Size of Alliance during the WVW rebuild.

So far it seems the amount of players being considered for alliances to be between 500-1000. I believe this will be a mistake to allow that many players into an alliance if you are trying to balance the match ups. As an example you can see that Mal once again has created a beast of an alliance ( read post Mag WVW). The alliance he created before decimated servers and destroyed communities and yet here he is yet again creating another beast and boasting.

IMO if you set the amount of alliances to the amounts posted, It will not be difficult for guilds to make such alliances to guarantee 24 hour coverage of full guilds communicating in TS, Discord, just rolling over the smaller alliances/ pugs who do not use the same communication systems.

If you plan on actually balancing the match ups, I believe you need to be looking at amounts below 300.

The problem is, not everyone that wishes to be in a WvW alliance is a hardcore WvW only player. I lead a guild of 207 people, and we field 15-20 during raids. Many of our members take a more casual approach to WvW, but still want to be able to do competative WvW. I see this also as a way to get my non-server mates that never wanted to transfer, to finally be joined up with us. This would bring potential new blood into WvW as we train them. By lowering the head count in WvW, it would force guilds to have to limit their WvW members to the most serious/hardcore only, and would give no place for PvX guilds.

How does lowering the player cap, and reshuffling them every 2 months make it easier to ensure coverage?

Alliances have to allow more than 500 players otherwise we'll just use a placeholder guild with 500 slots to dodge the alliance restriction.

Only way to achieve a smaller cap would be to make guilds themselves not be able to have 500 people. Which I doubt will happen.

Yeah 500 is the minimum. Its that or higher, or alliances are pointless... unless they add specific functions to them so that you want smaller guilds just to be part of one. Which would be perfectly fine, but you could still create a 500 man "alliance" regardless. Lowering the guild cap aint gonna happen, they would piss off so many PvE guilds.

Either way, arguing numbers now is pointless. We can already have 500 man guilds and they can already suck up all the good people and we could have a single guild making four 50 man zergs and still have 200+ queued. But it doesnt happen, because it doesnt work in practice. GW2 is a game, not a job. We are moderated by our own casual laziness. There will be strong alliances and there will be weak alliances no matter how you look at it. Matchmaking balances it all out.

Dedicated WvW guilds are normally fairly small, 300 would still easily accommodate a "mega" alliance of WvW guilds, thus the max guild cap as well as player cap. The 500 - 1000 is going to be casual PvX guilds and community guilds.

The natural law of doushy dynamics will make sustainability of mega alliances very difficult.

its not like more than 500 players play at a given time.

full que of all maps in 24 hours = 80 x 4 x 12 = 3840. max if each players play 2 hours.

WVW is primarily for big zerg fights. If someone wants small fights he can go to pvp. I think 1000 ppl per alliance is a very small number.

@etsmith.9025 said:( read post Mag WVW)

link pls.

My alliance isnt even 150 players.

Please know something before you speak on what it is I'm doing. I do not have a beast of an alliance. SBI + Kaineng has about 3 different alliances and a server community.

My alliance has 6 guilds in it and 4 of the 6 are on Kaineng. Why? because we picked a server to become healthy on after being on a locked server for over a year. My alliance of the past has never lost contact with each other. We have always remained related. My alliance of the past was made with this very system in mind and we aim to prepare for the release of alliances the best way we can and all of us do not reside on kaineng.This involves getting our old players who once quit the game to buy the expansions and get use to the game again. Its a process thats bound to take months which is why we choose a link that also nullifies being locked and stuck in tier 1 longer than 2 months of time.

Now this Mals Beast of an alliance isn't really a single alliance nor do I own it. The combination community that is SBI + kaineng is in fact 3 alliances and a server community + others seeking for a healthy enjoyable time in which they can log on and play when they want in a terrible game state.

• Alliance 1: (OnS, TW, eN, MI) on Kain
• Alliance 2:(AoEs, IV) on Kain
• Alliance 3:(korean alliance AoD, BB[Who left])
• SBI Server community
• Fate on Kain
• KnT on Kain

Every single community listed here is here off their own merits and the game state while meeting new people and preparing for alliances. Just by coincidence our individual plans have aligned us all unto SBI + kaineng (For 7 more weeks).Alliance 1 didn't know they were coming here until 2 hours after the relink because they wanted to be attached to SBI.Alliance 2 just so happened to be already on kaineng thus linked to SBI on relink with Fate.Alliance 3 was already on SBIKnT was on an island with no one to play with while preparing.

Take off the tin foil hats now if anything all of this is a perfect example as to why we need a system like alliances and to do away with something like server-links that allow for a near doubling in size of any given region or timezone as well as threshold.

