How does this prevent me from moving all my shiny HE gear to a low DZ lvl alt and just keep on wreaking havoc in DZ01? Rank really does not mean anything in terms of how powerful you are in this game. That is the purpose of the gear game. At best the rank will be indicative how much "effort" a player has put into the DZ, but it will really not say anything about how powerful that player is in terms of stats since stats primarily come from gear and not player levels or ranks. At worst it will not say anything or be plain wrong (think Twinked oyt lvl 30 DZ rank 1 player),

Gear is shared, levels are unfortunately not. Level restrictions only prevent purchases, not equipping purchased gear. So I'll just have one lvl 50+ char to purchase whatever I need and another low lvl char as rogue bait. That way there are basically no penalties for DZ01 griefing. Funds and exp are bound to that char and since I am low lvl my losses for going rogue are negligible. I already have HE gear from my main so I really do not need to kill anything except for players. Any good drops I manage to steal and extract from under their noses are pure bonus.

One not particularly elegant way to determine a players actual power would instead be to piggy back on the coming gear score functionality that will take a look at all gear in a players inventory and assign a score to it. Another way could possibly to make DZ ranks shared over all characters on an account, but that could also lead to some potentially odd scenarios in the sub lvl 30 brackets with a lvl 19 twink with dz lvl 50 gear (if such gear exists on lower lvls) leading to twinked out alts preying on players who are just passing through these brackets in hopes of keeping their dz rank on poar with their normal lvl.

However, I do not believe restriction or prohibition is the right path in the long run. In my opinion, it would be better to come up with interesting mechanics and content that will distract the presently bored players away from the low level zones. However, that means the developers will have to come up with new and/or expanded content on a regular basis. Otherwise there will be bored players going on griefing sprees again. Maybe remove DZ tech in low lvl areas and increase drop rates in high lvl areas and make players drop (some of) them upon death as a start? I don't really think that is the solution to rule them all either. It would probably take some focus off the low lvl zones short term though. But once they are maxed out on tech the bored top percentage will gravitate towards the easy prey again...
it's a vicious cycle of pain and grief ;p