What is the ArdaCraft Map?
Throughout his legendarium, Tolkien gave life to the continent known as Middle-earth, describing picturesque villages, imposing fortresses and dark towers. Yet it was the world these locations inhabited that made them truly iconic; portrayed countless times across a variety of mediums, Tolkien’s world has been the subject of many films, games and paintings. To make our project as immersive and as accurate to the lore as possible, ArdaCraft is in the process of making the largest and most detailed recreation of Middle-earth ever made.
History of the ArdaCraft Map
The beginning of ArdaCraft’s map is an integral moment in the history of the project itself, being the first thing ever created on ArdaCraft. The WorldPainter version of the map was begun back in 2013 by Fornad, before being imported onto ArdaCraft itself. Building began in 2014 and by the following year the map encompassed the Shire and Bree-land. Since then, new portions of the map were released as projects demanded, such as Lindon, Eriador and Rohan. In 2021, the decision was made to start work on an entirely new map, made to a new higher standard. Rather than continually adding terrain in small sections as done so far, a final penultimate version of the map will be released when it's complete, helping to create a seamless final version. Since then, as new portions of Middle-earth have been required, they have simply been taken from the new map and imported onto the server.
The ArdaCraft Map today
Currently, there are two ‘new’ regions on the map that can be explored by anyone; Anórien and the West-march of Rohan, two of our in-progress areas. Here you can get a taste of what the new forests, mountains and marshes will be like once the new map releases, though they too are just a taste of the final version! At the moment, there are various tasks being undertaken to make ArdaCraft 2.0 as good as it can be. Tens of thousands of new trees are being created to populate the world, mountains are being perfected in order to make upland areas as realistic as possible, and biome maps are being developed to ensure a truly diverse world (you can see a version of the biome map here). Aside from that, work is continuing on the main WorldPainter map to integrate all of these features into the final release.
The future of the ArdaCraft Map
Going forward, the ArdaCraft map will continue to be worked on, with regions such as the Mountains of Angmar and the Wold in current development. Aside from any regions that may need to be added sooner if projects necessitate, the entire new map will be released all at once at an unspecified date in the future. We are confident that this new map will be the most geographically, geologically and environmentally accurate Minecraft map ever made, as well as being the largest and most accurate recreation of Middle-earth in the world. The future is looking bright.
