I must be one of the only people that isn't truly that interested in WHERE Westworld is or what the world around it is like. I guess to me none of that really matters...humans in general are terrible creatures that are selfish, destructive, and violent...whether that's in the western United States in the 1800s or on the moon in 2052 doesn't really change much of that to me. I know it's been one of the things that a lot of people have really been focused on, but I guess I don't see how the location of the park or what the outside world is like has any impact on the story that we were being told.
Don't get me wrong...I'd like to know everything there is to know about the series, but to me the where/when of the park isn't really one of the main mysteries that I feel a need to know an answer to. I guess to me, the where of "somewhere," and the when of "in the future" are good enough answers for those questions.
I think it would answer a lot of questions about the connective tissue of the show.
How these people behave in the park is probably more jus humans being humans. I'm just curious, for what it costs to be a guest, what the economy is like for people to be able to afford something like that. MiB/William and his time in the park was explained... he's the owner, he can stay as long as he wants I guess.
I'd also like to know, since obviously this technology is what it is, are there artificial humans being used anywhere outside the park(s)? I feel like if they were, it would diminish the value of the park and the experience. Plus, they seem to have a lot of safeguards in place to keep their intellectual property from getting out of the park. As such, it seems crazy to have such an incredible advancement used solely for commercial recreation when the "real world" applications could easily be just as profitable. However, like anything else that is sold as a consumer product, once it's in the hands of everyone in the world, anyone can break it down, reverse engineer it, and sell their own version of it, so it looses its value to the one that created it. Imagine if the person that invented the automobile only allowed it to be used as an amusement park ride.
It also begs the question... the people that have worked for the park and left have knowledge of the hosts' internal workings. Get enough techs together from different departments and a rival corporation could probably piece together a lot of the information they would need to create their own robots.
As far as the "real world" in general... one of the hosts is told they would be hated in the outside world. How would anyone know whether they were real or not? Or is the outside world just filled with people that just hate one another for no good reason, hence them going to the park to purge their hate.
ETA:
Read on another forum what Maive's code said. One word in particular stuck out.
"MAINLAND". That implies that the park may be on an island.
