This feels like we are talking, and blaming the symptoms of a sick-campaign.
Yes the new free-to-swap-to-aao-side lockout did exactly what most veterans could had predicted and took us back to pre-90min-fort lockout cases.
But as the game has long been in a "killing" mindset, naturally year by year more and more players who continue playing will have more BiS characters that dont need warcrests or Renown. So if killing is the thing to play for, due to a lacking campaign, boring siegesystem, and lackluster zonemechanic. Then yes the strongest on the server, will go whereever they are allowed and kill whatever they can.
Im not sure if these killers will ever play the campaign in the future, but if the rest of us do, and we tryhard the sieges like it used to be in Forts and zone pushes. Then maybe it wouldnt matter as much, if strong players swap side mid zone.
It is funny though, there was just beginning to be a movement of "where are the guilds who said they would crossrealm, now that there are no lockouts" at the same time as this started happening. First of all, I cant remember any guilds stating in the past 4 years that they would balance out the aao publicly. And second of all, well.. this episode
For transparency I havnt played the lockout system yet as I've always mostly stuck to one realm at a time for weeks/months. But this does seem like a counter system against pvd, but at the cost of the most casual playerbase getting hurtful realitychecks on where they stand in the food chain. I do miss the days where I had to interact and build synergies with allies to push back from a losing postion over months in LOTD or on the Campaign as a realm, to catch up to the enemy who was more organized. These days, I guess thats a thing of the past and only a romantic memory of the past. And we can just wait for stronger players to land on our realm and carry us as mercenaries
