They really throttle treasure and stuff in order to keep anyone's AL-certified character from being overpowered, and in my experience the AL really attracts a lot of powergamers who want to be the strongest in the party so I see the reason for doing it the way they do it, but I would agree that the rules could be a bit looser and it would probably be fine. Like let players jump in at any level, but restrict magic items to the ones you get as treasure in a module you play, or something like that. That would solve the problem of getting games together past level 5 because it's almost impossible to play high level stuff in AL unless you have a regular group whose GM just so happens to be an official one.
They really throttle treasure and stuff in order to keep anyone's AL-certified character from being overpowered, and in my experience the AL really attracts a lot of powergamers who want to be the strongest in the party so I see the reason for doing it the way they do it, but I would agree that the rules could be a bit looser and it would probably be fine. Like let players jump in at any level, but restrict magic items to the ones you get as treasure in a module you play, or something like that. That would solve the problem of getting games together past level 5 because it's almost impossible to play high level stuff in AL unless you have a regular group whose GM just so happens to be an official one.