The problem is much larger than the aether nodes themselves.

The world itself needs a reason to be traversed instead of skipped. I unfortunatly have to inform people often that this game is nearly 100% focused on instanced content and they have put the open world the created to no real use.

The only hope we have is if they have a shift in gameplay direction in the coming expansion pack, it's possible showing the current appearance of players burning themselves out on instanced and locked out content. You can only tell people how often they are allowed to have fun before they decide to pack up and go to a game that let's them play whenever/wherever with whoever they want.