All of the overly large wilderness areas are a nuisance. They cause much confusion when running with parties of mixed experience levels. Even the devs know this. After much bitching, they provide quicker access mechanics to annoying wilderness areas, The Subterrane is a classic example. Groups would take very long times to meander through that place and wrangle the stragglers. Then one day, the embedded quest could be directly accessed from the top.
The areas are fine if you want to spend time doing the s/e/r thing. But how often do people do that now? Most just want to transit through the areas on the way to questing. Going back on that, there are some rares that players hunt because of the named loot, but those are rare indeed.
