It always amused me how these characters stayed clear from people who didn’t have a surcoat but were in a guild.
Isn’t that metagaming? 
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Not defending the surcoaters but if they asked that to people who were guilded without a tabard it would be seen as poaching members which would be even worse
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If your members are leaving because, god forbid, someone ROLEPLAYED with them, I think your guild’s got bigger thinks to think about tbh.
Normalise indiscriminately recruiting irrespective of the tabard they’re wearing.
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“Sir, can you please step away from her ladyship, your unsightliness is liable to make her faint”
:twitches at every mention of surcoat:
Why surcoats anyway? Just call them tabards, tabards are a real thing.
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Because depending on definition, the WoW tabards may or may not be technically surcoats. Tabards tend to be open at the sides
https://i.mmo.cm/is/image/mmoimg/an-product-max-mobile/knights-plaid--mw-100965-1.jpg
While a surcoat has enclosed sides
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41utsMtt56L._AC_UX466_.jpg
then there’s some stuff about sleeves vs sleeveless, but that isn’t very reliable way to categorise them either.
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Until the game calls them surcoats and not tabards, I will call them tabards and look at people funny who call them surcoats.
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I’m also fairly sure the word is extensively used in ye olde song of ice and fire books. Make of that what you will.
All depictions of tabards in WoW’s related media, such as it’s art and CGI cinematics, including the BFA cinematic, show them as, well, tabards. Open at the sides, worn on the front and back.
The in-game depiction is a limitation of the game’s engine, plain and simple.
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lyghte be wythe ye - hark! begirt ye not yn the liverie of ye lorde? myne retinyne hath nede of galliant mene at armes…
But really, I feel like people take Stormwind and its nobility way too seriously. Stormwind isn’t King’s Landing, it’s closer to the city from Tangled in terms of both atmosphere and aesthetics. We should really just be imitating Disney instead of tired old RP tropes from 2014.
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Complete with random breakouts into song and coordinated dance numbers.
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It’s entirely something more people ought be doing. Houses as a concept just provide a very convenient ruse for the organization of RP and RP relationships, and then on an even larger scale an easy excuse for said groups to mingle. I understand why, because of prior renditions, that cynicism to the concept feels natural due to anticipation of toxicity but as long as you experience enjoyable encounters on the server there’s plenty potential for something more positive. Just because someone did houserp badly doesn’t mean it’s tainted for everybody else. Gilneas is a mad atmospheric zone, very well lent to a couple of different RP loci that interact akin to what OP mentioned. I get there’s a few lore issues but, honestly, RP is for fun and with this in mind I think it pays to be a little (within reason) forgiving with the whole plague issue.
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Well in that case we could also be retaking and rebuilding Lordaeron back for fun as well, huh?
It sadly just doesn’t work like that when you have a world with deep intertwined lore with each bit being suspended by multiple others. It just causes an avalanche of lore/cannon issues.
The only okay way I see for using ingame Gilneas would be an instanced version of some other, functional part of the Alliance kingdom, not as Gilneas itself. Gilneans are basically refugees, wether they like it or not. Any nobles are free to hold onto their legacy, but their kingdom is lost and will be untill the plague gets purged from their lands.
I think it’s a bit of a jump to liken roleplaying in a zone like Gilneas that is, as far as WoW as a game is concerned, accessible with exerting some kind of visible change via reconstruction in Lordaeron. You’re also forgetting people have done both of these things - e.g. Strathmore/Tarsias or the countless ‘reclerm lorderern’ guilds - without descending into squabbles over the conceivability of their concept within a lore that is, however purely you elect to interpret it, made up. WoW lore isn’t suspended by, or reliant upon, a few given guilds’ actions because it doesn’t exist and our interactions only happen in an imagined world populated by our imagined characters. WoW’s storyline isn’t going to change because twentysomething roleplayers on AD just really want to roleplay in the Gilneas zone.
A few people choosing to not let plague get in the way of them having fun isn’t spoiling the fun for anybody else. Not unless you really want it to spoil it for yourself, that is. Plus Gilneas is a world-over and behind a wall, a very natural microcosm far less offensive than headcanon in hubs such as SW.
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I think personally it’s more that it kinda clashes with the Gilnean narrative. For years, and still is somewhat, the narrative for the Gilneans focuses heavily on the loss of their homeland, finding a new place, but still a nationalistic pride in that they can perhaps one day return to claim it.
That drive for the king and his people to take back their home kinda gets undermined if you would put it in the same world as some of the rp head-canons. Imagine Genn after years finally uniting his people up for a good time to strike back. They arrive on the shores of Gilneas, ready to take back their home…
…and there’s already some random lords/packs there and it’s all just fine.
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What you are implying would be okay if the goal is to make a closed instanced community, since it being open for interaction basically forces players to enter an alternate timeline by accepting something that isnt cannon.
I imagine encountering these people IC and deciding to just avoid RPing not cause i dont think they are good roleplayers, but because what they are doing basically doesnt exist in the cannon timeline/world which my character is in. RP should be open and interactive, not some closed instanced make believe playground which completely and automatically rules out everyone who sticks to the cannon.
TLDR: This type of RP is non inclusive and non interactive. It rules out any outsider who sticks to the cannon. If you like to be non inclusive and make the RP community even more disconnected, be my guest I cant stop you. I just think it’s bad and that is my opinion.
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Personally I would be so blunt to say that this/that kind of closed of roleplay works alot better in an environment where the group only plays/has full control, so a story/roleplay forum or discord server or something similar.
On a public game-server it should in my opinion generally be sticking to the actual lore/ongoing events. headcanon to flesh concepts out are fine, but nothing that directly overwrites a complete zone/actual story.
Essentially, when in a public roleplaying space, stick to lore that everyone can join in with, since it is public.
I think your point goes both ways. AD as a whole is a “instanced make believe playground” and, as I said earlier, it’s only closed and exclusive if you want it to be. We are talking about a very specific concept of a Gilnean RP area. Gilneas is in a very unvisited part of the map; were you ever to find yourself there, you’d be making the same tacit dismissal of the canon as everybody else. Were you happy to do that, like everybody else, and join in then it immediately isn’t exclusive. You can only be excluded in this scenario by yourself because of your own personal position (which is fair imo). I could quite as easily say that your strict adherence to the lore is exclusive of my own particular interest in Gilneas, and that by you wanting to forbid any RP that isn’t compatible with your interpretation of the lore you’re saying the world is yours and all RP in it must be something you’d be happy to partake in. It’s never like that 
I nonetheless respect your position but…
TL;DR I think the concept OP mentioned does not practically impede or exclude anybody else’s RP but still achieves fun. You aren’t excluded by RP happening somewhere you’re never going to go because of your own adherence to the lore.
It is from BfA’s war missions, so they ought to be taken with a grain of salt, but one of them seems to imply Gilneas is at least reclaimed / restored enough for the Alliance to march armies through it into Silverpine. Likewise another, which is to be taken with a handful of salt due to it involving Warden Stillwater, has the Forsaken raising an army of undead to assault Gilneas.
But the latter does tie in with what we were told at Blizzcon 2017; the Horde is fighting in Arathi so they can use it as a staging ground for a future attack on Gilneas.