This. They removed the Shattrath city portals (except Orgrimmar and Stormwind) when Wrath came out, and they removed the Northrend Dalaran city portals (except faction capitals, again) when Cataclysm launched. The previous hub isn’t supposed to continue to house alts.
It was surprising when they didn’t remove the Pandaria portals in WoD or Legion, and yes, it’s odd that they removed them before putting in what is designed to be their replacement in Orgrimmar and Stormwind, but we already have portal hubs in Boralus and Dazar’alor, so overall, we’ve not lost anything except if you have a lower-level alt parked in a place where they can get around.
There’s also been a lot of discussion about Dalaran in the Broken Isles and load times. I remember that during 7.2, my wife would always log out on the Broken Shore and just fly up to Dal when she first logged in. There were theories getting tossed around about a huge memory leak when Dal loaded up, because sometimes she’d be sitting there hanging on the Dalaran loading screen so long it would just never connect and she’d get disconnected before ever being able to log in. It was present to a lesser extent in 7.1, and got better in 7.3, but Dalaran does load slower than most cities.
We haven’t had the five-minute loading times that people are complaining about in quite some time, but it’s been a known factor even if the city’s portals are way, way more numerous and convenient than previous hubs. So I can understand that people who have those issues with it and their reluctance to rebind hearthstones for, say, bank alts that they’re only going to log into for a few minutes every day, because they’d have to wait several additional minutes without anything to show for it.
This used to happen with the original Dalaran-in-the-sky back in Wrath, too; my brother actually set his paladin’s hearthstone to Crusader’s Pinnacle and later the Argent Tournament Grounds, because Dalaran was so laggy (especially on login). I wonder if it might be because the city was in the sky and the game had to keep track of everything in a significant amount of space below it? I’ve no idea. But I get it.
I agree with Actasanc, it’s a bit annoying but it’s not the literal end of the world, even if you have to spend a couple minutes on Facebook waiting for Dalaran to load, or something. I, myself, tried to quit using the Shrine as much as possible back when it was current because it took my machine at the time ages to load, and then I’d have to wait for a huge lag spike to pass every time I did successfully zone in. It was convenient, but only just slightly more than flying to Thunder Bluff from Orgrimmar was in the first place due to loading times.
So I completely understand the inconvenience. And I know that this change is directed to funnel max-level characters through to the next expansion’s hub, because again, we have every single portal in either Boralus or Dazar’alor that has been excised from the Shrine, save Undercity/Teldrassil. Both of those are still accessible in Legion’s Dalaran, but other than specific holiday events like Pilgrim’s Bounty and to a lesser extent Noblegarden, there’s no real reason to go to either one after level 60, so even leveling alts don’t really have a need for related portals. They still exist and are accessible for those niche occasions, though.
It would have been nice if they’d put in the new portal hubs in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, but again, all this affects are characters who can’t just walk into the Portal Hub via the portal that’s already in those capital cities anyway. Two portals is all it takes for me to transit to Silvermoon from Orgrimmar, as opposed to hearthing to the Shrine, running around a corner, and into a portal there. And they will be adding the portal rooms in the nearish future anyway, so there’s a temporary amount of slight inconvenience posed to leveling characters and parked alts. It’s not the end of the world, just keep your shirts on. 