Interesting yes, but fun?
Your friend is doing a quest in the Eternal mountains of Doom on the edge of the world and you're in The glorious city of the Trolls. You want to go hunting together with your friend, how do you meet up with him? You don't know where he is, and he doesn't know what you want, where you are, etc. At the moment this would not be a problem, but when Planeshift is ready with all it's maps/levels and the game gets really crouded, that will be a problem. In the end, people would just discuss where they are to meet up in the game in IRC or teamspeak, and the removing of the /tells wouldn't have any effect at all except for being an annoyance.