Gone are the days of winging it to Dalaran or Shattrath to take advantage of the portals connected to every major city in Azeroth!

UPDATE: Zarhym addressed the portal removal in the official forums. It looks like class trainers and Auctioneers will be added in Dalaran and Shattrath! You can read the post after the jump.

According to a news post by WoW Insider, it seems as though the portals in Dalaran and Shattrath that lead to the major cities in Azeroth have been replaced by class trainers in the Cataclysm beta. In other words, if you want to pop between Ironforge, Stormwind and Darnassus (just kidding, who goes to Darnassus) quickly, you're going to need to find an alternate route. Obviously, with the entire remake of Azeroth come Cataclysm, it seems as though Blizzard really wants to usher their playerbase back into their home land, so it makes sense to take away some of the comforts that made Dalaran and Shattrath such fantastic home cities.

They do note, however, that with Cataclysm will come some more convenient methods of travel, like Deepholm (a new zone) having portals to Stormwind and Ogrimmar, and vice versa. We'll just have to wait and see what comes next in Cataclysm!

Zarhym's response on the official forums:

The reason the portals from Shattrath were not removed from Outland when Wrath of the Lich King released is that there was a new central hub with portals to all major cities in Northrend. There is no longer a neutral city hub which both factions will be using in Cataclysm. We want to ensure visiting the major faction capitals is still the most attractive thing to do in Cataclysm, rather than having people use Shattrath and Dalaran as easy connector hubs.

To make up for this, we'd like to add class trainers and Auctioneers in Shattrath and Dalaran for those leveling through The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content.