Yeah, well, 4e encourages a more strategic approach to LR teleportation. You CAN definitely use it to GTFO though, it just requires some way to defend yourselves long enough to cast the ritual. The basic ritual is Linked Portal, which takes 10 minutes to cast and lets you open a portal linked to any teleportation circle who's sigils you know. In this version the ritual is level 8, but it is limited to locations within the world, and there are wards which can block access to a given circle.
Note also that this ritual creates a PORTAL, which remains open for up to 5 rounds. You can peer through before crossing, and others, even your enemies, could jump through while it is open. So it is pretty useful, but NOT generally something you do in the midst of a fight, though note that Ritual Scrolls halve the casting time of a ritual, so you COULD teleport in as little as 5 minutes. High level characters with certain class features or feats may also be able to do it even faster, though surprisingly I wasn't able to identify a way to do that...