Most of the ZOMG HUGE game worlds are empty and boring. While realistic, realism isn't very exciting most of the time
Is that the lore sizes or the in-game sizes, though? Based on the numbers on WoWpedia (which may or may not be accurate) the lore Azeroth is something like 280 times the size of what's represented in-game.
I was under the impression that Daggerfall didn't actually have an open world, just cities and dungeons. I haven't actually played it though, so I could be misremembering.