"Yeah stuff gets destroyed in the process but so what"?

There's your problem.

You wanted to put your dinos to the test? Start a major story arc where it would have made sense for you to march an entire army across the Island. And better yet, pick an adversary that would have actually given you a fight.

You guys don't know how to handle your PVP in an RP environment. You can't respond to every PVP or IC verbal/political argument with a base wipe, or threatened base wipe, or near-virtual base wipe. Why? Because PVP trumps the RP every single bleeding time.

You will make it IMPOSSIBLE to do high-quality conflict. You can't RP a rebel force, or a thug robbing lone adventurers or caravans. You can't RP an under-lord who refuses to cooperate with some greater lord's demands. You can't do SQUAT because the moment you cross the guys who think that PVP gives them the right to dictate literally everything, they are going to destroy your RP for their own jollies.

Let's take the Hobowood shinnanigans as a simple example, because it happened. It doesn't matter how arrogant your character is, or the fact that you had a physical standing army. You were both land-claimants in a kingdom, and rather than having the King settle it, you were going to literally march your entire army across multiple territories to claim land from another lord because you didn't want to pay a piddly tax or remove a building. At no point would that even be remotely reasonable in a believable universe, because that would have caused civil war.