Of course I don't know , because I wasnt here, but I doubt that what you describe, happened from the beginning.
It would have taken a while to have worked out how the game works, and why would they want to move even if they could?
There were no drakkars then, and the novice jump, at least when I started playing, was only available if you were less than palace 5.
Susequently, what you described used to be attempted, with varying degrees of sucess, but its not so easy,if at all, to do now, there are restrictions on moving to a brand new kingdom, and there's limits on what resources you can take, and as was pointed out to you by theraw22 ,there's competition against all the others who have thought .......
'I have this brilliant plan, that nobody else has thought of so its bound to work'
'OOPS I just told everyone.'