Guild Wars 2

The reasoning behind this is simple: It allows people to easily (and freely) meet up with friends and guild members and lets people to get back to earlier areas. (Especially since everyone tends to end up in Orr or some other high-level zone with no real pressing desire to go back to earlier zones… as the rewards from questing and killing mobs in Orr are far greater.)

Besides, there’s already the “exploit” to go to the Heart of the Mists and then get to Lion’s Arch for free. From there, you can map travel (for free) to the Asura gate hub and be in a capitol city with your only real limitation/cost being the loading screens.

It seems like such a waste to make capitol cities look so amazing with so little reason to go back there.

I’d even argue that map travel to Fort Trinity should be free after you finish the storyline quest… and maybe Ebonhawke too, since you can easily gate travel there from Divinity’s Reach.

Travel from city to city in the original game was free, and easily allowed for level 20 characters to go wherever they wanted. So you’d routinely see people in various cities, long after everyone had already “finished” the game.

Free Travel TO Cities