Pre Mines of Moria, LotRO didn't mark quest goals on the map. It led to a constant barrage on the /shout channel of "Where do I go for x quest?" When you were tied to that zone for a couple of hours doing said quests, you a) had got sick of giving/seeing people give the same answers and b) knew exactly where the locations/requirements of the final quests were before you knew how to get the quest.

I'm not for having my hand held through the storyline, but the quest markers do cut out this unnecessary spam. I think a main difference between the "Western MMO" feel and FFXI in this area is that in a "Western" lots of folk will be doing the quests for XP and progression, whereas you have to admit, the vast majority of quests in FFXI gave relatively small reward (except for a story), so were mainly avoided (I did do 95% of the quests in that game btw!). In FFXI you really had the feel of you or your group going on an adventure, whereas when there are ~50 folk doing the same run-to-and-fro all shouting for answers because they can't RTFQ or look on a website, it gets tiresome fast and detracts somewhat from the fantasy feel.

Hopefully though, the resultant quest from said marked-NPCs in FFXIV will provide enough task with which to encourage the stone-by-stone exploration. It's really down to the quest design team ensuring that we have a need to visit each outcrop/cave that the area designers have put in!