Etheri.5406

You can't do this as long as the majority of the WvW pop just transfers to get those rewards and be winners. That's the fundamental flaw of WvW.You literally P2W by moving yourself to a winning side for 20$... which constantly kitten population balance and the established communities on any server that "wins". Its a non existente problem, cuz theres already a solution.Servers have a population cap.Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahzzggazhazhgage. HAHAHAHHAAHHAHA. ok. nice joke. Let's see... Every "full" and #1 server in the history of EU WvW since HoT has received LINK SERVERS. It's nice to be FULL but it doesn't mean anything if I can still move there for 120g / 2 months.And if servers can't be "stacked" without being "full", goodluck my friend. I look at stats and I see servers at 1.8-2.0 KDA while being medium or high status. I see NOT ONE eu server on "full" right now. Balance fixed? Honestly, the idea that "full servers" prevent a timezone from being stacked or populations from being inbalanced is absolutely absurd. "Full" status relies on playtime, is godawful and fixes nothing. Please tell me how "full" status saved deso... Oh wait no it was linked with vabbi twice, still got completely overstacked, then never linked again while stuck in t3-t5. Instead they gave 2 cheap links to FSP, the second best server, to ensure the bandwagon goes there next. And no suprise, FSP was going to die too.Gandara full? Linked every time. SFR full? Linked. No really, how exactly does "full" status stop anything? Also being stacked or inbalanced has nothing to do with the amount of players... As crazy as that sounds.

You can't do this as long as the majority of the WvW pop just transfers to get those rewards and be winners. That's the fundamental flaw of WvW.You literally P2W by moving yourself to a winning side for 20$... which constantly fucks population balance and the established communities on any server that "wins".

Agree with you except the social anxiety part, you don’t just get over an anxiety and it’s a bit disrespectful to state otherwise. What people need is more acceptance and compassion. No they don't. I get that you don't just "get over" anxiety, that's fine. You should also get that if I give players the choice between joining discord and not joining discord, most of them will not. I happily do a training raid, but if I do it i'd rather have all players show commitment to the group and frequently I want them on voice so I can call out what they need to do. It makes the whole thing a LOT faster and smoother. Acceptance and compassion goes both ways. Not every group needs to cater to your needs, and if groups don't cater to your needs that's perfectly fine. If there are no groups that cater to your preferences then perhaps you are in fact too demanding. Acceptance and compassion includes understanding that sometimes... some groups or players or playstyles or ... aren't for you. I'm certain that almost all the players that refuse to join discords / ts's aren't having social anxiety. Most of them simply prefer not to, and that's fine. But you don't have to play with them.

To sum up all my posts, the central node of my thinking is: soulbeast with the recent changes rised up among mesmers, thieves, spellbreakers, holos, to be a cheesy low risk high reward spec to use in small groups or solo roaming; and I gave more than enough proofs to consolidate my words. Then of course ranger mains came calling it glassy, if you fail the combo you are done and dead immediately, when instead I proved many soulbeasts even if full zerk, they run durability runes, and even if you add up marauder pieces your overall damage is lowered by an insignificant amount when instead your survivability rise up. That's what roaming is. Fundamentally inbalanced. H&r builds, hugging objectives, ganking, permastealth, resetting, completely laughable damage and rock-paper-scissors style PvP. It's about avoiding even matchups and picking matchups you can WIN so you can feel good about yourself even if the matchup was won by default. The skill comes from playing patient enough to only pick fights you win. It's loved for exactly that reason, anyone can be a winner no matter how high or low your skill level is.That's why it's so much more popular than PvP. Because people can pretend to be good far more easily. But does that make ranger in itself OP? Well it's risk/reward is completely out of balance but that's true for almost all "top tier" roaming builds. As you clearly state, most "meta" roaming builds are all about high reward low risk. Reminds me of everyone running condi mirage when it was completely busted.

