As a relatively new player (6 months), I find your proposal to cap AA devastating. I play a mid 40s berserker and had my lunch handed to me by gear-twinked faction pvpers all the way to about level 37. That much dying gets very old. But instead of quitting, I spent hundreds of hours doing boring quests and repetitive writs to build up aa. Now I have a lot of aa and I'm tough. I dont get jumped near as much, and when i do, i have a fighting chance, even against a dreadnaught or destroyer scout on a level 40 guild horse (another shock to us newbies--to see a level 20 toon ride up on a flaming horse).
As I see it, the ability to work your butt off to get high aa is the only goal that makes SOE PVP worth sticking with. Now at level 44, I'm finally a match for twinked scouts and healers my level who have all the best gear that their level 70 alt's platinum helped them buy.
If you go through with this corporate driven (making it easier for newbies to survive so you get more subscriptions) plan, I'd feel like months of work to reach a goal were for nothing. Get rid of faction gear if you want to make the game more fair. Grant AA bonuses for tradeskills to reward crafting. But don't mess with AA caps. AA is the only equalizing force we nubies have. A warrior who trains and adventures for years is going to have advantages over one who doesn't. That's how good fantasy works.
I don't know about my pvp friends, but if you go through with this AA change, I plan to dump EQII and play World of Warcraft on a non-PVP server. Also keep in mind that we PVPers spend a lot of money on Station Exchange.
Moog