Personally, I think open world works best in a game that focuses more on construction then destruction. Community projects like building up funds for a guild house and having people take part in building it is a great way to bring people together: much more so than banding together to bash some brainless peon HP bag into the ground that MMO makers seem to think is exciting. The monsters involved in the hunts don't even do anything but stand there walking in circles! I don't even see how it is threatening to any of the locations in the area to warrant the currency we are obtaining. At the very least there is a little bit of NPC interaction with fates...