They really need to just remove the restrictions. Aether remains congested because people come at low activity periods and park their characters. So if these restrictions were to get the playerbase to spread out and stay on their own DCs and stop piling on Aether, that didn't succeed. Now Aether is being punished because we can't do things like have friends just hop over and join us or hang at our houses or venues because other people won't stay on their own DCs. This was not the solution.

Carrots like the ranked PvP could be. Or not allowing someone to create a PF if they aren't from the given DC is a stick they could employ. Non-DC players could still join but not create. If that wasn't enough, lock them out of PFs entirely as a secondary step. There are many other things they could have tried but they just plopped the nuclear option down and called it a day.