What is the appeal of open world content?

[SpecialKK]

Perhaps I'm remembering it wrong, but the lack of "open world" really didn't creep in until much later in the stages of this game. Immediately after launch, I seem to remember the world being filled as players were doing early game content. Whether its running around towns doing quests, killing random mobs / storyline / quests outside of the cities (even levequests), there always seemed to be people around.

The problem I think is that once that initial playthrough of the main scenario was done, and those initial set of quests were finished, there were little else that tied players to cities. At first, leveling became a Fate-grind, and that's all people did to level. When that became too easy and people complained, they "optimized" it so people would do more dungeon.

Rather than having content that gets players to level in a true open-world content, its all contained in FATES and 4man dungeon