Yeah Coerthas is probably the biggest zone in FFXIV and it's fucking ridiculously large. Don't know about EQ, but it takes about 10mins on mount to run from one point around the map and back, and all of it is heavily populated, has points of interests, cool looking stuff, caves that add a decent bit of stuff in them and various building as well as 3 little cities. On foot, even with the bard speed song which is kinda like SoW, it'd take like 20mins to do the whole thing(maybe less due to sprint). And even doing a circle around he zone you don't explore most of it, if you were to check every points of interest in the zone you'd easily take like 30minutes, especially with the cave systems in there. Other zones are generally smaller, but most are still fairly large. On mount and going from point A to point B might not make it seem like it, but when you're for example looking for hunts, it generally takes you 5-8mins to do a round of the zone to check.
Mounts here are a big factor, since they're given early and move noticeably faster than normal running speed. Makes the zone smaller, this and TPing as usual, and most quests are split into quest hubs and stuff so you rarely get to do full zone runs, you generally go from the hub to the surrounding areas then when you're done you're sent to another hub. It's the design that makes them look smaller than they really are and looking for hunts makes that pretty apparent.
