Because let's face it... all it did was add a button to the interface that was completely unnecessary. You will now automatically meditate outside of combat.

I concur! It would be nice too if we can have 100% regens per tick outside of combat. I just don't see the necessity of waiting for complete regenerations & skill cooldowns (see below) while not in combat.

Well since you mention this, I like to talk about other buttons as well.

1) Run
"You have a XX% chance to successfully run..." For Pete's sake, just close the damn browser and you have 100% chance to run, LOL. Closing the browser is instant & effective, making it particularly useful for Hardcore players in an "uh-oh" situations. Either make the button 100% chance to run with NO delay or introduce some sort of penalty for closing the browser during a fight. The former might require a lot of work because we have items that give % chance to run. The latter is debatable because one might have pc issue/crash/power failure/etc.
[Of course one can hit the F5 key (to refresh), works the same but it's not instantaneous. For people with slow internet like mine, our Hardcore characters will be dead long before the page reloads.]

2) Hide (for rogues, halflings and whoever else has it)
Same reason as why you choose to remove meditate/rest button.

3) Cooldown
Wait... what, no such button??? Nonsense!
Anyone out there tired of waiting all your long cooldowns before each battle? -Simply reload your character and... voila, all cooldown resets! But why punish us in the first place?
I beg you, developers! Please remove our cooldowns while not in combat. We could wait, but you know... .

4) Cities
LOL, I thought of bringing this issue up but looks like you did a good job ahead of me.

#1: Yeah, I used to have a mechanic to penalize players for killing the browser during a fight, but I stopped using it because it was an imperfect system. When this game goes 1.0 I will try to implement a server-side mechanic to prevent people from doing that.

#2: Basically true, but I would ruin rogues' roleplaying experience if I took it away. Clicking Hide makes it feel like you're really there!

#3: Uh, I think at some point I removed the "login" cooldown for all skills. It used to start some skills with a timer when you logged in. I might add that back in for anything over like 60 seconds.