Inconveniences can be used as tools to add pacing to games, even mmos. The types of inconveniences you add are very important too, and the way you limit inconveniences is additionally as important.

Getting a group to tackle a dungeon, for example, is an inconvenience, but it also helps establish other game elements important to an mmo like social aspects and understanding other classes and their abilities better. When you accomplish something you can only do with a full group, then you also have a sense of that accomplishment. That's not to say you can't accomplish things solo, but that's why solo things are relegated to lesser events, like leveling up.

The way the current world design and transportation systems involved means abolishing anima makes no sense. I find it hard to believe people can pass judgement on whether anima can stay or go for 2.0 based on what little we know about the scale of 2.0's environment and the transportation systems set up.

The correct balance is one which makes traveling an adventure, and something that fosters exploration, and avoids the trappings of linearity and making everything instantly accessible, but doesn't mean going from the United States to Canada sends one on a trip that involves going over Antarctica to reach Canada. There is a balance that must be maintained or else something doesn't just become an inconvenience, but a complete waste a time. For example, currently organizing a group in Ul'dah to go to Darkhold without anima would be a complete waste of time. The travel distance, one which has no challenges, and one which fosters no exploration would actually take longer than Darkhold. That's not a good design decision, and if one of those people has internet problems or an emergency, it's all the way back to Ul'dah you go. It could be devastating to your group, and at the least it's a complete waste of over an hour. These are the kinds of mistakes FFXI made that turned away so many players, despite its moderate success as a title.

FFXIV 1.0 can't exist without anima, I don't know about FFXIV 2.0.