Honestly I don't think the commnity cares about "group of players" -> server packing. AKA Wvw World Restructuring.
They care about Alliances and how they will work.
My suggestion is that Alliances should work like this:
Alliance is a collection of guilds. It has a leader. A guild can only have one alliance.
Alliance leader receives requests from guilds... this could be verbally or via in game mechanics.
Alliance leader approves guild request, and thus bringing guild into the alliance (only takes affect at next matchmaking).
Alliance leader can remove guilds from the alliance (only takes affect at next matchmaking).
A guild leader should also be able to remove it's guild from an alliance as well (only takes affect at next matchmaking).
Alliance population is capped at some number that makes sense. Population is counted by unique players from amongst the guilds accepted in the alliance.
For example if a player is in three guilds and all three request to the same alliance, he or she only counts as one towards the alliance population, not three.
Accepting a guild that would put the alliance population too high is not allowed. Guilds that join an alliance become alliance capped meaning new members can no longer be invited once the alliance population is maxed out.
Player alliance selection. If all guilds a player belongs to request the same alliance, then the choice is automatic.
If the guilds a player belongs to are in conflict for alliance, then the player becomes "in conflict" and must select.
When a conflict determination is made, the player counts against all alliances populations (as it is unknown which will eventually be chosen).
A player can go out of conflict by selecting manually selecting an alliance. Note this manual selection cannot be changed until after the next matchmaking completes, so it should come with a strong warning. The reason to do this is people constantly changing which alliance they are going to be in makes it hard to figure out when the alliance is full or not.
Going out of conflict removes the player as counting against the unselected alliances.
Any time a guild is added or removed from an alliance conflict determination for the players is recalculated (player can get out of conflict is a guild is removed from an alliance, or go into conflict if a guild is added to an alliance).
A players should have a flashing wvw icon to indicate conflict so that it is obvious action needs to take place.
If a player fails to get out of conflict, at the time of matchmaking whatever the mostly recently repped guild is for that player will be chosen automatically.
This automatic guild->alliance selection may obviously be undesirable and is the price to pay for not tending to your alliance selection.
I know this seems like a lot. What I am hoping here is that both main guilds and lesser/secondary guilds can nicely be managed into an alliance, and also the conflict system will make it clear when a player needs to "make a decision" and not be randomly assigned. Players will want to try to get as many as their guilds as possible to choose the same alliance, to avoid the "hey my friends are scattered across various wvw servers" phenomenon.
Then Anet can parse out the wvw playing time from the alliances to try to form balanced sets of servers (groups of alliances).
This is my 2 cents.
-Smould
I was place on Dragon's Claw I expected to be on First Haven (per DHU guild being selected for world restructuring) Yes, because I had trouble last time with world restructuring I tried selecting DHU again on Friday night just before reset to try to make doubly sure my selected guild was registered properly prior to reset... I think that is what resulted in my assignment getting messed up?
