I think guild wars is kind of cheaty since thats not really open world. I don't know how much bigger the expansions were in Guild Wars and while it was fairly big, it was mostly was long path, with a couple more open areas. That would be similar to taking a mario game's levels, lining them all out in a row, filling out the sides with green or something and making mi^2 out of all the nothingness around it.

I wonder if some of these areas were also based on a speedometer and if the speedometer was not quite right. It could be saying 400 mph, but you are really only going 50 or so.

Its interesting how small WoW is. I guess if you get on a fast mount it doesn't take super long to get from the top to the bottom. At least WoW's map is jam packed with stuff. There's not a lot of unused areas on the continents.

I never played Fuel, That is bloody insane. That data on Nightfall can't be right, right? I mean the original guild wars map looked huge but it was isolated into these really narrowly navigable kind of linear areas right? I don't know, it's been ages since I played any Guild Wars but that doesn't seem like genuinely traversable land.

That's a lot of graphics.

Interesting. I figured Just Cause 2 would be up there. That is my favorite open world. Not open world game. But favorite open world to just explore and sandbox in. It's also quite beautiful in spots and deals with draw distance in some pretty clever (and good looking) ways.

For me Ultima 7 still had the largest-feeling world I ever encountered because of the sheer amount of wholly unique, handcrafted content. It only took an hour or so to travel from one side of the world map to the other, but every inch of the world map had something very unique and interesting.

As an example, here is the list of NPCs. Every single one was a deeply fleshed out character with a unique graphic, a complex backstory, a unique way of speaking, and saying different things at different times of the day (ex: speaking in a lighter tone when drunk in the pub than when they’re working in their shop):

http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Category:NPCs_of_Ultima_VII