Well not only will the animation be speeding up but we are going to be almost doubling base movement speed in the next patch. It is a big world but you will be surprised how small it seems when your running around with a travel power lol.
For the Shift/scroll thing, the whole movement system will be changing not in the next patch but in the future, I think you will enjoy it.
Once we roll out the next section of the map we will be updating the map. Currently a lot of the POI's will be changing, so look forward to that as well.