The "official" realms do things the way describe and IMHO its terrible. You can download Isle of Kandor and see for yourself.
Using a smart image with pins for navigation sounds great in theory until you actually do it. The problem is pins don't have permanent labels only tooltips that only show up if you haver over them. And maps of any size tend to get lots and lots of pins.
For instance:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8p7j49o1y...22.40.png?dl=0