Sense of discovery is severely lacking in this game, but it's something that's hopefully being addressed in 2.0.

Don't forget, XI had its share of instanced content. But you had to earn the right to do even them (beastmen seals), and they had guaranteed rewards (though not always good).

I'm all for raids, but I think there should be an even amount of instanced raid/open world content. Build me a world first, then populate it with raids.

What we're seeing right now is the only thing SE can do while they build the new worlds. We're playing in a game that will get scrapped by the end of the year apart from the instanced content. They can only give us a very small taste of what to expect from 2.0.