Heh, I could spend as much time talking about and hyping this game as I actually play... most because my net is screwy which limits my play time
"Travel Times - How are they?"
I just made a test. Running from the top of one of the continents, following roads to Ironforge, then taking the tram to Stormwind and run the rest of the way, took an hour.
You can get pretty much anywhere in fifteen minutes, depending of course on which gryphon lines you already have. Most flights take a minute or two, as do the boat rides between the continents. Few zones can't be reached with two or three gryphon rides and a short walk.
FFXI is ridiculous. It's really obvious when they put in teleports from one side of a town to the other, because it takes TOO DAMN LONG to run across (with multiple load times). Oh, and there are NO load times in WoW. Only short pauses when you enter an instance or switch continents, and Chris Sigaty claimed that it was because you are actually transferred to another server. If I got it right, Kalimdor, Azeroth and instances are on three separate servers. When the a server crashes, sometimes you can stay a while on one of the other two... you just see all your friends log off from the others.
Anyway.
"Exp grinding curve? - How is it?"
There are enough quests for you to take. By the time you finish all quests at your level in an area, you will have outlevelled it. I've only grinded for exp a few times when I didn't want to pull together a group for a few harder quests. Four-five big quests together with all the combat exp will usually earn you a level.
"Soooo, are Hunters not so good in groups? Or do they work as well as other classes?"
There are no differences in stats between races. A tauren hunter is just as good as a dwarven hunter, only five times larger. Pick your favorite.
As for grouping, hunters seem to work rather well. I haven't gotten my hunter very high, but lately I've done a lot of questing with hunters and there is no problem.