I've been playing both WoW and XIV (WoW a lot more), what I miss when I play XIV is just stuff out in the open world. Every day I open up youtube and I'm met with a short that tells me there's a hidden weapon, pet, transmog, mount, crafting recipe, etc. in WoW that I've never seen before, and it always involves something intricate in order to obtain. Then I look at XIV's open world and it's just this boring map with next to nothing. Seriously the maps are used for FATEs, a place for the MSQ to exist, a handful of gathering nodes, and Hunt mobs oh and treasure maps. The most I see in terms of hidden stuff in XIV is maybe there's a FATE out there that drops a pet or TT Card. Much like the OP I don't want them to just copy paste WoW, but they could do more than this.

I want the zones to be something I want to explore, not a one and done where I only ever come back if a treasure map or hunt train brings me back.