shaped mass (such as a cone with the sharp end cut off for the surface and a rounded wide end). This would give constant gravity on every spot of a flat surface, only problem would be that It probably couldnt sustain weather which would mean life would be impossible.

There are no 'flat' worlds... Only planes of existence where terrain is flat. Ah, and Discworld.

So, unless Tyria is in one of those planes, or is part of Discworld...

While i like to believe its a flat world, the moving clouds and such seem to say its round. Of course this is all logic based and as the game uses magic really anything could be possible. I honestly think this is the best topic on GW i have ever read for sheer fun factor.

There is more than one Discworld - the Great A'tuin had children, remember? And presumably somewhere in that universe is the other parent...

the world of tyria is oval shaped and has green tinsel wrapped round it.

i thought everyone knew that :P

I don't think Cantha is west of Tyria.

Using a picture previously used in this thread and pointing out certain landmarks in red I believe with near certainty this is how the body of water from the Tyrian map lies on the GW2 globe.

I apologize for my horrible tracing.

And Tyria according to this would take up most of the planet.

Oooo, hmm..

That means, with elona and cantha there really isn't much room. Elona's gonna be in the arctic circle. That can't be right

Thread closed IMO.

Flat or spherical, the description of Kodlonu Hamlet certainly suggests it has Earth-like weather patterns, even heading in the same direction. This would put the equator slightly south of Istan, but well north of Cantha which appears to be sub-tropical.

Has anyone mentioned hyper-cube structures? I mean, given the extremely original land we've been offered by Anet, there's no way it's going to abide by eucledian geometry

It's not always light. Some areas are dark, including Riverside Province and Vahtendi Valley

does it matter?

It does for lore reasons.

Its not flat and its not spherical.

Tyria is a box!....... kinda thingy..

Its a Dyson sphere.

Its not magic its genetic tampering combined with nano machinery.

"The Gods" is a single AI mind that became paranoid and schizophrenic over a VAST period of time.

Xunlai agents are in fact alien beings that have taken residence in the sphere to study and contain a possible galactic-wide menace.

Destroyers are semi-aware maintenance/building robots that are beginning to malfunction (or function correctly?)

The Eye of the North is a part of a larger spoke like structure leading directly into the sun from which raw building materials could be transported to the Destroyers.

I wish I had a CRT to take a photo of Tyria on it with the tube's geometry settings put to the extreme (as spherical as it can get).

I had the same thought. How cool would that be?

That is the best evidence anyone has provided in this thread.

Perhaps the Domain of Anguish is simply on the other side of the flat world where it is always night?

I think it's triangular.

We need to know for when we insult people so we can say
Your flat like tyria!
Doesn't work if tyria is round...



Tyria is a tube,

The sun is in the middle of the tube.

thats why is almost Always daylight.

It gets night when the sun travels to the end of the tube.

Thus only certain areas of tyria can get night =P those being the end of the tube.