@Latecomer
The world of G4 is big, but that doesn’t mean anything when most of it is just “real location but with horses”, and there’s no bigger picture. Worldbuilding isn’t just “facts about the world”. Worldbuilding is “Story happens because of how the world works and what’s going on in it”. It’s details that create the sense that the world is (or was) alive. In my mind, good worldbuilding isn’t about how many locations or historical figures you have, but how much it means.
I consider good worldbuilding to be “Ponyville was founded by earth ponies, so they don’t use magic to change the seasons”, or “We thank the ocean for protecting us from The Storm King”. Bad worldbuilding is The Crystal Empire. There’s a bunch of disconnected trivia, while basic questions like “Why is the empire located in the frozen north?” or “Why are the ponies crystal and what makes them special?” go unanswered.
@Background Pony #BB4A
In G4, a third of the population could fly and control the weather, a third of the population could use magic, and it was ruled by an immortal sun goddess. And yet protecting Equestria almost always came down to The Mane Six. There were monsters, but Equestria hadn’t adapted to dealing with them. There was this weird disconnect between what Equestria should have been capable of, and how well it actually handled a crisis. It was almost like Equestria was in stasis until Twilight moved to Ponyville, and that problems only arose so that The Mane Six can fix them, and then things go back to normal. G4 wasn’t really “going anywhere”.
In G5, just about everything in some way ties back to the tribes splitting up and Sunny reuniting the crystals. Where G4 Equestria had magic all figured out, one of the ongoing stories in G5 is about New Equestria adapting to the return of magic. Seeing how the return of magic affects things makes the world feel more alive, and when they solve a problem, it represents them successfully adapting.
