I entirely agree with the original post, some of these maps are so poorly designed and executed its just heart-wrenching to see. I adored the old maps from Guild Wars one and spent countless hours exploring, yet these are all just a noisy mess in comparison. the story is equally as bad, it dose not seem to have the love and attention to detail previous entries have.
Hands down the worst expansion GW2 has had to date for all the reasons mentioned on the original post, perhaps covid and working from was to blame. I am still a fan and love the franchise, I just hope future projects are substantially better than this, it really is a shame as POF was an an amazing expansion.