I used to logon a few times a day to see if I could get some Alert XP, and I often got sucked in and played for a bit. For the past two days, I haven't even logged on to check.
Same reason daily daily certs only count if you log into the character. It does help players play. OP has a point.
I'm in the same position and I've been asking myself the same question others have asked here, "am I only playing for the XP/certs?" I do have fun most of the time when I play (the game has its frustrations) but it's funny that it looks like I needed the alert XP/cert bonus as an incentive to actually play though. There have been other things that have occupied my time this weekend.
Honestly I've been ignoring alerts since the new Esamir just because Esamir is my favorite continent now, but before that Amerish was my favorite continent and I mostly played on Amerish. I like the new system, problem were switching characters at the end just to get XP for the winning faction, people would log in just to get xp for something that they didn't been hell fight in. Alerts are meant to the factions something to comete specifically over. If you're logging in just to get alert xp for certs why are you even playing? I don't get what you're complaining about "I can't log in just to get free certs anymore? Well thanks a lot SOE I'm not playing anymore!" By the sounds of it nobody will notice you're gone.