Just here to voice my approval of essentially everything said in this thread.
Make the areas more engaging. The areas are big, but there's no real point to them. No interesting destinations or fascinating secrets. I'd be fine with you adding more, smaller areas that are widely varied. Part of the fun of XI was seeing all the different zones and sights. The areas in XIV are cool and all, but they can tend to get pretty boring when they are all you see, because it's not so much the fact that much of the terrain is reused, but it's more of the fact that it's so big it becomes obvious.