Good question.

I expect to be tweaking the map at different stages to approach an optimal balance. There's a tension between having a huge world with enough space to get lost in while ensuring there's enough content to fill the space. And if the travel distance for quests becomes too much, questing can become tedious.

For cities and roads - to make a guess, the v1.0 world I could see having around ~1.5-2.0x more roads and cities as compared to the current version.

To add some more detail, here's a breakdown of the components that make up the world map: Biomes, Regions and Factions.

Biomes are the map environments you encounter throughout the world. There are 8 planned biomes: Mountainous, Desert, Forest, Plains, Swamp, Dark Forest, River, and Volcanic. A not-insignificant amount of groundwork has already gone into planning for these, so most of them if not all will likely make it into the final game. And this is not to mention other Realms (which I won't get into here).

Factions can be friendly or non-friendly.

Friendly Factions: Includes human warring factions that claim territory and battle, like the Verdant Guard, or other non-political factions like the Leafborn.

The warring human factions are: Verdant Guard, Stonewardens, Aridax. The original design document has 6 warring human factions planned, but we'll see how far we get. I would prefer to have fewer, but with unique lore, architecture, armor, and quests, before adding more.

Non-Friendly Factions: Includes enemy groups controlling dungeons and roaming the world. The main enemy factions are the Machinists, Gremlins, and Cultists (currently in development). These play a significant role in the story and have their own related quests.

Some factions live in only one region (Verdant Guard lives in Greenhaven), while other factions are spread out (Leafborn and Machinist Temples can appear in various regions).

There are also minor groups or monster types you could technically call factions, since they have their own alignment: Wildlife, Wizards, Nyserium, Streeal, Fairy...

The way to think about regions is they pull from a common set of components to create a unique aesthetic and difficulty level, mixing biomes+faction+other map features.

The same biome can be found in multiple regions, but typically a region will feature a primary biome. Most regions are also planned with a specific difficult in mind, so regions of the map will tend towards a difficulty (with some randomness thrown in for flavour).

Regions:

• Greenhaven: Dominated by forests and home to the Verdant Guard.
  
• Ashen Caldera: Appears in the center of the map and will to feature the Volcano biome. This is where Moreld has his tower.
  
• Sunscorched Wastes: Huge desert, largest region in the world, home to the Aridax faction.
  
• Highcrown Peaks: High-level mountainous region, home to the Stonewardens.
  
• Whispering Glade: Dark forests (planned).
  
• Mirelands: Swamp area (planned).

These regions are all planned, and exist to varying extents, but are not fully fleshed out. They will be extended as new biomes and dungeons are completed.

For example, the "Ashen Caldera" region already exists and you can find Moreld there, but it's not very special currently, since the Volcano biome is not complete which will be the unique attribute of this area and make travelling difficult.

When it comes to world size, the first goal is to ensure good balance for the needs of the game. I imagine something like in the game Subnautica, where you have these aesthetically distinct areas to explore at your own pace, which are quite large but not endless. However, if possible I'd love to add a world-size option you can set at the start of the game enabling you to create a new world that is truly brutal and massive, where travelling is a significant danger and effort.

HYPED for that vision