All right, I'll give my input.
My favorite village is Bherna from Gen/U; I like the cozy mountain setting and the idyllic vibe of the place. My favorite hub is probably the P3rd one because it's very compact, while still looking stylish and having great music.
As far as modernizations go, I thought the reduced focus on preparation made things a little diluted. I know why they did it, but I still liked to put actual thought on inventory and such. I also don't like the ability to enter tents and just resupply basically for free (I self impose not using that).
On the positive side, selectable auto crafting saves a lot of time.
As for Wilds, it's mostly very good (sans performance) and I enjoy it far more than I did vanilla World (I play World with ICE now), but I feel some things were simplified to the point of absurdity - mostly how Bowguns are handled.
The biggest positive Wilds introduced IMO was moving offensive skill to weapons; it should always have been that way.
Edit: to further clarify with bowguns: infinite ammo is going too far. That said, I don't enjoy using bowguns in any game past GU.