I haven't had a chance to read thorugh all 11 pages of this post, so if someone has already suggested this then I second it, but I see 2 real problems here:
1) Players perception of how hard it is to move from red->blue and back. I saw at least one early poster who mentioned how he had to get his VEAT to L20 to go blueside, which is untrue. You can go blue side (and vice versa) as soon as you can get to Pocket D (which I have done at L2, but I suspect you could at L1) and talk to null the gull, who will change your alignment to any of the 4 on command.
2) Ease of group invitation. If you are running your rogue or vigilante on blue side (which I do to at least get in some groups) you can't be invited by anyone on redside, even if you technically could group with them. The same problem shows up in coop zones if you are vigilante/rogue - you can only be invited by folks in your nativezones or already in the coop zone. If you know what you are doing, it doesn't take much time to travel red side but it still puts a kink into accepting invites.
We can fix one by making it a little more obvious how easy it is to move around. Put copies of Nul the Gull in atlas and mercy (obviously not offering to make you a full hero in mercy or a full villain in atlas) or even better, add the functionality to the P2W vendor - everyone knows to stop there anyway.
The second one may not be possible to fix, but it would be nice to be able to invite anyone who is eligible to join your group whatever zone you and the inviter are in. This would also make it easier to form up RWZ ship raids and ITF's for Cimmerora. This change is likely to be a lot more code intense and also a lot more lilkely to break things, but it would be nice.
Both of these options don't require designing new content, which cuts down on the work the homecoming team has to do. The only kicker is whether the code for handling invites is complicated enough that this can't be done and making sure you don't end up with full on villains in atlas (and full on heroes in mercy).
My 2 cents,
Midnight Mystique