But your saying the old maps were special because you saw them repeatedly for 20 years, and comparing them to maps that have only been out a handful of years. Doesn't that seem like an unfair comparison?
Sure, you're right, but when they first presented the Realms they didn't give us these maps, they gave us other maps (if they gave us any). Now they give us these maps, but I've got no hold on them yet. Who know what maps will they give us in the future. Will they still show the Griffin's Eyrie? Is this place relevant or important to the people there somehow?
Given that consistency and grip are some of the most important elements of worldbuilding, it's weird that they didn't start by giving us maps to the central patches of the first Realms they visited right away, and built on them to have a shared anchor on their worlds. They missed the chance to hook us up on familiar geography. It's almost like... they had no idea what they were doing.
See, I like getting so many different perspectives on this. This for example is the opposite of the problem I had with the Old World Map. I was always bothered by the way it looked like a lightly altered real world map with some extra stuff crammed into it. Just like Westeros and Game of thrones. For a fantasy world, I really have no problem with them trying to make new looking maps, and new looking landscapes.
Totally separate, but I never found most of the names in the old world that original either. Most of it was just pulled from real world history or based on other, similar fantasy.
When I say "original" I don't mean "new", my mistake in using the wrong word. There's value in creating a world designed to make you instantly recognise a corner of its world, to make you feel like you belong. After all, people think it's unoriginal when the map is almost Europe, but not when the clothing style, armor and weapons are all exactly European and Medieval. Why? It's essentially the same. I see Hammerhal's domes and golden roofs and all its weird architecture and I feel like that's an alien city, not a place I can relate to. Again, not really a problem, but there's been little effort in making the Cities feel like home (for now).
What AoS does is forego the familiarity of the Old World (not because of its antiquity, but because of its closeness to the real world) and substitute it with bizarre concepts and mechanics, a thousand and one currencies and new valuable materials (incurring in the Pokemon world problem of "are there still normal animals, and if so, where are they?"), strange architecture and art, and generic English placenames like Flamescar Plateau (ugh), or fantasy names which show no real consistent language origin or even internal consistency. Was it so difficult to make up three sets of preffixes and suffixes to represent three major languages, and then make up names with them? You've got Cotha, Vitrolia and Bataar. Yeah, these names tell me nothing of the relation these landmasses have among them or the culture which habitated them. Especially when the theme of the Realms is "they were once dominated by great empires which have now fallen". If more of their world was named... names, instead of just "X cool adjective + Y cool geographic term", maybe they could have more character. One Empire founded Sazar, Sarramir and Sakortha, (begin wiht Sa-, like a reverse -Stan) another one founded Larskto, Kratz and Bormro (only As and Os, consonant clusters), another one created the provinces of Ker'gyr, Mir'yonith and Lygash (glottal stops and gutural consonants). I don't know, consistency.
But the Old World and the Realms are very different beasts. The OW pulled on your sense of familiarity. When you draw parallels and push metaphores, a similar name is a reference, and if the system makes sense, it's super useful at conveying information quickly. Ok. It would be very strange if you saw a city called Volgagrad in Tilea, or a city called Napoleti in Bretonnia, but that's not what happened. The Old World, thanks to its constant callbacks to the real world, was not only familiar, but consistent.
You could tell by seeing Valmir von Raukov's name that he was part of a frontier culture, hybrid of the Empire and Kislev, and by his Vlad Tepes inspired hat and moustache, that he was a ruthless general who was ready to fight the invaders at all costs. Original? No, but very efficient.
I'm not as familiar with the other realms, but a big part of Shyish is that different parts of it correspond to different afterlife's, or totally normal but dark influenced places. So some people might scratch out a living in the literal bones of an afterlife, and other people might live next door to a ghost cursed realm. I find it to be a fascinating take on it. How does a community life in the bones of their ancestors? If they know what's going to happen. Clearly people die and move on because we've seen depictions of a number of 'hellish' after lives, as well as a handful of mentions of more pleasant ones. (Usually before they get messed up by Nagash.
And that may be an interesting concept on its own, but in the wider world of AoS, it just raises way more questions than it answers. It makes Shyish an excessively convoluted place where you need to do all sorts of narrative gymnastics to justify people living there, their culture an psyche. After all, some of these people travel, and some of them go to other Realms and tell of the Underworlds, and suddenly no one in the Realms is us. No one! Everyone is 100% sure that there's life after deaht. The whole thousands of millions of people in the Realms have solved one of the most pressing questions we, as a species, have ever asked. They, therefore, are not
us anymore. This poses very transcendental questions about mortality, the meaning or futility of life, the sense of it all, which I see the writers at GW as
WOEFULLY uncapable of answering in a satisfactory way.
The novelists may do a good job, but the fluff writers on the battletomes? Oh no.
Let me reiterate: I really like much of the AoS setting, it's wide, exciting and new, and it's got tons of possibilities, but so far, it's got plenty of problems too. Shortcoming in basic worldbuilding. Sometimes a cool concept is introduced without it making much sense. Sometimes an interesting idea is crapped on by some commitee deciding on a cool name tested on control groups. The NECROQUAKE. Oh my God. So Sunday afternoon cartoony.
