Question: MAP: Why is this?

[Kreelor]

Why do each of the different zones have different text scales on the map, since reportedly, Carbonite has only one map?
The "Map" seems to be broken into individual fragments per zone. There is a a loss of consistency and legibility.
Some towns, etc. are impossible to read without zooming way into them (unnecessarily), while the others are quite legible. Therefore, setting a 'zoom scale' factor for the one, negates the 'zoom scale' factor for all the others.

[Rythal]

Blizzard designs the map, and the pieces that go into it. The size of the map they are drawing, does not always reflect zone size, because it was ment to be viewed as a world map, not a zone map.

Every zone has it's own scale to translate how far one step takes you in a global position compared to a zone position.

[Kreelor]

Thank you, Rythal. I appreciate your reply and the explanation. I had wondered about the varying scales between zones, so I'm glad I asked. I thought the text on the custom Google map was upon its own 'Text' layer and therefore, just the text itself could resized without effecting the map (terrain), etc. just like the icons are resizable. Thanks for your reply.

[Digital_Utopia]

Interestingly enough, based on my own experience- the maps themselves seem to be created as one - or at least created based on the zones around them - as the fit is almost exact. So it seems that they simply scale it to the size it needs to be to fit the WorldMapFrame, and then add the text. Which, really, makes sense.

I did a project a bit ago, that actually pieced together the individual map zones into their respective continents, using data from the Astrolabe library to correctly scale, and position the maps.









For the full size- well, fullest that DeviantArt would allow (~9200px wide), you can see that here

http://digitalutopia.deviantart.com/