You learn the strangest things at academic conferences.

Not only can you now zoom around the real world via Google Maps, but you can now also view a Google Map of the World of Warcraft. Apparently, by combining information about the measurement of significant features on this map, and the distance you can cast certain spells in world, you can calculate that Azeroth is approximately 50 square kilometres.

Not only that, but the in-world land of Lord of the Rings Online is around that size, according to the New York Times. Tolkien provided a scale map of Middle Earth, which is FAR bigger than that. Putting these pieces of information together suggests that 50 square kilometres may  be the optimum size for any section of an MMPORG world at this point.

I noted down at the conference that 50 square kilometres is also the approximate size of Disney World. However, when I checked, it appears to be around 122 square kilometres – the size of the entire World of Warcraft, not just Azeroth. The World of Warcraft is therefore the approximate size of the city of Newcastle.

Milton Keynes, in case anyone was wondering, is currently only three-quarters the size of World of Warcraft.