Even zone design and traversal is formulaic

[Absurdity]

That has been a thing since ARR.

The big difference is that ARR buildings at least had the decency to put a "No Entry" sign in front of doors you couldn't go through.

ARR was the only time where you had a significant amount of buildings in the zones that you could enter.
The smaller zones also had more small details in the environment, be it clutter, camps, interiors or just NPCs doing their thing.

Then ever since basically Heavensward, and the introduction of flying, the zones became huge but rather bland and lifeless.