I believe the zone design for FFXIV is as follows:

Several key areas within each zone that have their own unique theme/design.

The problem is, they are connected by copy/paste and an extremely boring landscape.

Now, heres the real problem. Many people spend most of their time travelling through the boring parts to get to the interesting parts.

For example, if you travel from gridania to uldah, most likely you will be traveling along the road. So all you see is the same layout of forest for 15 mins then you get to Thanalan, and you spend another 15 mins of seemingly, and often times actually, the exact same landscape.

When you finally reach your destination, you're like WOW this is awesome, but that last 25 mins of landscape was total crap.

So, I think improving the areas along the road and the paths people take to travel should be a priority. And adding special landmarks would certainly be one of many tools that could be used to accomplish that.