wow The Actual Size(s) of Deathwing Reddit Drama

[Starym 3,779]

 

An interesting thread popped up on r/WoW the other day, with a user trying to calculate the actual size of Deathwing. So far, so normal. What isn't quite normal is the fact that the poster got a large amount of posts correcting them, with some negative ones as well, as their scale apparently wasn't accurate, to the point where some redditors actually messaged mods to take the post down. In the end the user deleted the post and their reddit account, presumably due to the replies.

Part of the reason some got so (hilariously) outraged is because the user had calculated Deathwing to be around the size of the Empire State building, when normally standing up. But, as there actually was an official source on this, some fans got upset:

.@ffsqueegee @dailydot @nerdist Deathwing was designed to have a wingspan of about 365 meters, eclipsing all of those tiny little dragons! pic.twitter.com/UVQRABp05s

— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) January 23, 2017 

Now the actual dragon has had MANY sizes in game, so the above is pretty relative, as many characters change sizes in WoW. The original reddit post doesn't exist anymore so I can't link to it, but it turns out it wasn't really inaccurate at all, depending on how you look at it, regardless of the official tweet above.

In comes a second attempt, as  Tauralt took on the task of figuring out the proper scale of the entirety of the old Earth Warder's body, basing it on the official wingspan and doing some reference work and pixel counting.

In the original picture (which this is an edit of) the first, lower Deathwing model went straight to the top of the building. And here's the math to back Tauralt up:

Quote

Sorry in advance for the mangled size lines, this is an edit of the original post that was deleted.

Alright, did some quick math to try and find the actual size of the cinematic Deathwing, the only one we have an exact size for; a 1200 foot wingspan.

Using his in-game model from here, I took his wingspan at full extension and screenshotted it. This measured 900 pixels.

Likewise, I took his body length at full extension and screenshotted, resulting in 375 pixels.

Knowing these two things, I took the exact same concept art OP used and put it into Paint, setting his body length to 375 pixels. At that length, his height ended up being 248 pixels.

Now that I knew all three dimensions, I could convert them to the one dimension we know for sure.

900 pixels became 1200 feet (Wingspan)

375 pixels became 500 feet (Length)

248 pixels became 330 feet (Height)

With those numbers, this is the size that I got. Still very large, but roughly 70-90 feet shorter than Godzilla.

The various incarnations of in-game Deathwing may well be much larger than this, but this is the only Deathwing size we know for a fact.

(There are slight discrepancies between the proportions of the HotS concept art and the WoW model, as well as the poses not being identical, but this is the closest I could get.)

...

Everybody knows that when you make a size chart, you must obviously but a banana to scale. So here are the dimensions, translated to banana.

Deathwing's wingspan would be about 2,057 bananas long.

His length would be roughly 857 bananas long.

His height would be about 566 bananas tall.

This is assuming an average banana length of 7 inches.

So there you have it, Deathwing is 1 Godzilla-height. And about 2,000 banana-lengths.

But we're not quite done, as Tauralt also went one step further and actually (sort of) exonored the original poster, by calculating the in-game dragon's size based on the Spine of Deathwing encounter:

Quote

I decided to scale Deathwing based on his size in the Spine of Deathwing fight, using this image. Assuming a female night elf is 7.5 feet, then the thickness of Deathwing's largest armor plate is some 37.5 feet.

From there, I took the largest of DWs armor plates from his concept art and stacked them until I reached the top of his head to gather his height. This was just under 29 armor plates, giving a height of 1,087 feet.

Knowing the ratios of height/length/wingspan, I was able to parse this;

H - 1,087 feet

L - 1,644 feet

WS - 3,946 feet

This measurement isn't nearly as precise as the OP and probably shouldn't be taken with much seriousness, but I thought it'd be fun to do anyway. Thanks to u/Lion_From_The_North for the photo and for inspiring me to make this new size chart. Pretty chonky, if I do say so myself.

Turns out the guy who made the original chart was correct, in his own way.

But this also wasn't enough for Tauralt, as someone made a very specific reference to another recent size issue and well, we also got this:

So, math, reasoning, drama over a dragon's size and some toxic comments. Sounds like WoW in a nutshell to me!

[MrM 44]

Yeah, but where does Optimus Prime's trailer go when he transforms?

[Aernath 173]

Gotta love WoW Reddit, they always manage to deliver the best drama over even the most unexpected subject 😜 

[Starym 3,779]

29 minutes ago, MrM said:

Yeah, but where does Optimus Prime's trailer go when he transforms?

Don't even, I'm sure there's a an entire sub-reddit dedicated to that.

[Dejo93 984]

42 minutes ago, Aernath said:

Gotta love WoW Reddit, they always manage to deliver the best drama over even the most unexpected subject 😜 

It's Plebbit. What else to expect?

[Znifler 58]

Title: "Reddit Drama" is a bit over the top no?

Sure they took it serious, but calling it drama is a bit over the top. Actually way over the top.

[Ixa 48]

This fandom is wild. People lose their ish over the weirdest stuff. 😂

[Yevhen 18]

The part about bananas reminded me of a Soviet cartoon where animals tried to measure a python in parrots, monkeys and elephants. Results are quite similar. Here's a link (turn on english subtitles): 

 

Edited April 19, 2021 by Yevhen

[Yevhen 18]

7 hours ago, MrM said:

Yeah, but where does Optimus Prime's trailer go when he transforms?

It forms his charisma.

[Starym 3,779]

6 hours ago, Znifler said:

Title: "Reddit Drama" is a bit over the top no?

Sure they took it serious, but calling it drama is a bit over the top. Actually way over the top.

Uh, when someone gets SO upset over something like this that they message the MODS to take it down (and yes, it's multiple people), and the user actually deletes their account (as I'm guessing they got some wonderful private messages as well) I'd say it's solid drama.

[Cinderwalker 0]

I am fairly new, but are raid sizes accurate? Why is Illidari 20 feet tall in black temple?

[Yevhen 18]

6 hours ago, Cinderwalker said:

I am fairly new, but are raid sizes accurate? Why is Illidari 20 feet tall in black temple?

Raid model sizes are almost never accurate. Ultra-big humanoids are used for easier navigation (it is easier to notice 20-feet Illidari boss among almost-6-feet players). As for bigger creatures - that always changes based on engine capabilities and what is actually needed (like how city in lore is bigger than in game to save players trouble of riding for several hours from one end of city to another). 

[Luname 21]

Still a pipsqueak next to Ancalagon the Black.