I'd like there to be more to it than that as well. However its much easier to get to ally with Erudin than say, Newport. For the Newport Port Necklace you have to do tons and tons of faction quests to get Ally. For Erudin you just go to Warrens and wail on kobolds. I've turned in craploads of gnoll ears and bandit heads with my froglok and completed Ring 2 and am still dubious. I went to Warrens for maybe, 3 hours and went from dubious to warmly in Erudin.
Seeing as Erudin is one of the major cities and (I think) the only (non evil) newbie city that isn't connected by translocators it would be really nice to get a port item to there once reaching ally, but as of now it's too easy. Maybe they could implement a challenging quest for one or something. And if getting ally in Erudin were to get you a port without some kind of quest, Warrnens would be packed with people getting their faction up.