From the latest 'Ask Us Anything', we've learned the following:

As long as you have visited a Wayshrine, you will be able to travel to it. Travel between Wayshrines is free.
Fast traveling to a wayshrine from anywhere will cost you gold, and there are limits how often you can do this.


So it's sort of like flight paths mixed with the hearthstone in WoW, just to make an example most people can relate to.


But it boils down to what was said between the lines.
The first sentence essentially says that travelling between Wayshrines is without any restrictions at all.
The second sentence says that, while travel between Wayshrines is unrestricted; travel to Wayshrines is restricted.

In my opinion, fast travel means the following:

+ Efficient form of travel

• Saves you time (crucial for a lot of players)

+ Gets you somewhere, fast, allowing you to transition seamlessly between areas that are nice in your opinion

+ Removes the potential future demand for flying mounts, saving us from that awful concept

- Can counteract the immersive elements of the game, because:

• Casual teleportation is a huge source of power and doesn't really make sense even in a fantasy setting
  
• Might have a similar effect to flying mounts, removing people from the world to some degree

- Can remove the sense of danger from the world, because:

• You no longer have to face certain monsters or areas unless you want to

- Can distort the balance between challenge and reward;

• Gameplay is like life - you must go through tedious bits to fully appreciate the good bits; not all gamers realise this, but every designer has to
  
• The game might feel too uninspiring after a while, as you just portal hop to every important location and portal hop back
  
• Diablo 3 nearly erred in this way by having a Nephalem's Cube in the beta, allowing people to sell loot without leaving the battle

To make the most of the good bits, and reduce the impact of the bad bits, I suggest the following...

If indeed they do choose to have a cooldown on 'wayshrining', it should be dynamic and matter. There shouldn't be a restriction on using them, ever. But there should be effects you might want to consider before jumping.

Let's say you have an hour-long 'Wayshrine buff', which is active one you jump through a gate. This persists through the hour, and doesn't disappear until the timer has run out, like Desertion debuffs in WoW.

Let's call it 'Fast traveller'.

The 'Fast traveller' buff should be about transportation, and it should be what lets you decide on whether it is appropriate for a Wayshrine-jump or not at any given moment.

• Teleporting once gives you the 'Fast traveller' buff, which comes with 20% faster run/walk speed. This buff vanishes after 60 minutes.

• Teleporting twice (within the hour) reduces that effect to 10%.

• Teleporting three times (within the hour) removes the benefit of the buff; instead it slows run/walk speed by 5%.

• Teleporting four times (etc.) increases the negative run/walk speed effect to a maximum of 90%, making you really slow until the hour has passed.

The purpose of this system is to encourage people using a Wayshrine to get to their destination once - and then travel around by foot, questing and what have you.
Give the player its destination, but don't give it the world.

Exploitation of the Wayshrines, i.e. just hopping around everywhere, should be discouraged. It would make the gameplay too fast, the content too brief, and possibly boost inflation as people gather materials.

But use of Wayshrines should not be forbidden, so a timer forbidding you to jump at all would be bad in my opinion.

Furthermore, I think a good, solid, system of roads are needed to make this system even better. If it's simply enough to ride along the main road and follow the signs to your destination, people will feel encouraged to travel by foot.

Your thoughts?

like I've just written in the other thread:

here comes my explanation if there is no other in the game:
there were spells called 'almsivi intervention' and 'divine intervention' in Morrowind which teleported you to the next temple of the appropriate religion.
so it's just a prayer to the gods that are willing to help you once a day


the gods and especially their shrines were always a big part of The Elder Scrolls, leaving them out would be like leaving out shields.

Thanks for that delightful input.

Do we know this is ZOS's intention with the Wayshrines, though?