Are we expecting TO MUCH from 8.0?

[Absurdity]

Because they were redesigns of the really terrible 1.0 zones that kept the good stuff and are as loaded with detail as current zones but a fraction of the size.

Often they added most of the good stuff, because there was none in the 1.0 zones. The vast majority of them was just flat copy+pasted plains.

I would prefer ARR sized zones and have more of them each expansion.

While I would also prefer ARR zones if I had to choose between the two, it wouldn't really work as long as flying exists.
You notice it in the ARR zones right now even after the update, they were not designed for flying mounts and the comparatively small size becomes really jarring when you can zoom through them on a flying mount.

There are so many detailed nooks and crannies in DT zones we're unlikely to ever see because we just have no reason to explore that stuff even if you do all side quests.

As someone who just flies through the zones when I'm bored, looking for exactly this stuff. Yes, Dawntrail has a few of those nooks and crannies but still nowhere close to ARR, where almost every zone was packed with tiny details, NPCs just doing their thing, buildings you could enter in almost every tiny settlement and "mysteries" that we don't have an explanation for to this day. I put mysteries in quotations because sometimes it's just a really big door you can't get past, but the question of what's behind it remains.


Ultimately I blame flying for the change in zone design.
Yes it's a really convenient feature to quickly get somewhere, but the consequence of flying is that zones needed a massive increase in size so you couldn't just get to the end in seconds and feel like they're way too tiny.

This increase of course had some knock-on effects, like the reduction in clutter/detail. Both so consoles/potato PCs could handle the zones but also because they simply didn't have the time to add that much detail to environments 4 times the size.