I love the mix of North African and Middle Eastern aesthetics they went for. Some structures really just reminded me of Petra in Jordan, specifically Porta Praetoria and the temple below the striking dummies in the Fringes. And it's normal to have a sprawling desert, because that's what you'd expect: major cities were concentrations of buildings, with nothing but sand and rock in-between for miles. That's how Persians laid out their stuff, that's how the Egyptians did too. Sure, there were buildings here and there, usually temples or funerary grounds, but still rather detached and still rather separated by "vast brown". And this is even further compounded upon when you remember that this is A WARZONE. It doesn't matter how pretty Ala Mhigo or Bozja or Othard used to be. Garleans tend to suck at site and heritage preservation. And it's not like they care, given appropriating their conquered territories' cultures to humiliate them is a commonly-employed tactic.
There's virtually almost no difference to the "normal" citystates we experience otherwise. Replace all the vegetation and forest in La Noscea or the Shroud, or replace all the snow and ice in Coerthas, with nothing but brown and you basically get the same effect. However, the most comparable area to it is Thanalan, which does seem to have a lot more structures in-between and around the place than just "vast and unending amount of BROWN". South Thanalan non-withstanding, that is. But again: WARZONE. Don't expect stuff to be standing up or look pretty and glittery when a nuke is dropped over you.
And I feel like people forgot that that's kind of what happens when places are torn apart by war. Literally just turn on the TV, there's one going on at the moment being very broadcasted, with a lot of people doing "before and after" collages online.
The issue was mostly relegating their biggest hub, Ala Mhigo-proper, to an instanced area and the only bit you visit is just a specific neighbourhood. While everything else was just "uninteresting".
But hey, it could be worse.
Could have been Amh Araeng.