I swear people are just making things up to complain about Dawntrail now. It's one thing if you want to complain that XIV zones aren't very interesting, but they've never been (and I wish they were), and all the zones are just setpieces you'll briefly go through and then never meaningfully deal with again. Like:

ARR: Alright, this was the start of the game and had a bunch of zones (which were redos of existing ones), so expected to have some variety
HW: I think Azys Lla is the only "meaningfully interesting" zone here, but unique final zones isn't a surprising thing. The churning mists was pink, which was neat, but that's about as neat as Mamook being blue.
SB: This had unique zones due to having the expac take place in two entirely different parts of the world. But like, the Ala Mhigo side (Fringes/Peaks/Lochs) are about as similar as DT zones and the Othard side (Sea/Yanxia/Steppe) isn't much better outside of having a sea-based area.
SHB: This had unique zones, sure. But it also came with the caveat that they used an entire world's worth of content to do it, which seems a bad example if you're complaining about the use of a single continent.
EW: This had 10 years of plot points to wrap up and is in an obviously unique position compared to other expacs.

And when did this become an entire continent? It's a part of two continents (N/S America), but if you look at any XIV maps there's still cloud cover over north-north america and south-south america (which is the XIV map language for unexplored areas).

Like, I fully agree there's issues with Dawntrail, mainly the first half of its MSQ. But choosing to complain about zone homogeny here is just baffling to me. Maybe they could have made the zones different colors, or something (like the Mamook portion of Yak Tel), but like, if not for the fact that the Final Days (major story event spanning multiple expacs) happened in Thavnair, where would be the mystery there? It's a pretty happy zone otherwise, about the same as visiting a new people in Tural. Just swap the comedy segment with the alchemists with the comedy segment of Wuk Evu. The only mystery in Thav is the dragon ruling it, which is something that lasts all of a single cutscene for the player.