I would agree 100% with op.

A very clear example of this would be wow. If you've played it or are familiar with the dungeon finder, then you know what i'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, i think the dungeon finder is a genius idea, but a lot of people don't have any clue where at least half of the dungeons they do are located. There is no reason to. You can sit in town, when a group is ready, you teleport there. In such cases why even have open world zones?

I agree that to me xi had a perfect blend between travel and immersion. But that's my opinion. Having the option to instantly port w/e you want pretty much whenever you want destroys the sence of "adventuring" to me. I have been voting for the removal of anima since day 1. Let people port to a crystal maybe once every 24 hours, I could live with that.

One thing I read people argue against my point on this is that they don't have time, or don't want to spend time, traveling for "no reason". While i understand how it was frustrating trying to trek half way across the world in xi, even if you got a port close, you still had to travel, IMO online rpgs aren't for people with very little time. I'm not saying your time on games like these should be spent completely wasted, but isn't this type of game about exploring a virtual world? I had so much fun on xi sometimes just exploring zones, every inch.