Where does the name come from? Arcadian? Perhaps. It may just be a random name, but it's intriguing me.

I don't think there's an answer. But it does seem an odd choice, and a bit too distracting to qualify as one of the devs' private naming jokes. (Also Known As The Old Smaug Himself, the Betty Netches of the Skate Park, etc)

ZeniMax-Zenithar, etc etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_(utopia)

The landscape was styled after it.



Or ASCII-Islands, goes nicely with the ABCean Oceans.

Though Zenithar was based on a Daggerfall tester named Stephen Zepp.

What about Acadia National Park?

:lol:

I can imagine that the mushrooms were really asterisks.

ZeniMax strikes me as far more cleaver than Stephen Zepp. Boo.

I think that Arcadian is the right term, then. I had a hunch, but I figured it could be a 'Valenwood' kind of likeness.

I'll go with the concept of a pastoral utopia or we'll be having an endless argument over which green spot on the earth named Arcadia the Ascadian Isles were based on.