I have been looking for a good LotRO-related use of my iPad.... I know you're focused on Android first, but if you do hopefully get to iOS, please don't forget the iPad - the expanded size compared to a phone would be awesome for this.
As for your specific questions, I agree that zone-based maps would be fine given the intended functionality. Something to consider, however - if you do get the "where am I now?" functionality working, and if the Compendium or a similar resource ever became a reliable source of quest lists and related coordinates, you could imagine the ability to choose a quest(s) that you're tracking and have the rings/shading show up in the app, essentially replacing the in-game parchment map altogether. That's a lot of ifs, I realize, but just from a design perspective, if that ever became possible, it would be nice to have the seamless map to show distant quest-related points. That's a big frustration with the in-game map - you have to hunt for the rings in the zone you're in, and then if you don't find them zoom out and look again. Of course you could also address that to some degree by putting an indicator on the appropriate edge of the screen to denote that the location is in another zone in that direction.
I personally also think that a seamless map helps with world immersion...if you never zoom out of the parchment map and look around you can easily lose track of where different zones are in relation to one another. A seamless map would promote that world awareness, and a simple button like "center on me" would help with "getting lost" on the map.
A point in favor of zones, however - instances, and especially housing neighborhoods (low priority perhaps, but would be nice to have the ability to flag friend/kin houses, etc.), would not really be able to be placed on the seamless map, meaning you'd have to build the zone-like interface anyways.
I'm probably rambling, but I also have a thought on the problem of communicating points between the client and the mobile app - what if you had a lightweight plugin running in the client that could record the point data in-game to a file (plugin settings file, whatever) that the Windows client (the one transmitting the "where am I now?" coordinates) could read and pass along? I personally don't like the idea of having to pick up my iPad and point it at the screen in order to load a new point via QR code. Not as bad with a phone perhaps, but then phones can't be used as a real-time map as easily as a tablet that can be docked and placed near the monitor, which is how I would hope to use this eventually.
Hope this was helpful feedback. I'm really looking forward to this!
