I was thinking about this and I found out that world map makes game boring, reasons: you can travel anywhere in any direction, you can avoid anyone with 300% outdoor. This causes game to be to easy for traders, and disables game economy and ruins ingame trading risks etc. There are no trade centers, thieves get looted by guard - players don't get their stuff back. Would an advanced player would kill some trader for 10 brahmin hides?

Anyway my idea would be to edit the world map by rivers lakes or anything that would be impassable terrain. Breaking the world map into states, dividing them by those obstacles. How to get pass from 1 place to other? You will have to enter a city or location, and when you walk trough that location, the exit would be on another location on world map. You won't be able to select other location from world/town button of course. This would force traders or anyone who wants to pass to enter a place which is controlled by players (no npc guards, npc traders/quest ok). This would also force advanced players and organizations to do something about protecting or raiding such places. Some of this places could be trade centers and some guarded just for interest in certain resource. Road would have to be a place where you transport very important materials so people couldn't avoid such place. Even without transporting anything important people would still have to use that passageway. With this when people die they should be replicated in their base, or some beginner town (VS NCR HUB SF) where they'll have free replication (inn system).
I made an illustration for those who don't understand:
