It's a cool feature, though I think it's "lazy" as well. One thing I really missed about ToP was just sailing around to get to some place, finding that new type of Mermaid, Jelly or Dolphin on my journey and just exploring that "pirate" aspect a bit more.
Furthermore, the idea may seem to be innocent, but there's really, really many shortcuts you can take with the global dock and it makes some aspects of the game which are supposed to be hard or tedious a complete joke (i.e. 10 SQ Sea Tasks); which would otherwise either require a bit more effort and time or careful planning ahead by docking ships in various docks - which, again, takes effort and time.