The current open world zones are also dead anyway even on the biggest servers such as Balmung because there's not much to do in them aside from gathering and there's little to none FATE parties that happen unless a relic grind says otherwise so I find it funny that people think this will be dead on arrival when what we have now is also the same.
I'm opposed to the OP's idea of the zone being too inconvenient to explore but it would be nice at least to have a very relevant but optional open world zone that's actually fun and captures and actual sense of exploration and adventure which people seem to be opposed about for some reason.
I think it would be a good change from the same-old instances we always get in every patch where the people you get from the DF would barely communicate because they would rather speed-run and leave the instance immediately than have a laid-back time playing with the party. Anybody else tired of that?
Mind you, Diadem is close but it's poorly implemented content, with lots of flaws that's still being ignored and it has a time limit plastered onto it.
Just this line alone makes it utterly pathetic how hospitable the 2.0 and 3.0 zones are, which is ironic since the Calamity had a lot of negative effects on Eorzea, so people would think the world would become more dangerous, but we get the complete opposite from 1.0.