With this many fb running around I've pretty much given up on playing ele in WvW and switched to scourge and guess what? I actually feel like I'm doing a lot -- removing boons, especially stability and then ccing enemies with fear and I'm also keeping my squad alive through barriers. So many times I see bunch of red circles on choke coming from meteor shower I just laugh and put on my barrier and run right through, and if the ele is trying to channel it without stab I just put a fear mark on him for immediate cancel. This all hoping I dont die to retail too I don't agree with the person you're replying to. That said the way you describe ele in WvW is a L2P issue. You shouldn't be bombing the enemy group with meteo randomly expecting downs. Either you use it to trade meteo for space / their cooldowns or you coordinate a bomb with the rest of your group where you expect downs. You can't go drop a solo meteo and expect downs - that's just not how the game SHOULD work because it'd make ele insanely oppressive. FB being able to negate eles who don't know where to drop their damage skills for maximum effect but rather spam DPS on the zerg / melee ball is their goal. Even in full pirateship meta, the majority of the time you're supposed to control their RANGE which very very rarely has FBs / healers sitting on them. The more you beat enemy range, the more space you'll acquire for yourself. There are two moments where you bomb melee : coordinating a bomb with your group - combined with CC and strips from others- and the moment they corrupt your cleave will easily down players AND finish downs or the enemy melee yolo pushing you, and your melee countering their range. At this point you should use SOFT pressure and still keep main bomb for the moment melees reserve for eachother rather than instantly bombing - unless your range is strong enough to crack their melee alone. You shouldn't be dropping meteo's and be able to expect downs, even if they're perfectly on the group. Players that die to random cleave damage are bad pugs and a liability. Ofcourse almost all groups are full of bad pugs that die to random cleave - but that doesn't say anything about the viability of staff ele in zergs. Staff ele's biggest issue is how hard it scales with numbers and how effective it is against bad pugs. This means if it's viable in 20's, it'll be oppresive in 50+. For GvG, staff and ele is way too weak and won't be run. For general WvW gameplay - I'd say there are plenty of small zergs which literally die to 1-2 good staff eles because they just can't deal with the constant pressure due to massive L2P issues.

Just for clarification: Are you agreeing with OP or not? For 1v1 / duelling or small group roaming, not at all. Freely around the map in a vacuum, they still have strong kite but that's rather standard for roaming builds. It's strong, but not super OP. For free for all ganking while hugging the safety of objectives and groups, ranger is very safe for how strong it is. They have a lot more freedom in pressuring players and choosing fights than classes like warrior / rev / guardian / ele / ... These need to put themselves at risk a lot more in order to pressure or kill someone a lot more than rangers do. There risk / reward doesn't add up.

I'm afraid I cannot post in this thread by @"Gaile Gray.6029" 's orders.The amount of posts here that clearly show players do not know, understand or comprehend their own builds or the ones they're fighting is very large. It's impossible to discuss "balance" if you pretend you're fighting a class that isn't limited to a certain BUILD. I can say FB can give every boon in the game except alacrity at 100% uptime, including 25 might, do 2k+ breakbar dmg, heal very well, do 30k+ condi dps and 25k+ power dps. But the truth is it can't ever do all of these things at once. Except in WvW or PvP ofcourse. There a holo is a conversion bunker with 5 elixers and 4 exceed skills and arcdpsh4x giving them full zerk, commander and mender at the same time. Where a rev has access to 4 elite skills and a ranger has both 3-5 utility skills used for unblockables and damage modifiers, full zerk and defensive modifiers all at the same time! WvW is such a wonderful world. :)Before you die, blame the class and come to the forums to talk about balance, go play the class and figure out what it can and cannot do depending on builds. It'll make you a better player (omagod, that's elitist i just wanna play my reapur!). It's not that the meta is balanced, it's that finding a post on these forums that actually accurately describes pvp or wvw balance (much less gives suggestions to IMPROVE it without breaking other modes) is like finding a needle in a haystack. It'd be easier if most users didn't post about things they're not sure of at all. PS. If you're a person who takes pride in running their own, amazing special builds and you encounter someone with a build so good they completely slaughter you... consider having a look at the meta build for that gamemode / playstyle on that class. Chances are that... it's exactly that one ;)

