My point is that the extra space there isn't needless. That some areas, while unneccssary for a quest, can have purpose in other ways.

I can concede the argument that since there aren't stark atmospheric changes between camps within the same zones, that areas can feel same-y, and that if you try and describe them all you end up with a shorter list than you expected. A lot of regions in the real world look very much the same, and you'd have to travel a fair bit to see variance. I accept that XIV's geography, aside from bottleneck roads (technical limitation) and the Black Shroud (miserable), is going to look largely the same because the smaller 'sub areas' that would normally take up something like two or three maps in XI are simply merged into one larger near-seamless one.