Sense of adventure, more than just dungeons

[Niadissa]

Easily one of the best experiences I have had exploring, was running through a bunch of high level area's to get to the next town. The one that comes to mind is in Everquest, going from Qeynos (the western Human City) to Freeport (east coast human City) you had to go through several very large zones, talking like 20 minutes to get across some of the zones, and some of them were even larger then that such as North, south and east Karana, go up through High Pass (either had to have a run speed buff or be able to turn invisible) get past all of the orcs and Gnolls then still go through Kithicor forest, full of undead if you happened to get there at night, and finally go through the east and west commonlands to get to freeport. All in all was a journey that could take hours, especially if you were unlucky, but the sense of accomplishment was cool the first time.

Granted, if you had to do it more then once, such as dying just before making it to the safety of town, it really sucked lol. I'm not advocating for this scale, but the idea of Large, open, and dangerous areas is very much something I would love to see.