You're probably thinking Chardok or Howling Stones (Charsis). But...that's the thing, that became a charm of the game. Stuff from those dungeons was more valuable, and getting a group to go there often allowed for more exp/loot because they were out of the way. Yeah, in an actual "world", not everything is perfectly utilized. There are frustrations, and that leads people to plan and overcome them with others. There is a delicate balance there (It obviously can't be too frustrating, or its just a pain in the balls and no one will do it...but it shouldn't all be served up to be max utilized; let the players do things).
Just reading these notes...Honestly it looks like they are falling into the trap all modern MMOs do. They are trying to make a great game. Except, no matter how good they make it--it will be second rate to a single player experience, because of the baggage that comes with being available to so many people. So it will always be a 'worse' game than you can play on your own.
Essentially, the biggest curse of modern MMOs is developers over-designing the game, and under-designing the world. As someone else said...most modern MMOs don't even really need their 'worlds'--cities are just 3d lobbies, and you enter into the mini-game you want to do for 30 minutes before you log. Boring. Especially when I could just be playing any number of small scale multi-player games that do it much better.
