Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Hunts have sometimes attracted over 100 people. Big FATEs such as Foxy Lady, Ixion, Archaeotania and Chi have actually attracted as much as 600 people and congested instances to the point nobody else can enter.

Just because FFXIV splits areas up into multiple zones doesn't mean they are not large. It's just a design decision to do it that way.

It is also worth considering that some other games don't actually put a lot of effort into that extra space. You can generate bumpy terrain pretty easily and throw some random rocks, trees and other things onto it and say look, our world takes 10 minutes to travel across, but is there anything really interesting across most of it? In FFXIV, the entire area has a purpose and there is barely any of it that is not used for a quest, FATE or other activity at some point and that is also a design decision.

You might think some of it is not used but if you have done all of the sidequests, class/job quests and every other activity there is, you do discover that everything actually had a purpose.
Uhhh... what? Let's take Sea of Clouds. Half the map is not used in any way and is just empty filler that only has FATEs. You don't go into them even in sidequests. The middle and eastern portion are practically unused. I think it's kind of ridiculous to say that the entire area has a purpose. I mean compare that to Elden Ring where the world is both far bigger (even if you add up all of FF14's maps) and far denser.