Most of what I did involved exploring the half of the world map that I hadn't been to before, using my successfully-bred tier 4 horse. There were some really nice-looking places, including an enormous city (Altinova). However, they had all the same types of shop selling the exact same range of things, and same types of NPC offering the same type of quests. I'm not missing anything by not hanging around.
Well, actually I am missing something: the risk of doing myself physical damage from button-mashing in fights. I was starting to feel a soreness in my right hand from clicking buttons very quickly and another in the tendons of my left arm from holding down keys during combo moves. I preferred it in The Secret World where I only risked hurting my thumb from using the side buttons on my mouse repeatedly in combat.
My overall verdict is that BDO can be fun, but is far broader than it is deep. If you like breadth, this is the MMO for you. If you like depth, well it has its moments but it mainly uses grind as a proxy for it. It's a well-engineered design, but not one that's trying to say anything. It does look gorgeous, but even that is limited: there are very few clothing options for characters, and the character models don't default to plausible body shapes.
I'll end with a picture of my alt, because hey, why not?
