The Coldharbour start is the original (and lorewise and storywise, the most appropriate) starting area, and it takes you to your Alliance’s starter island after the tutorial. From there, you can wayshrine to wherever you want to go.
I think it's much better this way. I've lost count how many times new players are a bit lost primarily due to the lack of structure the Intro quests provide. I'm so glad they returned to the original.
Besides, after you've done it once, you can still skip the intro no?
No, it’s gone. Maybe Balfiera Island will be reused. This tutorial, the original, should have been the tutorial all along.
My suggestion was always that they should have had the Coldharbour tutorial and used the chapter tutorials as intro quests so we didn’t lose those areas.
I would really not be surprised to see an Adamantine Tower dungeon in the future. It's a nice size for them to reuse the location for something like that.
However, at this point, the only way to have a character in Balfiera is to have a new character who started the old tutorial before the patch, and then did not finish it. Those characters will still be on Balfiera until they leave (but the old videos we got from the portals are permanently gone from the game and can only be found on YouTube now).