Is it me, or the characters are a little out of proportion to the rest of the world?

It's just you.

More seriously, as I can obviously only speak for myself, I don't feel it.

I know it was discussed that the Creative Director prefers to play MMOs fully zoomed out, which might have led to the 'default' camera distance from the player being further out. Most streamers aren't likely to change this, I haven't seen any who have adjusted it.

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Oh, ok, then I definitely don't feel it.

A door on a house doesn't seem to be the wrong size, to me. And my character doesn't seem to be the wrong size relative to the door...

The palm trees are usually the size of the ones I've seen in my life, and the shorter trees have branches that annoy me because they have collision and my character can't run under them.

The dungeons, however, are vertically huge, which they've said is by design, so I see the feeling there as intentional.

In short, yes, but there's a fairly good reason for it to be that way.

Third-person games have some unique design constraints which necessitate a larger scale than is strictly "realistic", since characters need a lot of room to move around comfortably, and the camera needs to be able to zoom out without getting stuck on anything. This is a larger problem in MMOs, where dozens of characters might need to occupy the same room for an event like a siege or raid, while still having enough room to reposition freely.

At a "normal" scale, environments would feel cramped and awkward to navigate. Therefore, buildings in MMOs are designed to accommodate this, and are often built with high ceilings and large floorplans.

From what I've seen in the alpha, props like market stalls, wagons, and tents are in-proportion with characters, but buildings are scaled up a bit, and trees are tall enough that the camera won't clip through branches if it's fully zoomed out. However, in practice, I don't find this to be that noticeable, especially with the camera zoomed in for a closer over-the-shoulder view.

Nah, it's pretty to scale to me. In fact I was fairly impressed with how everything felt proportionally. The best example I can give is the village walls in Winstead (for those of you who are streamer view only.) They are just high enough to cover a decent amount of the lower laying buildings, but like in actual medieval architecture, the wooden walls (palisades) are mostly made out of tree sized logs (relative to the ones surrounding winstead) and about a a third to a quarter of a persons height depending on elevation. They are pretty in line with the actual palisades and fortresses I've been to irl. No one will build a wall bigger than they need to irl and many fantasy games screw that up. They either get outlandishly out of proportion compared to the trees, wood, and available quarries or/and make things egregiously tall and big to make things feel more important and 'epic'. This is acceptable for temples, castles and statues, but day to day buildings? I'm quite happy with how things are right now.

Relative to the character they feel like they were made by and for an average human. As a dwarf player, they feel slightly too big to me, however, I think Dunir dwarves will be built a bit taller than the base test model on average.

Barrels? Wagons? Tents? They all feel slightly too small honestly, but close enough to correct that it doesn't bother me. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that things are in third person and the zoom is kinda far like Azherae said.

As for natural landscapes? No, those are about to scale. If anything the landscapes feel a bit smaller than I'd expect. I've been to many mountains and sweeping hilly areas on multiple continents and can say that things do tend to make you feel that small irl. It's working as expected given the areas Intrepid has chosen to 'show off' the most by making the starter area, even a little on the smaller side I'd say. Maybe in the full build this will be increased relative to natural landscapes since this is only a low laying tropical area for the most part. The truly mountainous areas are close to the world border (I tried) so I couldn't get a good sense of the more extreme terrain. Admittedly I haven't been up to the northest north.

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They seem to me, as someone who has played, within proportion of irl objects relative to the characters. What seems off to you?

I can sorta see it now, that I've tried to, and I can say why I might not have before.

I assume that characters in games like these are quite short, particularly when they aren't of the 'tall race' in the game, whatever that is.

I also expect ceilings to be high, for camera movement related reasons, and the Empyrean Architecture (I wouldn't spend too long in a Kaelar house) makes that even moreso.

Maybe that's why? We're playing non-customizable characters, as someone pointed out. Those of us who normally play tall characters might notice it faster? (so far that seems to be how it goes for everyone I know)

The size thing is not something that bothered me, because I end up comparing my size with that of the pork roast I pass by, the tents I go in, etc. Relative to the objects I've seen the size seems fine. For tall architecture, I don't know what to say other than I love feeling intimidated by the architecture in games.

I did notice the default zoom out though and liked it. I like to play as zoomed out as is possible/practical in all my MMORPGs and strategy games and actually everything. I imagine that's going to be adjustable and remain adjustable though, to suit different tastes.