The thread about legendary places had me looking at the zone map and the suggested approximate size of each zone. This led me to wonder, why are the zones so large? Admittedly, there are thousands upon thousands of semi-invisible NPCs that live, work, and play in the background of all the rooms we as players see. These NPCs have places they frequent that just wouldn't be interesting to adventurers, so it's reasonable that we don't see every house when we walk down the streets of Crossing. The one or two points of interest along each street are important enough to warrant having a room. So when we walk out the west gate of Crossing, somewhere along the way we ignore the working farms that are immediately outside Crossing, and skip right to the dangerous places where wild hogs and goblins roam.

But is there any reason the area surrounding Crossing (including Arthe Dale, but not quite reaching Dirge or Tiger Clan) is the size of New Jersey? That seems excessive. Therengia is larger than England, Scotland, and Ireland combined.