How many WvW guilds with 500 people do you know? And how many of them are raiding guilds that would create an alliance because the guilds want to be together? 500 people is a ton of people and there is currently only one type of guild that could reach those numbers - and that type of guild is quite literally what an alliance is. Let's say we wish to have 10 guilds for an alliance. We give each guild 50 slots for players to fill and hopefully give them room to recruit or add members who return at a later date. We hit our cap immediately. If one guild thinks they don't need 50 slots and gives some back, but then suddenly discovers that they need them back it is now too late since the other guilds may have used up the slots. There won't be 500 players all on at once, and not every day/night either. Of those 500 players their times will be spread out over the week. By limiting that number to such a low number friends who show up in the a guild who have not yet been added to the slots allowed are now left out. This will split not only servers up, but guilds as well. This is a game killer overall. The server allowed all members of a guild to most likely be on the same server and be on the same side if they went to WvW. With the system being considered this will no longer be the case. Guilds will be separated by this alliance system. ANeT you really need to do some more thinking on this. I'd like to see this alliance system implemented with as little pain to actual guilds as possible. Which again begs the question... how many 50 man WvW guilds that want to be together do you know? Really? I can barely name 5 "larger" guilds (ie those that can field 15+ active people in a raid) on my entire server and I can guarantee you most of them wouldnt work together in an alliance. That's also linked servers, so we're looking at 2 servers... IMO you're giving a scenario that doesnt exist in practice and one that the alliances actively work to prevent - too much stacking. It's the same thing players have complained about for years and want to reduce, especially raiding guilds so they can "fight" (or at least that's what they say). I could also easily say well if 50 guilds with 100 players each want to play together, they cant under alliances, that's bad and limiting! But the very point of alliances is to make smaller chunks of players. Instead of one massive 2500+ man chunk like the current servers, Anet wants five 500 man chunks. The cap is there for a reason. Also in your specific scenario and if we're assuming active players and raiding guilds, even at a "limiting" 10 guilds with 50 people in each you just created an alliance that would DOMINATE any current T1 matchup on its own. That's how many people 500 really are. I agree with your point. There aren't even 10 guilds with 50 members actively raiding left on EU. That said, of course you can't name 5 guilds on your server. Every single guild except KALE left your server because of the amount of super-demanding overly casual pugs that would stalk them 24/7 but refuse to do anything that is asked of them. Sound familiar? Your pugs literally bullied the guilds they relied on to carry them out of the server, then cried and went back to PvE / moved out as soon as stuff imploded. Now your server might become a link server (soon tm, lul) instead of the stacked server it used to be. Your server had 5+ guilds that had 15+ members to guildraid for YEARS. It was literally the guild graveyard for GvG guilds for years too. I agree with your point, nobody has 10 guilds with 50+ members that actually raid WvW somewhat actively. But the idea that you can't name 5 guilds on your server is way too funny. You're a huge advocate of the gameplay these guilds dislike. You play on in the opposite style of what this server has been for years, until the guilds that made this server leave because it's literally an awful place for them to be, and then you state you can't name any guilds on your server...Probably shouldn't have created an environment in which no guild wants to play? Half a year ago you had RT, Kale, Kill, TS and AmP all actively raiding with 15+. All veteran guilds playing on your server with a pretty good quality too. It's not my fault the only guild left is Kale which is now 1/3rd kale and 2/3rd pugcloud chasing them. You keep ranting about pugs in every single post. I grow weary of it. I dont have any idea what you even mean by "huge advocate of the gameplay these guilds dislike". I run as a 1-3 man party roamer primarily and has been that ever since my primary raiding guild pretty much dissolved years ago (the main commander we had back then started up TA, that was probably still on Piken). The guilds do their thing and we do ours and they most definetly created their own toxic enviroment, more often than not focused around their leaders. If 15+ guilds leave because there is a 3 man guild running around (the horror, the horror!) then yeah... right... hm. The point was that this is representative for all servers, yes. Alliances will neither help nor hinder guilds doing whatever they want. That's not the purpose of alliances.Alliances won't balance servers, because they don't take the effect of guilds and organised groups on servers into account.

