Studying work by others is certainly helpful and watching time lapses can give you some new insights or inspire you to try new techniques.
I think that you can have poor practices in almost any software, so yes also for World Machine. One more general “poor practice” is the practice of repetition and doing the same over and over again. Instead of exploring your boundaries and limits, you’re stuck in your comfort zone and iterating similar designs. So that is the main pitfall I want to warn you for.
This sounds like a fun and beautiful idea. I know of a similar thing in the logo design world, which we can draw inspiration from. But if you want a challenge right now, try creating a mountain range with a glacier. You can find inspiration in the glacier macro by @JakBB. Another challenge is to create a multibiome map with at least 4 different biomes for example, let’s say mountains, canyon, river/grasslands and a desert or taiga.
And lastly, finding good peers you can draw inspiration from is always nice, so I suggest joining this Discord group.
I hope this helps and if you have suggestions, I’m all ears and would like to discuss them!