No, it "shouldn't" be. WoD ships have no LODs, and some people think that since they're generally less detailed that this is acceptable. WoD can manage larger battles than, say, WiH with steve-o's capships, but in doing so it slows down PCs about as much as some WiH missions.
(Don't get me wrong, I love WoD, but LODs are kind of important)
Env mapping shouldn't be much of a problem from what I know. (If a specular map has an alpha channel at all, and most of them do, then envmapping is drawn for that ship; it's just that they're much more prominent on some WoD ships).
Unfortunately I don't think there's much you can do to lower the impact of unoptimized ships except, well, optimize tham.