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I don't know how you create levels. Unless you're super picky about everything on the map.
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As you should be, you're creating levels for an MMO with thousands of players not a for fun project.
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Below are a simple Bazaar and mini town I made. I created levels for every house you enter as well as multiple rooms for each, Created cave systems. Animated the water and also animated the flags and some grass parts so they move with the wind. Animated the waterfall, and even set up an animation that allows the lily pads to move around if a character goes in the water. and gets close to them. And most importantly set up collision on every item so your character doesn't walk on the buildings. And I even did other small things like creating a simple system for when you buy potions, Mana potions. even made in a simple health system and mana system. to go with it and created bandit AI for the player to fight and level up against. Although I didn't create a character.
And how long did it take to create all this? literally made everything in 1 study hall in school which is about 40 minutes for me.
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Either you're lying about it being 40 minutes or just making it sound harder than it actually is and are using an editor that makes those things simple. You also have to acknowledge how outdated the Graal level editor is (they may have an update one for developing but to my knowledge they don't), which makes it more tedious than using editors like Unreal which have been constantly updated to make them extremely easy to use.
Factor in that Graal uses it's own scripting language as well so a lot of premade tools you see in various editors just don't exist for the Graal editor, and they are harder to make because the language is obsolete and limiting (I personally don't really script using the language, but most fancy tools you see often make use of several languages - and ones that get updated to be more functional). Also factor in they are being published for a live MMO, so naturally a lot more work goes into fine tuning details and making sure everything will work properly. Your 40 minute town is extremely bland and rushed and it's very easy to tell.
Crono has been making Graal levels for well over 6 years so he is probably the most experienced expert in this thread on the matter, I also know he enjoys doing it and while I can't say if the other devs do or not, I know that enjoying it makes you want to put more work into it and making it the best you possibly can. Maybe you can do a 40 minute rough rough rough draft, but you're looking at a lot more time if you want it to be polished and presentable.
It's not like staff are just slow and bad at creating levels, they just have to follow a specific schedule for content release and what they spend their time working on.