Here's 2 cents from a 'new' (18 month vet) player.
AE is great if you work it right, there are ALOT of farms out there, but as has been already said, if YOU pick the mish and form a team stating 'NON FARM AE team LFM' or somesuch, you can get what you had before...I, myself, LOOK for those posts. I seem to lack the skill for building good teams, thus people who expect me to lead a disappointed, but I have found some AWESOME teams this way.
That said, AE is, how was it put...? Bright and Shiny...yep and most of the playership has gone there, but that tend is FINALLY begining to slow, people are coming back to the arcs and mishes outside AE... I am glad for it because, I too, have had less luck finding teams outside. I am like you, I will exemp down to level 1 to find teamage, and have had to resort to playing...ugh, farms, just to have a team to interact with. But I'm finding more and more NON AE players now that the 'newness' is wearing off.
Lastly, in my short time on the game, and even before AE showed up, I have found that the server makes alot of difference.....some servers just don't seem to have people who want to team. Example...I can find teams red and blue side ANYtime on Virtue, same for Freedom, it's sporadic for Victory, Justice, and Pinnacle. I can almost never find teams on the rest, so I don't play em. Maybe it's just me, but that's what I've seen so far.
For me, like you, teamage is the way to have fun. Once I got my 5th level 50 (NONE of them farmed up), I had generally ran most of teh arcs coming up...so teamage is my best take.
What do the rest of you think of these theories?
