I love the concept of open world dungeons but I feel that in XI these dungeons were wasted or underutilized. You had these massive dungeons and essentially their only use was to camp at the entrance and grind mobs. Maybe after a few levels you'd go in a little deeper. You probably had to do some exploring to find a coffer for an AF quest.

Even for rank and story missions it was typical for players to have higher levels aid them or sneak/invis their way through. I really loved the CoP missions and it was for the reason that you had actually had to have a strong group and fight your way through dungeons, complete all objectives, and then fight a boss.

That's the kind of content that I want and if the best way for the devs to accomplish this is to focus more on instances, then so be it.