Corridor worlds seem to be a common thing in the East, or at least the few eastern games I have played. Some manage to disguise this better than others, and even ARR manages it in the area around Drybone and the Sagolii Desert areas.

I reject the idea that we have to give them time to grow. Open-world areas aren't something you change after releasing them unless you want to pull a Cataclysm thing...which we did already. 2.0's zones are like they are because Dalamud went kaboom and changed the landscape. No, this areas were designed like this, probably for some weird technical limitations (insert senseless blaming of the PS3 here!) and because Squee missed the point about what was wrong with 1.0's areas. Sadly, this is not something they can solve easily. They'd have to redesign some areas, and the most they can do right now is take away all the annoyingly arbitrary invisible walls that serve no purpose, like this previously mentioned rock.