Your first one reminds me of the first new zone in Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns. Where the enemies assault strongholds and players would have to defend/escort/build up in the zone while other mini events pop off on the map. Mini bosses would attack caravans and under ground holes would appear after defending a fort. Deep underground 2 bosses await the players as they have to kill/avoid the bosses while getting air from the plants or they suffocate. The whole map is a huge battle zone and hundreds of players participate while earning loot as the battle rages on. All coming to a final assault on the world boss castle where we have to defend the catapults on 3 different places of the map while they destroy the walls so we can get in a kill the boss. It rains random loot all day long with the possibility of legendary weapons dropping. If the boss is killed the assault ends, people get tons of loot, the world resets and the timer counts down again for the next assault. If boss lives people get some loot, forts get enemies patrolling the area and a poison barrier in each fort until the next reset.

I don't think it (the GW2 rant) would work with FF14 because FF14 is a dungeon crawler, the combat is stiff compared to other MMO's like its tied down. The release of deep dungeon though proves that they can make every class a tank/DPS. Now they just need to step away from the bad fates and implement something like GW2 has with their events/fates.

Yes to your ideas, would be nice if it was done in the world map and not an instance. The Zones in FF14 are lifeless.