On one hand, you say that people shouldn't expect so much from a po' little indie game, but on the other hand, you say that their expectations are "imaginary".
I'm saying that when people compare AoD to Fallout and Arcanum, they forget that it's an indie game. When people ask why there is no environmental interaction, unless they mean 'where are my chests with loot, bitch!', they expect way too much for such thing doesn't exist yet and we've never promised to do anything about it.
Of course, if all they are saying is 'but I wanted to click on that button!", it's a different issue that has nothing to do with environmental interaction.
I think you did hit on something earlier when you mentioned the illusion of interaction (I mean specifically in regard to running around maps, rather than teleporting to each NPC). Don't get me wrong - I used to love text adventures and MUDs, but the switch from text to point+click adventure wasn't seen as a loss by adventure gamers, even though the introduction of graphics only really added illusion at the cost of the sophisticated choices that were around near the very end of the text adventure genre. I understand the decision to auto-teleport - I get frustrated running around maps pointlessly as well. But for me, it's kind of like the discussion of endings the Codex had recently - there can be a greater benefit to something which in its immediate form is somewhat painful. Running around the Hive, or FO maps not only gave the good ol' 'incidentally discovered quests' and allowed the use of environment for foreshadowing (so much of PS:T in particular - all the little random conversations, all the bits of minor art, seem to foreshadow later plot points despite being trivial at the time you encounter them) - both of which I view as being beyond an indie project - but also the feeling of scale and world layout (which I feel is more a design decision than a resource one). The open map in FO gives the feel of the explorer, whereas walking around in BG2 and PS:T just helps set out the world by giving a sense of scale and layout. The under-Amn content of BG2 is a good example of one that would lose a lot through teleportation, in that walking through this ginormous, seemingly endless, underground dungeon beneath Amn does a lot to characterise the setting.
For a company that is actually TOO obsessed with creating illusion over content, one of the ways in which Bioware has declined is by gradually dropping the illusion of geography within hubs (first restricting the 'run around a giant hub mixing combat and non-combat quests and getting kind of lost' to the intro hub, then scrapping it altogether). I think I feel probably the same way as you during the mindless running around between stuff. The payoff for me comes over time - it adds up to a feeling of immersion and scale.
My concern is that it's also the kind of thing that could conceivably sink a project commercially, and deprive you of the chance to learn and improve. Under-estimating the importance of illusion is a really easy mistake to make when the current industry is so illusion-obsessed at the cost of meaningful content. It's also the kind of thing that a developer can learn from, if it gets the chance. I know that the teleporting thing has certainly made me half-hearted about purchasing, and I think it will have a similar affect on a lot of non-Codex (and, frankly, a lot of Codex) market segments - and that's even compared to mindless, stupid, annoying running without looting or environmental interaction to create genuine content out of it.
Then again, last couple of times I went to Europe, I preferred those walking tours that all the cities seem to have, even to GOOD coach tours. And I don't like walking. Just getting oriented in a place has its appeal to me.