Was about done with the game playing from green zones and not taking part in the territorial/political aspect of the game - each to their own, but for me that's the main selling point of this game. For raw skill-based pvp there are way better options in mmo and non-mmo forms - AO is kind of all about guilds colonizing the wilderness, fighting over territory and exploiting that territory as fully as possible. About the only law being the law of whatever guilds are in control - and all the pockets of lawlessness in between. I mean, that was always what gave UO its edge, minus the organizational/logistical demand in AO.
So I've joined up with a guild called KDS who are based out in red/black on the east continent in order to get back to the part of the game that drew me in originally in alpha. And it's a whole different game, for sure. Everything has much more of an immediate purpose. Again, non-meaningful/persistent MMOs have their place, but they also need to have way better gameplay in order to compensate. On the other hand, Albion Online can potentially get away with having pretty ass gameplay.
Thing is, KDS are part of such a huge alliance, that the red/black territories they're based in are often safer than the yellow zones my last guild moves through. Like, this guild is so over-the-top organized that it has created its own carebear bubble out here. I guess it's something that happened a lot in Eve too, where an alliance could lock down large chunks of 0.0 so effectively that it just felt like empire space. But it's definitely not a good thing.
So yeah, that's I guess my new worry about AO. That cooperation is too easy, and there aren't enough mechanics to drive guilds apart and make them fight. There needs to be some degree of entropy that prevents gigantic alliances being content with holding huge swaths of land. Right now, the fact that this means its members can tier-up insanely fast in safety, and build high tier gear easily, means everyone is happy to just chill and progress their character unabated. Maybe once people are capped there will be more thirst for blood - but then at that point, what are people even fighting over?