#96 - March 3, 2011, 11:41 p.m.
Nothing on the island is overtuned.
Except spawn rate. :)
And the reason for that is that it is less work to do smaller area with 'over-tuned' spawn rate then the bigger one with 'normal' spawn rate.
We didn't decide on the size of the two zones because it would have been more difficult to make the areas larger.
I totally get players' points about the area feeling cramped. I can understand how many players would feel that way, particularly on PvP realms. At the same time though, I think if we spaced everything out according to what players are asking for in this thread, we'd see at least an equivalent number of complaints about how the distance between all questing points of interest is too far -- that traveling around the zones to quest just takes forever on land mounts.
We tried to find a happy medium so that everything doesn't feel insanely far away, but doesn't feel insanely cramped either. As it stands, it doesn't take long to get around, but the size allows for a little interesting chaos. We're not trying to make things overly difficult or elitist, but we don't want everyone to be on full auto-pilot while doing dailies.