Guild wars 2! Giant map to explore and alright story in the free to play part.

Even if you pick different backrounds and race you can port to the other starting maps and the story connects everything later on.

It also gets more difficult so dont think it is always easy like in the starter zones.

And it is one of the old school f2ps thats still good without paying if you wanna try it out.

But if you spend money on an expac you keep it and dont have to pay for a savegame like WoW.

One of the rare MMOs that values your time and money.

If you want to scratch a similar itch, and have not already, try Guild Wars 2.

It does have microtransactions, but only because they have no subscription fee and they are mostly cosmetic with a few rare exceptions.

It also has no FOMO except cosmetics from certain festivals, which you can also buy in the next year.

It is still the best MMO on the market IMHO, because it values your time and money compared to other games in the genre.