No gold should never have weight. You trade items you can't carry for money. Trading it just for a bit less weight doesn't seem appropriate. It doesn't add anything to the game and is just a hassle to keep an eye on. That said, please make money very, very sparse. I HATE when I can't buy anything interesting anymore because I have so much money that I already bought everything. There are really only a few games that have their eco system working. Make selling gear 1/10 of the buying price instead of the typical 50%, and keep the drops rather low. You should be forced to make choices, gear towards a specific thing etc. Optional, difficult quests can yield some cash, but I don't think it's a good idea to get an epic item's worth of money just for moving from a to b.
I think that usually has more to do with them not wanting to reveal high level weapons outside of their zone. I think its kind of neat to have a teaser preview even if you can't buy. On the other side of the economy, I don't want to be forced to strip every corpse and cart all the common gear back to town just to keep up in gear. It ends up being an unending game of inventory tetris. I like to see drops tend towards 'uncommon' and up rather than every guardsman having a basic chain and sword set on him.
