Well to be fair, oftentimes you'll have micro state machines at a lower level (NPCs keeping track of their walking direction, etc.) but yes, at the macroscopic level a state machine usually doesn't make sense. It's easier to implement and maintain if you can keep your high-level logic (e.g. UpdateMapEngine) as stateless as possible.
But it is just one piece, certainly not the map environment itself.
Also, good to hear from you N E O. It's good to know you seem to be hanging in there, taking classes again.