Why did they changed this from version 1.0 ?

[Felis]

Maybe the people complaining didn't vote in favor of the change? I didn't vote for smaller zones, that's for sure. Or maybe they didn't play version 1.0 and just come up with this feel by themselves, but back then they couldn't vote.

Maybe this is the problem.
If they would have played 1.0, they would know that the zones in ARR are much better and full with variety than a whole region in 1.0 where everything looked the same. You could have been somewhere around camp skull valley or wineport and would not know until you opened the map.

Sure, the zones could be bigger, but they are still much better than the regions we had.