Yea, being handily beaten with a plethora of words in 3, 2, 1...
(Also you're still a hipster Lithose.
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Travel is boring no matter what you do and no one likes doing it. The purpose for travel times is to create different local zones of activity like in EVE or to facilitate size and scope like in WOW (pre flying mounts). So the object is to make it the least pain in the ass as possible.
As for instant travel ect (Just expounding on what you were saying, Draeg). UO felt like a really big place, but it also had one of the most convenient and exploitable instant travel systems around. As someone said earlier, it's about "internal consistency". In UO, you had land, resources, rare spawns, PKs and places you wanted to hunt PKs...In the end, even though you could go everywhere instantly, once you were there, you had to search around for what you wanted--it made the world feel big, because once you arrived, there was still a ton of land to see. It also helped that not every part of the world was designed to be useful BUT it COULD be useful to players--so it was always changing, which kept you re-exploring, despite being able to travel instantly.
I personally like EvE's system, if I were designing a game it would be more like that. Except I'd give ways to reduce travel times by charging big money, or through expensive resources. I'd want to equate long term travel with either time or money (because, well, time is money). A player doesn't always have time to put into a game, but it should feel like it was an effort to cross a great distance, you can simulate that feeling with other expenses. And as an added bonus, you can let player operated travel businesses undercut the NPC's (It would still be expensive, but less so). So as an example, I can get you through the blockade and to Alderaan, but it's going to cost you 17k. (Or in game terms, I really want to hurry to my group and do that dungeon, and I'll pay big for convenience right now.)
All in all, the most important thing is making sure travel is worked into your world. Instant travel can work....Slightly longer travel (Eve) can work as well. I kind of agree with you though, Draeg, I don't see
verylong times working--Unless you build the need for it into the world AND it's only done by player choice, and creates "conflict" or cooperation by doing it (Like a special set of resources that can only be carried on land, so is vulnerable to bandits ect)....In the end, making the world feel big doesn't have to require a ton of time, it just has to require some expense to the player to cross it OR there has to be a reason to go out into the land a lot--and that expense can be gold, or time and the time doesn't have to be massive, lets face it, ten minutes of travel in an MMO feels like completing the Oregon trail.
The only problems I see come up with travel is if you have the deadly crossing of instant, easy travel and large swaths of useless, uninteresting land (Like leveling zones). Then travel in your game is going to suck and you're making the world feel small, because most of it is useless background bullshit.