I can only agree with the OP on this topic. I think that any decision that prevents you from playing with your friends in an mmo is a bad one. The entire reason that I play this type of game is to interact with other people so I just don't see the point of forcing people to separate and play with strangers essentially. Also, if you change your allegiance to another GC you lose all of your current progress in pvp so that really doesn't feel like a viable option to me. In my opinion you should be able to play all types of content with people on your friends list or in your FC.

It could easily be worked into the lore with a little effort, allow people to temporarily become mercs for example. To me the lore surrounding this content is not that strong to begin with and it feels like every time they do something that a lot of players don't like they point their finger at the lore and try to act like it's impossible to change/work around when it really isn't.