Savage Worlds: World of Warcraft: Part 4

Non-cannon time, so break your lore sticks and let's talk.

The old World of Warcraft d20 game listed Stormwind's population at an incredible 200,000 people. This was later revised to somewhere down to 20,000 people, which for a medieval city is still huge. Medieval London from 1100 to 1300 grew from 15,000 to 80,000 people, so there is a nice real-world reference. Here is a map of 1300s London so you can get an idea of how big of a city you would need to fit 80,000 people:

Source: Wikipedia

I can tell you now that even fitting 20,000 people into the in-game city of Stormwind is going to be a stretch. The place can't even handle a couple hundred players as it is on a weekend night. But seriously, there is something to be said for the original 200,000 number.

Because 200,000 would work.

If you said that "Stormwind was it" and the rest of the lands around it were mostly wild and unsettled (save for a couple dozen miles of surrounding farms thinning out as you go), such a high population would work. The city would be massive and the central castle would likely look something like a spaceship towering above that mass of people, but as the sole population of the world for most of humankind, that number would work.

Take that map of 1300s London and multiply it by three to get an idea of scale. Check the scale of 2,000 feet. I could see a Stormwind of triple London 1300, being that size, with 200,000 people, and the majority of humans on the planet. If the world is dangerous, people would flock together for safety, and we could have a huge scale world of 100 or 200 times and still have the iconic cities spread far apart. Fill the rest in with "wild, dangerous, and unexplored land" and we are back on track.

No new lore needed, just a scale change. A scale change with lots of "unexplored land" is a whole lot easier for lore-obsessed players to swallow than is all these new imaginary places and locations. They only need to agree that the capitals are massive in scale compared to the game, and that is also an easier sell because who doesn't like massive and huge?

So that is the answer. I will go back to the non-cannon mega-population hundreds-of-thousands "race capitals" sort of design, scale up the lands to be epic in size, and fill in the rest with dangerous and wild places. Also, take note of this comparison from the Warcraft movie and the game - these look like cities that could support the 200,000 number, especially Stormwind (compared with ancient London):

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/163429/20160608/warcraft-perfectly-mirrors-world-of-warcrafts-azeroth-in-these-comparison-images.htm

Another added bonus is this sort of design creates high drama. Because Stormwind is the capital for all of humanity, if it gets destroyed, that's it, game over for the humans. Same goes for the elves, the orcs, and every other capital. We can still have smaller versions of the non-important places, as I can't see scaling up Booty Bay to be gigantic, but I could probably add a couple rows of buildings behind the docks just for fun and to maintain that sense of scaling.

With one or two easy pills of lore-breaking to swallow, most of the world's the lore is intact, a sense of scale is created, and the design has a built-in high drama.

Excellent.

My Savage Worlds conversion of World of Warcraft is back on track. Next time, powers and classes.