On April 24, 2015, Zwift launched Watopia. Here was their message to the small community of beta testers:
Together we’ve ridden 1 million miles (@1.6M km), 333K laps and climbed a total of 44M feet (@13.4M meters) on Zwift Island. That’s like climbing Mt Everest 1.5K times! We think that’s a big deal, so today we’ve launched our new course on the next isle to celebrate. Welcome to Watopia, your new home on Zwift!
As you can see, we’ve successfully moved and we’re ready for everyone to conquer our 10k course filled with fabulous vistas, bridges, and all new terrain. We’re still under construction so please be patient as we work to bring you the best ride possible (helmets encouraged!)…
See the full game release notes from Jon Mayfield posted April 24, 2015 >
A few fun facts:
- It took the beta testers 5 months to ride 1 million miles, while in December 2017 the community rode over 700,000 miles in just 24 hours in a major fundraiser event. But in 2024, Zwifters rode/ran 1.02 billion miles on the platform – that’s an average of 2.8 million miles per day!
- The “Zwift Island” referenced is Jarvis Island, the first Zwift course. The honey-hunting bear in Titans Grove is named Jarvis in honor of this original Zwift map, which relaunched in 2024 as part of Watopia.
- When first launched, Watopia had only one 9.1km route, known today as the Hilly Route. The next Watopia expansion was Ocean Boulevard on December 30, 2015. Today, Watopia is home to 116 routes (including some running-only routes).
- In between these Watopia updates, the Richmond, VA UCI Worlds course was released September 1, 2015.
- Today Zwift hosts 262 routes spread across 12 maps (in order of release): Watopia, Richmond, London, Innsbruck, New York, Bologna, Yorkshire, Crit City, France, Paris, Makuri Islands, and Scotland.
Is Gravel Mountain contained inside one of the other worlds?
No, it’s its own world, but I didn’t include it above since it’s never been open to the public (and probably never will be).
It would be great to have a gravel only world since I am (or more accurately was) a primary gravel rider.
No love for the early blue riders 😉
Brilliant post Eric, thank you.
Oh yes, I do remember that message to the community back then. It felt like we had already come a long way. Little had we known…
Wasn’t an early adopter, however, discovered Zwift during lockdown, now on
an enforced break following a
hip replacement, plan to be back on my bike Monday as part of my rehab, very much looking forward to it
Thanks for the history lesson on Watopia and the other Worlds. Someday I will ride them all.
Well, I remember racing on Tour d’ Giro way before that. I miss Tour d’ Giro