Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
@OP: You forget that in FFXI (specially in the case of CoP) you had zones that were designed for the story rather than the story designed around the zones. Most of those zones were too far out of the way to be of any real use to players at large.
What you forget is that the majority of zones in XI all were designed that were based on story elements as well. In CoP there were some zones purely made for story purposes, but that was outweighed by the regular zones introduced. The only story related zones are:

R. Site A01/B01
Sacrarium (doubles for NM fights and subligar farming)
Phomina Aquaducts (though doubles for other stuff like subligar farming)
Promyvions
Pso`Xja (doubles for other stuff)

This is ignoring the BCNM areas and regarding the capped period. Otherwise a lot of zones were designed to be unlocked and explored through the story then later on your own (you know, like a FF game tends to do.) Everything in XI was world relevant and story relevant because the lore and storylines fit into the world like a good RPG.