The website will offer a written analysis of things to look for, but yes you are blind. In a nutshell the first map has no scenery, one terrain was used, some flowers were dumped here and there to the point where it looks fake, (look at the flower placement in the second map) monsters that had no business being there and were dumped into the map, (in the new version the scorpion is gone, the demon is gone, the fox that any of the monsters would've eaten is gone - the Minotaur, Griffon, and Evil Trees are also gone, but they would've fit in regardless) and the tree terrain was put together (in the improved map) in a way that makes them look fuller and less fake. What you see in the first map is basically how I start the process of adding trees to a map now - I drag my mouse along and let it fall where it falls. Then I add some tree terrain here, remove some there, and what you see in the second one is how it turns out.
Things to note is that in the second evolution of the map I make use of empty terrain, where as I didn't in the first, but I took it a step further recently and made empty terrain have borders so it melds with the map. Also, you can see that Legolas' portal has replaced the old standard one and in fact has replaced the old one in all my maps as it is just so much better (note also I now use no monster objects on top of teleporters). On top of that the style of putting the darker colored clover terrain next to the trees and lighter colored terrain out in the open is something I originated for the redesign of that area (which I did from scratch by the way - I discarded the previous map and just made a fresh one as one really needs to do when redesigning awful work). I liked that style so much that when I went to redo Amita I imported that style to my new Amita maps and so there is a little bit of history as to where things originated for the very few of you who find that sort of thing interesting. The moral of the story is when you find something you like, you tend to bring it with you instead of leaving it in 4 maps that few people visit.
Anyway, one side by side map comparison will just be Legolas' interior ship view previous to Legolas improving water terrain in general and after. The point of doing something like that is just showing how no matter how well made part of your area is, an improvement on that one minor little aspect is something that one shouldn't overlook. There are certain images which are so badly in need of being redone that I absolutely will not use them under any situation and I think one of the mistakes that new mapmakers make is that they try to add a little bit of everything and don't always make that effort to filter the good from the bad.
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