[carnificus]

Originally Posted by valondar

^

The game has made a point of showing us that if you log out in a non-inn area, your body remains in the game, vulnerable to attack. There was a bit where Kirito logged out and Leafa kept watch over his body and talked to Yui a few episodes back.

True, but that wasn't in a neutral city.

We've never actually seen anyone log out in a city before that last episode. When they logged out it was in the middle of a forest, probably inhabited by a multitude of dangerous mobs. There's nothing we've seen in the show so far that explicitly states that you can't immediately log out in a neutral city, the only thing that could have suggested otherwise was Leafa suggesting going to an inn before the servers shutdown, but that could be attributed to any number of things.