Ryandor.com

My map has a lot of empty undeveloped land, with areas of high concentration scattered about. I've always heard since player shards have less players it's better to make a smaller map.

However, I'm not sure if this always has to be the case. If the entire world is very detailed and very large, then it probably means players won't run into each other. But if the entire world is very large, but only has a few interesting areas that players are likely to gather at, then that would accomplish the same thing as a small map wouldn't it?

Sure, Its more based on how big of a shard you are expecting to have realisticly. Most shards today dont get much bigger than 20.. 50 regularly active players, due to the large amounts of shards out there these days, and high turn-over rate.. Only a few actually run long term, and do actually build a playerbase of 100+ people (online at any given time).

Your thinking is good though, plan out your world in a good full scale, not real small, but not overly huge either.. start out with like you say, a good detailed map, with just a few (that doesnt have to mean only 3 or 4) good main interest areas, focus on only one main town, and maybe a couple other very small towns, but with room to grow.

This way in my opinion, you have room to work with later, should your shard become a hit later. You have plenty of landmass to construct a new town, or spawn camp, etc as you need. Rather than having to completly rework your entire maps landmass later.

_________________
Forget what you know, know what you forget.