Rediscovery

I've been levelling a new character the old fashioned way. Today, I ended up back in EbonHawke. How could I forget Gwen's ghostly flute playing when you commune at her marker?

Wow, just wow... I continue to be amazed at the richness of Tyria and the continuity with GW1. Bravo Zulu, ANET, well done.

Ive been doing the same. I discovered a section of the grove i swore id never seen before

This is one of the reasons I level characters 'the old fashioned way' whenever I can, even key runners. I make exceptions sometimes - like when I created characters specifically to be a weaver and a holosmith - but unless there's a reason I 'need' to skip it I like to take my time with them. I find the game much more fun when I'm just roaming around the map seeing what I can find and not worrying about any particular goal, and all the random things you can find and see along the way are a big part of that.

For example I'd somehow completely forgotten about the pipe organ in Caledon Forest until I was doing the heart near there and saw someone else playing it. Then we managed to work out between us how to unlock the chest. Well, it was mostly him because I'm tone deaf so I'm useless at those music puzzles.

When I have time I also like to run/ride to my destination instead of using waypoints - or I'll split it. I'll do part of the journey by asura gate (or PvP lobby > LA > gate) and then go cross country the rest of the way. I end up doing a lot of gathering on my daily achievement character because I do it along the way, and I often get caught up in event chains and stuff which were happening when I was passing.

I have done map completion 10 times, and I still seem to find something I haven't seen before every time I did it

Everytime I redo map completion I discover new things, found an organ in a house at ebonhawke.

Nice. I had similar experiences when I created a bunch of character races to experience the different branches of the personal story with. While I mainly did this to gain the associated achievement points, it was refreshing to experience the other races with their own stories and starting areas. (I had only experienced the game with my main Human Elementalist before this)