@CyberDev - I guess it boils down to personal preference; You can tell a story with landscapes yes, but you want to keep your player’s attention; So many MMOs have the tried and true Walk here, Get a mount and go here but as ***Scott Rogers ***says “If walking is gameplay, something is wrong”.
A lot of new MMOs are using each other as a branching point but I see hardly any that are trying to break new ground and try new things. You see it with FPS games as well where they use the same formula as previous FPS games and tweak just one or two features; Many MMOs copy the last and tweak one or two things - Something that anyone on this forum could change - If walking is not gameplay in every other game, why does it count as gameplay in an MMO?
Anyway, Back to topic 