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

[kyuven]

Getting past XI for a moment... In terms of pure explorable land-mass, XIV is probably the smallest MMO on the market. I don't really expect this to change in the expansion either. They put so much thought and care into crafting dungeons, raids and other instances. I wish they'd put even half that effort into making the open world interesting to explore.

Not even close. ARR just has less useless areas. Everything in the game has at least SOME value. They took a game that was oversized (FFXIV 1.0) and streamlined it.
Development 101: Don't make more than you'll actually use.