and here we go again, OP is asking a legit question and the typical bunch of "never really have played FFXIV 1.0, but still i love to talk shit about it to sound cool" players come around to derail the thread.

@topic

i remember a good bunch of those places from 11 and 1.0 aswell.it was those places you came around randomly and instantly had to take a pictures of, in case you wouldn't remember the place lol.
sastasha in 1.0 was a simple open world dungeon.and the sastasha that is known as a dungeon in ARR, was rebuild after the image of another open world dungeon found in la noscea that had a closed off area with an underground pier.


it would be nice to have more explorable zones like that back in the game, but as it is the current open world is seen as nothing but a place to either fate, hunt or gather.without open world group parties like you had them in 1.0 and FFXI the reason to create such places is probably just a waste of ressources in terms of development.some of those places were already wasted on 1.0 because most spend their time leve leveling or simply went for favorite exp grounds like raptors or beastmen strongholds to exp at.