Your Top 5 Areas for Improvement and Brief Suggestions Therefor

[Enkidoh]

Honestly I only want one improvement (in multiple areas): Update All ARR areas for flying/swimming

Unfortunately the ARR zones simply are not set up for flight (it was a bit of a stretch to allow swimming in them), many are just too small and if you were flying you'd be there in a second - this is why ground mount movement speed can be increased twice in those areas, it's to compensate for not being able to fly there (and probably we never will, sadly.).

and bring back the missing areas from 1.XX.

The southern half of Mor Dhona, the West Shroud (which at least one NPC in game has been saying they are cleaning it up since the launch of 2.0 and there's been more than enough time; it should be plenty clean enough for adventurers now), Coerthas Central Lowlands, Coerthas Eastern Lowlands, Coerthas Eastern Highlands and the other 2/3 of Northern Thanalan somehow vanished between 1.23 and 2.0.

Now this I agree with! Alas Coerthas Eastern Lowlands is already in the game, as a PvP-only instanced area (it's the zone used for Fields of Glory - Shatter), and because of that (there are Allagan ruins in there) access to it is virtually closed off to the public. But the other areas I definitely would love to see return (maybe have the southern half of Mor Dhona as a new zone, maybe name it 'Silvertear Falls' or something).

Merging the two-part cities into one and making them seamless with the surrounding regions would also be nice.

Sadly this will not happen, as it was a specific and deliberate change from 1.0 that was done deliberately (and for good reason, the 1.0 Gridania and it's stupid long passageways meant it took forever to get anywhere and was a major complaint by 1.0 players, at least now it's all nice and compact). So this sadly will never happen.

[KisaiTenshi]

Sadly this will not happen, as it was a specific and deliberate change from 1.0 that was done deliberately (and for good reason, the 1.0 Gridania and it's stupid long passageways meant it took forever to get anywhere and was a major complaint by 1.0 players, at least now it's all nice and compact). So this sadly will never happen.

Not really.

There's a far more obvious reason that has passed. During launch, these areas were packed, so they needed to be split so the "area where people sit there and craft" was separate from the "area where people hang around the Aetheryte" , of which the GC areas for Ul'dah and Gridania are in the Aetheryte zone.

They could easily restore these areas to a single zone now. But that may have to come with several other updates, like being able to swim in Limsa Lominsa and Gridania (there's a river running through it), and having Ul'dah expanding some of the ridiculous cut off areas. (The outer ring was the original loading tunnel, and the area we briefly see at the end of 2.x.) Gridania doesn't need to restore the original loading tunnel, as it was just obviously a loading tunnel. The Limsa Lominsa Loading tunnel however feels like an entire area is missing.

Presently, Ul'dah and Gridanaia are empty , maybe 6 players between both areas (and 80 bots in the GC area.) The Limsa Lominsa area has maybe 30 players, max.

[Shurrikhan]

Sadly this will not happen, as it was a specific and deliberate change from 1.0 that was done deliberately (and for good reason, the 1.0 Gridania and it's stupid long passageways meant it took forever to get anywhere and was a major complaint by 1.0 players, at least now it's all nice and compact). So this sadly will never happen.

The only real concision the change created was to exiting the city, just as to Limsa Lominsa, by skipping the long bridge (or, in Grid's case, pair thereof). In all other cases, the minimum time spent in the black screen reloading already takes longer than the few additional steps. Pass through a 10-meter tunnel at a meter per second, or spend 10 seconds loading...

They could also just as easily, say, reduce the gap between the Gridania marketplace and the aetheryte, such that whatever assets are implied by the loading screen gap are simply skipped. They're two separate decisions: loading screens do not uniquely allow for reduced travel times.

And that's not even mentioning the sprint nerf or what reverting it, as it applies to out-of-combat travel, could accomplish...