Stormwind Keep valued at $10,293,472
The blog Movoto (tagline: "The lighter side of real estate") has done evaluations of fictional properties before. This time, they've set their sites on Stormwind Keep, of our own beloved Stormwind, to try and determine the following:
How big is it, actually?
What's its real world equivalent location?
How much would it cost to purchase, based on the previous two factors?
The answers, in brief, to those three questions are: 47,219 square feet, Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd, Wales, and US$10,293,472 ($218 per square foot), respectively. Ten million dollars seems like a whole lot to me, but article author Randy Nelson asserts that it's actually rather a pittance for a castle. Then again, he also points out that as far as we can tell, Stormwind Keep only has one accessible floor, and the rest is all for show. Even the Ruins of Lordaeron are bigger than Stormwind Keep. See what you've done, game designers?! You've devalued your own non-existent property!
Back at the blog, Nelson gives an in-depth breakdown of how he came about all the numbers as well as how he determined that Caernarfon Castle was the best approximation of Stormwind Keep in the world. I highly recommend a read of the entire article--don't just stop at the infographic! The whole thing is interesting and fun. I'd love to see more analyses like this, if the blog authors have the time and inclination, if only so that we players could have yet another aspect of our chosen factions and races to argue about.
