Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-24494913-20140319193521/@comment-10209824-20140324150316

It could if it was the only Ring, since there was only one in Dark Souls, but you can find multiple copies in Drangleic. The only place you could find multiples would be Vinheim because it was given out to the High Sorcerors. But also since the Developers themselves said Drangleic is not Lordran, we can thusly rule out Lordran and that leaves Vinheim.

How do the Giants in DS2 seem more barbaric? If anything they seem more organized, with a King and everything, than their counterparts in DS1 who merely served the gods. It's been 1000 years, and really the only difference between these giants is that they are generally skinnier to the DS1 giants. Lordran was the only place whose cities accomodated giants, hence the larger stairs next to the human sized ones, whereas Drangleic doesn't and you don't even run into Giants in Drangleic, except for the ones in Black Gulch that aren't from there anyway.

And yes, Smough is a giant. He's the same size as them and shares a similar sounding name to Gough who is a giant.