Alliances needs to be greater than that of 500 not lesser based of the simple fact that a single max sized alliance would only equal 10% or less of a world. I think thats more important than the physical number of bodies. If I'm not mistaken that's what ArenaNet said or estimated it would be and I'm fine with that. Since the OP wants to use my history as an example who else is better to speak on it. My greatest sized alliance was when we took guilds and players from BG, JQ and TC and moved them to YB. That move wasn't 10% of a server nor was it 500 accounts. The difference is we moved to a server that was already populated which wouldn't and can't happen in the proposed alliance system. That was 300 players btw. Not the biggest recorded alliance btw. The server locked the next day and stayed locked for weeks after we rose to Tier 1 and after many guilds left. And Yes that decimated servers and communities as all moves under this system tend to disrupt and decimate communities. The larger the greater effect. Mine was no different and 1 of many that shaped the history of WvW.

As long as the alliance isn't on my server i'm fine. Could care less about a "stacked" alliance. cause we all know you're not getting great fights on a stacked server.

@"hunkamania.7561" said:As long as the alliance isn't on my server i'm fine. Could care less about a "stacked" alliance. cause we all know you're not getting great fights on a stacked server.

we are though. we're playing longer. Finally enjoying our time even if it is temporary. Players coming back to the game and meeting new faces. All this despite it being a stale game we suddenly find enjoyment in it.

From rational perspective, it is unlikely that "people" would be used as a indicator on the threshold. Rather, data value derived from specific formula which I assume will include people, play hours and play timing. This data value again likely to base on the total data value derived from the entire WvW, to get a average value against number of possible worlds. Through this average value and other expectations like number of alliance per servers and coverage considerations, then decide the data value for the alliance. To make it layman relate-able, they would then convert this data value into range of people but not fixed number of people. But, there is also a possibility to avoid PR nightmare, they would still set fixed number of people by averaging down the data value. Or perhaps has some ways to show the data value of a player.

I am very much leaning towards an alliance cap of close to 500 players and nowhere near 1000. When you consider that the cap is for active WvW players who specifically flag themselves as a WvW player for a guild in the alliance then 500 appears enough.

A guild of 500 should not be allowed to ally with another guild at their own will. A guild of 500 should be the cap. That 500 man guild should have to deal with random other guilds/players/smaller alliances being paired with them at reset. A 500 man guild is powerful enough. Allowing two (or more) 500 member guilds to ally at their own will could easily be a big mistake Anet. You have to understand human nature to win or your alliance idea will loose.

500 sounds like a pretty large number of players for an alliance already. Sounds like a good upper limit to me. IMO, the smaller the alliances, the better Anet can create balanced + fun matchups.

@Annihilator.2617 said:WVW is primarily for big zerg fights. If someone wants small fights he can go to pvp. I think 1000 ppl per alliance is a very small number.You're either a troll or have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

@coro.3176 said:500 sounds like a pretty large number of players for an alliance already. Sounds like a good upper limit to me. IMO, the smaller the alliances, the better Anet can create balanced + fun matchups.

^This. I would actually prefer a 200 member cap but I know that's not gonna happen because of Guilds 500 player cap.

@"Strages.2950" said:

^This. I would actually prefer a 200 member cap but I know that's not gonna happen because of Guilds 500 player cap.

That's what I was thinking but then people were saying "guild max is 500" To me I say trim the fat and lots of those guys are not gonna wvw if they're 500 deep. It'll prob be 500 for that reason alone tho which sucks. Oh well.

I dont see Anet making guild caps lower than 500 so I dont see alliances being less than 500 people per alliance. But I hope Anet makes 500 the max number of people per alliance. Then match ups will be as random as possible and that should produce the best results.

@Strages.2950 said:

@Annihilator.2617 said:WVW is primarily for big zerg fights. If someone wants small fights he can go to pvp. I think 1000 ppl per alliance is a very small number.You're either a troll or have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I understand people have different tastes. But wvw is primarily for big zerg fights.

The smaller the number the better it will be for match-ups, and dividing people up.

But, the community issue kicks in at some point. I don't buy the nonsensical arguments about community going away with servers. Alliances will foster deeper and more meaningful communities, unless...the player cap is too low to do so. 500 is right on the edge of that. You want room for a variety guilds and commanders, and roamers, and scouts. We're going to need robust and healthy alliances because that is where the next set of rivalries and motivation to "win" will come from, and yeah you can stack 500 hardcore players and demand players but in 5-8 hours a day in WvW and probably win with that. But the more middle of the road alliances(and there should be many more of them) will need those 1000 slots.

Mal's alliance got rolled over pretty easy in the Mag match-up so I wouldn't worry about it being some strong show of force on whatever side they end up on. I do agree that allowing up to 1000 people per alliance is a bit over the top. Reason being, we want to stop the behavior of how many servers act now. If up to 1000 is allowed, servers can simply re-ally with each other keeping their "server" together while adding in likely other servers whom do the same. Essentially what we may have again is a populated server + a few links vs another populated server with a few links vs another populated server with a few links. Isn't this what we are trying to get away from?

500 should be the max but looking to actually scale it down further.