It's just... Wow.

I've rather slowing been making my way through listening to the audio books(tending to listen in burst), and while doing so I've found myself paying a lot more attention to all the surprisingly numerous examples of pre-retcon Traveling we see...

Not just to the fact that "that happened" though, but how it actually looked to of worked as apposed post-retcon Traveling, and... You know, I had never really even THOUGHT about it that way before. It just... Answers SO many freaking questions. To say nothing about one or two out and out plot holes.

Pre-retcon Taveling. Well, it's basically just bog standard teleportation. While slower to use(Pre-retcon Taveling seeming to be quickly spammable)the Portal Stones basically ARE pre-retcon Taveling ter'angreal. Well, extra-dimensional Traveling, but still more or less the same mechanics. Save for the Portal Stones likely being able to take more people along... I mean "not even one of the Forsaken could move an army with Traveling" being said by the same people who at the time saw said Forsaken as nigh godlike in power.

I mean... Just THINK about how different such a thing is to post-retcon's wormhole Gateways.

Pre-retcon Traveling was a useful ability strong channelers had, and perhaps even only the REALLY strong ones. Useful, but still rather limited in scope and application.

Post-retcon Traveling... Is just out and out faster then light travel, and an extremely versatile form of it at that.

And then the thought comes that... The Age of Legends. The Breaking... Most of the ground laying of WoT's world building was set in place with PRE-RETCON Traveling in mind.

And suddenly... Everything from "why would the AoL with all their tech have overpopulation issues, when they could trivially colonize other worlds?" to "How the bloody hell did ALL the channelers in the Breaking forget the SINGLE most useful weave for dealing with the Breaking?" makes a lot more sense.

While on the flip side, just picture the plots of any of the post-retcon books WITHOUT the ability to move around whole armies easily... Entire PLOT LINES just wouldn't of even of been able to happen. Yet even without them everything would gotten dragged out to hell and back in universe just be pure travel time alone. Well, ether that, or we would of gotten sick the overuse of the Ways.