I used to feel the same way as the OP but over the course of years... I used to be hardcore into Everquest and I do miss those open world exploration MMOs like that especially sailing on a ship in the ocean and literally waiting until you reach your destination I used to be all into that. These days I'd just prefer unnecessary time sinks to be removed from MMOs. Even if we still have to grind for items and fates or whatever, it still feels more 'fast paced' than having to run to all your destinations and struggle to kill a simple overworld enemy.
I'm just looking to feel more 'satisfied' with my time invested in a game now a days because I've grown conscious of my time being limited. Having an extra 1 hour of my game time being used due to having to commute to a destination that I've already commuted to once already is just redundant to me. Having to struggle to kill my quest NPCs during long questlines is unappealing.
Still... That feeling of exploration that I got from Everquest... I don't think any game will give me that feeling again. Guild Wars 2 had a beautiful world though especially the underwater stuff while FFXIV is really linear and a lot of really beautiful places are cluttered with NPCs that aggro you. Still, FFXIV plays well, feels fast paced despite some of these grinds like the relics being slow as heck. I think FFXIV could do a little better with the world design for immersion purposes but I don't really want to be forced to run to dungeons with parties while waiting for everyone to get there or having to run back and forth to destinations without any other travel options.
It's interesting to note that during Everquest, Druids and Wizards could teleport people to specific locations and save great amounts of time on commutes. I used to park in hotspots with my Wizard and sell teleports to people literally you could make good money with this stuff. The point is, even back then when there was no such thing as easy teleports and what not, people did everything they could to shorten their commute times to save time.