I'm okay with the size of the world itself currently. It's big enough that it feels like a real immersive world without being so big that a disproportionate chunk of my game time is spent in transit. I only have so many hours a week to play between all my real life commitments, I'd rather spend that time actually playing and doing things instead of running from A to B.

On the topic of higher-level monsters in starter zones, I think if they made the treants and goobbues and adamantoises right outside the starter cities hostile rather than passive, that may be a good enough boost in the danger factor for sprouts to make things interesting without making them tedious.