Since I was involved in the design of that map, I don't like it being compared to Vogel's basic bitch LEGO brick map in such an ignorant way.
Let's make a more fair comparison, where instead of just rough straight line shapes, we trace the map outlines with a more fluid brush.
I included islands and inland seas here. As you can see, the Realms Beyond map has several inland seas. The Queen's Wish map has... exactly zero.
Same with islands. Realms Beyond has several small islands off the shore both in the oceans and in the inland seas/major lakes. Queen's Wish has... one island if you count that little bit off the northwestern edge of The Vol.
Notice the shape of the coastlines. Queen's Wish's map has barely any jaggedness here, it's all straight lines and 90° angles. Realms Beyond has barely any 90° angles, coastlines flow naturally, have indentations, bays, small peninsulas jutting out, etc. Look at the western coast of Jotunheim up there, or the bay to the west of Sabag-Hirar.
Of course, this is just the basic shapes. When we go into detail, we have floodplain deltas, river valleys, mountain ranges, major forests etc, all of which I fail to spot in the Queen's Wish map.
If we cut it down to basic shapes we get something more like this:
Let's make a more fair comparison, where instead of just rough straight line shapes, we trace the map outlines with a more fluid brush.
I included islands and inland seas here. As you can see, the Realms Beyond map has several inland seas. The Queen's Wish map has... exactly zero.
Same with islands. Realms Beyond has several small islands off the shore both in the oceans and in the inland seas/major lakes. Queen's Wish has... one island if you count that little bit off the northwestern edge of The Vol.
Notice the shape of the coastlines. Queen's Wish's map has barely any jaggedness here, it's all straight lines and 90° angles. Realms Beyond has barely any 90° angles, coastlines flow naturally, have indentations, bays, small peninsulas jutting out, etc. Look at the western coast of Jotunheim up there, or the bay to the west of Sabag-Hirar.
Of course, this is just the basic shapes. When we go into detail, we have floodplain deltas, river valleys, mountain ranges, major forests etc, all of which I fail to spot in the Queen's Wish map.
If we cut it down to basic shapes we get something more like this:
. If it weren't for the Codex, I would never have discovered some gems, like Dark Heart of Uukrul. There are obviously outliers, but as a hivemind, they do have a pretty good taste, just check their top(something) rankings, with the likes of Bloodlines, Arcanum, Fallout, Torment, Jagged Alliance, Wizardry, Dark Sun, etc.
