I had enough of the “now zones are as tiny as postage stamps” claim, and measured a couple zones by flying thru them with my toy plane, and a stop watch.
As an example of “old zone” I chose a rather typical zone, Dragonblight in Northrend. I measured it as about 2 minutes horizontally and 1 min 15 secs vertically.
Then I measured Bastion, which timed as about 1 minute 30 secs horizontally and 2 minutes vertically.
Lastly Zereth, which timed as about 1 minute horizontally and, again, 2 minutes vertically. I did not include the empty starting area at the left center nor any island.
So, Bastion is actually bigger than Dragonblight, and Zereth is almost as big. In any case, give or take a few seconds, perfectly normal zones.
No “postage stamps”.
I think it’s less about the size of the actual land mass and how the zone feels, people are frustrated with claustrophobic feeling places that are jam packed with mobs and awful terrain that takes a long time to navigate. Places like this typically have less actual content because they’re just designed to make everything time consuming.
Edit: In Blizzard’s defence, the new zone is actually a pleasure to navigate when compared to these types of zones, a step back in the right direction i think.
let’s appreciate that OP addressed the concern about “zone size”. we can then move on to what you’re describing.
Do we all agree zone size is okay?
Zereth Mortis is great.
Also, another part of this conversation is how zones are all these little instanced areas now, go and fly from the southern most point of Shadowmoon Valley all the way up to the most northern tip of Netherstorm… now that’s what you call a world, that’s an expansion that feels like a big world.
Now it’s take a portal here, a portal there, notice that your hearth is on CD and you’re faced with an agonizingly long flight path or just afking until your portal/hearth is off CD so you tab out and watch YouTube instead of actually playing the game. Those are the types of choices we should never have to make in WoW.
I agree, and having a cohesive seamless open world has always been one of the greatest strength of WoW.
The most popular other games are, really, a bunch of instances. In FF14, Guild Wars 2, Age of Conan etc there is no way of actually travelling directly from a zone to the next without a load screen, and often understanding where you really are in the global map is impossible.
In Shadowlands they chose this method to represent the idea that every zone in SL is kind of a separate world. I agree it was a mistake.
I think that when back in Azeroth they will resume the “almost seamless world” philosophy. 
Fingers crossed 
You’re right they are not postage stamp zones. The quests though are fairly thin, linear, and for the leveling experience, there were only the 5 (if you include the intro maw) instead of the 8+ we usually get.
lol everything you just said was a postage stamp zone. this is and was the zones we screamed about in the day and now idiot!
Calm down there man
About the numbers of zones…
BC: 7 zones
Wrath: 8 zones, 2 minizones (Crystalsong and Wintergrasp), 1 hub (Dalaran)
Cata: not comparable
Pandas: 7 zones, 2 minizones (Isle of Thunder, Timeless Isle)
WOD: 7 zones, 1 minizone (Ashran)
Legion: 5 zones, 4 minizones (Broken Shore, 3 in Argus), 1 hub (Dalaran)
BFA: 7 zones, 1 minizone (Mechagon)
SL: 6 zones, 1 minizone (Korthia), 1 hub (Oribos)
Just a hint of a downwards trend, rather than a real trend.