how big did ff11 area grow before and after all the expansion?

[Lemuria]

You also have to consider FFXI had slower movement speed, hardest-to-get chocobos, less teleports (till last year. Now you can teleport basically everywhere in there, I'm still playing it), quest objectives at far distances from each other, and no quest indicators on the map, also no Sprint. All that added up to a bigger world feeling.

Yeah, but it also had danger. Overworld mobs are genuinely quite scary in FFXI, whilst ARR has zones inhabited by the weakest trash imaginable. Only Fate bosses pose the slightest threat, and those are heavily signposted. That one aspect alone made exploring the map more challenging and rewarding. ARR should take a leaf out of FFXI's book. There's a reason it was so popular for so long.

Oddly though, the devs missed a trick when designing the maps. We have characters who can jump and yet there's not a single time it's ever made good use of. Crucially, maps are designed with the grounded pedestrian in mind, when they could have been far more interesting and elaborate. Guild Wars 2 makes good use of the jump with its own jumping puzzles and other hidden easter eggs in the maps.

Something for them to consider for future maps I guess.