To the "open world", for me DOS2 is not open world in a literal sense because anybody is fixed levels and I wish you luck to kill Mummy Dearest with lvl 10. TES IV Oblivion was open world because anybody scaled to your level and you could clear the game with lvl1 more or less. Which was lamented a lot and for good reasons.
In a classical RPG for me there have to be level barriers or there is no feeling of progression. I don't need a totally open world, I just need a big world. But I'm not a real explorer type of player, I usually follow the story and I'm always surprised that and how people find stuff all over the maps I passed by.
