Yes you have to wait a fair bit of time on EVERY toon to be able to be somewhat competitive with the other side, Also you still need to make a trip to recruit troops.
I also should point out that you also need to make the trip every time you want to que for a war front or Island expo...
Which is like me saying if you cant find your way around Boralus you really suck at the game, just because you have an easy time with it dons't mean that everyone dose, and considering that even after 6 months I can still find skeletons all over the place in Daz, I guess a lot of people suck .
Also the only thing you really need to go into the slums part of the city for is the BMAH which has an uninhibited path to it.... After that is just a complaint about wavy streets VS verticality (Both of which are mostly fixed with flying).
Boralus is a dump because you don't need to take a flight point to get to about half the things you need to do in the city? It's quite literally just following the road to your boat and skipping the stupid middle man...
And your only cost for that is you have everything take you longer to get to, and half of your things are inside one big building making it all on foot travel. Past that it's ascetics, and it's okay not to like a normal port setting (which is kind of a misnomer considering Proudmore keep is actually very pretty as well) over a Place room/Pyramid, but that is just taste, likewise someone can say they like a normal town over the flamboyant over the top troll architecture.