Area Limitations: Indoor and Outdoor seperate?

Gamer asks if the indoor areas of large outdoor areas count as separate when calculating the recommended area limits:

In my considerations for how many areas I need to be able to support, do I count building interiors as separate areas or are they held within the outdoor area that contains the building.

Our previous estimates regarding the number of areas in an official campaign module counted only the relatively large, plot-critical areas. The module I was just writing dialog for, for instance, had 7 major areas: 2 city districts, 1 tunnel map beneath a noble’s estate, and a 4-floor prison complex. The interior of the Tyrist temple and of the noble’s estate were not included, nor were any of the stores, inns, taverns, etc, that you could wander into along the way.

Again, performance issues are hard to gauge at this point and our choices, thus far, have developed more out of design considerations (the desire for a tight, fun-packed, 2-hour module) than out of specific technical limitations of the game engine. When we have some solid performance data on these sorts of things, we’ll certainly share that info with everyone on these boards.

Thanks for asking,
Rob Bartel