On the subject of "bigass open zones to explore and wander around!", I don't want most of the game to look like an empty space with a few mobs spread aroung and a random house put here and there without any kind of uniformity and boring travel times between stuff I already saw hundreds of times. I much prefer having small maps where everything in there is 100% in the hands of the artists and where everything was made on purpose.

Open worlds with vast samy-looking zones are boring. Controled zones are much interesting. I realized this the moment I started playing Ragnarok Online back in the good ol' days.