The real question, IMO, is what are the Japanese players asking for? Because if the answer to that question is open world, I'm willing to bet we're going to eventually be getting open world. While SE will no doubt take everyone's money and cater to multiple audiences, they're a Japanese company. If the Japanese don't want a WoW clone, and want endgame content in the form of open world five headed Tiamat's that drop epic speedy shoes, similar to XI, that's probably what we're going to get. A lot of NA's are obviously too squeamish and fragile for open world HNMs, but are the Japanese?

Maybe Reinheart can weigh in on what he sees in this regard coming from the Japanese community.

Maybe all this instanced talk is just the hook for western audiences going into 2.0 and the open world content will be coming shortly after.