Quote Originally Posted by delukard7 View Post
To me the overworld map felt more alive
ARR feels like the maps are glorified waiting loby
For example if, square took the maps away and leave a central zone (city) and a board to do the instances, ARR would still continue with no loss whatsoever
This is simply not true. A game like that would be a slog since so much of the world's character and, dare I say, enjoyment!, comes from exploration.

If you want to ignore the world and just compartmentalize the game to nothing but the city states, why bother with any overworld at all? Just log in and pick a dungeon. If that's all you want, just play those cheesy mobile MMOs.

In fact, this whole "just stay in the main hub" was a massive issue with pre-DF FFXIV, as you had to remain in the main hubs to search for players to run content with instead of doing literally ANYTHING ELSE while you waited. Ul'dah was hopping in 1.0 for precisely this.