Full wipe zips are a gimmick and for people who don't understand recoveries and roms. Everything that a full wipe zip does can be done by the user in recovery or done by flashing a Rom.
Using the "date wipe/factory reset" option wipes everything in /data (this includes dalvik cache) and /cache. Then when you flash a Rom it will format /boot and /system. These are the only partitions that need to be wiped/formatted.