I agree, in part.

Non-interactive travel time is one of the things I hate more in a game. I stopped leveling Archeology when I noticed that, while working on it, I was spending more time playing Zelda on my DS than actually playing WoW. The same can be said of some other things - combat in WoW, specially as a tank, is simple and boring enough that I could often play Zelda with my right hand while farming mobs for daily quests with just my left hand.

On the other hand, I find it important for my enjoyment of the game to be able to do what I want, when I want. The combination of LFD and dual specs actually prevented me from burning out badly in the middle of WotLK. Without them, I would not have bought Cataclysm - I would be long gone by the time the expansion released.

In the end, I'm playing a mix of DCUO and LotRO for the time being, and will buy both GW2 and ST:TOR. Unless one of those games surprises me, given the promised feature list, I fully expect to keep playing GW2 in the end - instant travel, free respecs anywhere when out of combat, classes that can fill any group role, free server transfers, all players granted identical performance PvP-only gear for arenas, non-random gear from instances, zero loot drama, etc, make me really interested in that game, since it will have about every convenience I always wanted in WoW.