In my opinion:
This one game called DAOC ( Dark age of camelot) did it right with something called rvr (realm vs realm) warfare. and they are still going today whereas a lot of other pvp centric games have failed.
Id love nothing more to have a red server, but that would be a bad business model for a game coming out of alpha.
Not to mention we are in a pandemic which has gutted our way of life for the most part.
In EQ2 days when we had nagafen and vox I think, it was a newish concept, even then though people only lost coin if they had any on them, maybe an odd heroic item, should they lose a fight.
It did not last long though in terms of a business model, even with those protections in place.
They tried 2 more times with its nostalgia/maint mode servers, TLE, it was around for maybe 4-6 months, even less the second time around. Then they tried a TLE red server on a limited time basis, which was a worst idea in itself.
Lots of games have tried to figure out the pvp formula but its going be an uphill battle when 50% of the customers are not going to get that same sensation the other 50% are getting. I mean they could do participation trophies I guess but even then its not as good as that first place prize.
So how do we fix that in 2020 in a pandemic?
Simple, people love being a part of something and misery loves company. RVR...
We all win or we all lose.
Maybe come up with 2 other factions, like Aliens and the other could be robots or AI etc lol.
So humans, AI and aliens wow now you could do a lot with those, lots of expansions, worlds etc. $$$$ big money!
Different strengths and weaknesses, well not to get off topic sori, but I think rvr is the way to go if you want this game to be around 5 years from now. IMO