There's always fog of war, or whatever the equivalent term is outside RTS games.... Parts of the map become visible when you enter a localized area on the map. However, I don't think that would do us much good, or push people into exploring. Maybe at start until you realize there's nothing special to explore on the current maps. There's not many impressive or different landmarks right now, and even the ones we have currently serve no purpose. No reason to go to so many places on our maps, at all. So much empty space that is not used for leves/gathering/quests/storyline.

I see the world design being the biggest problem here, and not the visibility of maps itself. If the landscape was more interesting, even if I had a fully opened map, I'd still want to visit places that were marked with "weird" icons on my map or seemed intriguing in some way just to witness them with my own eyes and take screenshots or whatever. Right now I'm just demotivated by huge distances of empty space and the fact that so many things look the same per map.