I'm an explorer, builder, and killer. Not much for socializing. I play a random gen map three maybe four times and then I start a new one. Even though the parts that build up the world are the same, I don't know where they're at. I get to explore all over again.
I'm hoping TFP adds a lot more options into the built-in random world generator (and speed it up). In the meantime may people have been using alternatives like NitroGen to get even more variety out of their random worlds. Some of what NitroGen does can be duplicated with changes to the XML files but a lot of it can't, and it is a LOT faster. You can create an entire 4k map in a minute and an 8k map in less than 5 minutes (much less is most cases).
Given the new slooowww progression and time to generate, starting a new vanilla world is less than appealing. NitroGen helps with some of that. In previous alphas, I would restart often.
I'm guessing what was meant was 4 minutes for a 4k map, 8 minutes for an 8k map? Which is a lot faster than it is now but still a lot slower than NitroGen.