Because most players will simply skip all quests and secondary quests and either do corruption portals and expeditions over and over to level up making going into any other town that’s not in the middle useless. Once max level most will go north and do more of the above for gear and loot and simply go back into cities in the middle of the map for selling/trading thus again skipping the appropriate progression of the game leaving other towns even more useless and empty.
Game design, hand holding, streaming content on how to progress by skipping steps is leaving the game to have empty areas to the sides of the map.
How do you correct this now that everyone rushed to max level? I know more areas and cities are coming but will that help even out the playing field?