Goblin Squad Member
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I personally enjoy games where travel is meaningful and takes some time. This gives more shape to the local communities and I think would be especially important in a sandbox. It also makes exploration a lot more meaningful as it takes time to get around the map. I could also however, see mages at later stages gaining teleportation spells (with the distance of the teleport directly correlated to the skill of the mage). Then those with the teleport ability could charge for their services, giving another avenue for "meaningful player interaction".
Has there been any word on travel in PFO and how it will work? Hopefully no more "binding stones" or "worm holes".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tyveil,
One blogpost that goes in-depth with the economic system is Butchers, Bakers, Candlestick Makers. In learning about the economic system, you can get a good idea of how important travel will be to the economy (with merchant characters transporting goods from one settlement's market to another, for profit).
The other blogpost to look at gives more information specific to fast travel, Time is he Fire in Which We Burn, which in turn references the blogpost before it for how some player-owned buildings interact with characters using fast travel.
Lastly, for information on the game world, check out Introducing the Crusader Road.
I highly recommend reading the corresponding threads about the blogposts, as the devs gave a lot more information and clarification in them (I usually just search each page for "Ryan Dancey" or "Vic" for the older ones. For the newer ones, search those and "Lee" and "Stephen." It's easy to spot them once you recognize their forum avatars, too).
To answer your questions quickly:
Travel will be meaningful and take time.
The ability to enter fast travel will never be too far away. During fast travel, players will have the ability to interrupt your fast travel and attempt to ambush you. In some cases, you may be able to avoid the ambush if you react quickly (your travel will be interrupted, but you can still run away before being engaged).
Local communities will take shape in settlements, because settlements will each have their own economy (no world market).
Ryan stated that there is not likely going to be long-distance teleportation, as this bypasses the fast-travel interruption mechanics or requires new mechanics to be put in place for it. (I will admit, I thought EQ was cool with Druids and Wizards porting people around for $$$; then broken a little by Luclin and totally by PoP. But that was a completely different game, where travel was only a timesink).
'Binding points' will be where you spawn after your character dies. There will be no reason to return to your corpse if you died via PvP, as after a player loots you (gaining 1-Some random items from your inventory), the rest will be destroyed. There will be no 'corpse camping'
I doubt we will see 'wormholes' for the same reason we are unlikely to see teleportation.