When Luclin came out, the spires were on 15 minute timers. They'd only port you to the moon once every 15 minutes. Also if you were in the area of the spires (directly within the 4 of them) you were automatically ported.
They eventually reduced the spires timers to 5 minutes and forced you to hail the person at the spires for an item, which when sitting within the area, would be required to be ported.
I don't have a problem with the 15 minute timers, I do with the 5 minute timers. Once you got to the Nexus, you always had another 5-10 minute wait until you could take the spires back down because they never lined up perfectly.
In my opinion, the game went to wrong with the Planes of Power portal stones in Plane of Knowledge. That allowed you to cross the world in an instant, taking the massive world out of the equation.
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