Well, if the large guild want to, they can just create a wvw-only sister guild just for their wvw players to select as wvw guild. Of course technically that eat up another slot.WvW guild isn't that hard to run either and I am sure any large real pvx guild leaders, if they really want to, can easily build up a large 500-man active wvw guild. Fortunately, I believe the leaders find no fun in that since the whole purpose of creating a large guild is to able to play all game modes while having social environment of consistent faces. However, the real concern shouldn't be any kind of 500-man active wvw guild but rather, a combined 500-man active alliance of same timezone, especially non-prime timezones since we don't really have much people in non-prime. Of course, some people downplay that concern, I am interested to see if such alliance really get formed and if it does get formed, how the players gonna react to it and how anet gonna handle it. bear in mind even if it is 500 active, that's not 500 in WvW everyday for hours each day, the majority of those maybe in WvW for an hour a day or less with a smaller minority in WvW for 3-4 hours or more each day. If anything an alliance made up of a single PvX guild would be weaker in real terms to an alliance made up of multiple smaller WvW focused guilds. That's where the WvW playtime considerations will take effect in future. Where the algorithm balances around both raw numbers and playtime. Bear in mind you can fully dominate a server even with 200-300 active players. If your alliance has 5 pugmanders and 200 players that will follow these 5 pugmanders, you already have more power than the 1.000 pugs. Because half the pugs will just follow and listen to those pugmanders, and the other half you can reliably kick because you don't even need them. You can literally control half the gameplay because you're the group that organises things. And most players in GW2 will not organise anything. They'll just scourge around looking for something to join, jump into. Even PPT wise, 200 active players are more than enough to dominate many pug-dominated servers. Sure, you lose coverage 600 vs 200 at first. But if you have 30 capable players online, you can farm virtually any pug blob and after hard-farming a server over the weekend they tend to magically all dissapear. By monday it's 300 vs 200 with one side having way more skill. And i'm talking about the 200 vs 600 scenario. In reality, it'll be 200+400 vs 600. A group with a strong, 200 man alliance is going to faceroll over ANY pug-based alliance without any issues. And most alliances will be nothing but that : pugs looking to jump in and leech. Because that's what WvW is nowadays. I don't disagree with what you're saying in theory, but that's just a L2P issue and pugs are not likely to be spending as much time in WvW as dedicated players so once they put in play hours into the algorithm/equation those will get balanced out. And my point still stands, a 500-player alliance won't have 500 dedicated players. And both sides will have multiple alliances, I seriously doubt there will be an alliance that is 100% random pug players, you might be looking at scenarios of 200 + 400 vs 100 + 500 sure, but your scenario above is unlikely to happen. Maybe you disagree with my terminology. Maybe you consider different skill levels. If I look at EU WvW, I don't see many organised communities and guilds left. If you look at "stacked fight servers" like WSR and vabbi we're talking about a core with maybe 200 players. 500? hahaha. Yet this core is enough to hard-farm virtually any other EU server if they want to. The same is true for some other servers. The majority of their kills and progress comes from the guilds and players that carry the community. Against pug zergs you need 5 good players and you win by default. Because GW2 WvW relies on organisation. And almost all the players in this game are casual pugs refusing to organise. They need other players to do it for them. Hell even then half of them won't. You need other players, communities, ... to tag, tell everyone what to do, teach them, make them play and so forth. If nobody does, then most players don't even bother and you will lose a LOT of pug activity. If players do all this and make players want to play, then you gain pug activity. Let's ask it in terms redditors would understand : Would you rather have 1 ravya on your server, or 100 pugs who play as much as ravya? I'd rather have ravya than 100 times more players. Because truthfully, he's worth more than 100 players. And I assume that, after 2 months, the alliance with ravya will have higher pug activity. Because he'll lead them, teach them and make them have fun. They'll come into WvW MORE because they know it's nice. Meanwhile 100 players without someone leading them can roam and man siege at best. You'd be lucky if you have 10/100 players capable of being useful without them being told what to do. Anyone who isn't interested in solo play won't stay / play because they don't enjoy their alliance. They won't suddenly become commanders that can stand up to experienced players. So as always, an alliance with commanders and the players to follow those commanders will GAIN ACTIVITY because pugs LOVE TO WIN.An alliance WITHOUT commanders (or maybe not so good ones) will continue to get rolled over because they don't have anyone to teach them better; nor to carry them. And slowly but surely, their population / activity goes down. Spreading out the "population" is irrelevant. The population itself is mostly irrelevant. Population is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. The population literally follows around "strong" servers and "high rated / PPT" servers... Yet you'll regularly see T1 "strong" servers lose their core only to bleed out within no time. Even now, the issue is not "population balance". The issue is a huge skill difference between players. Different expectations and playstyles which don't match. Population balance is only the result of the above mentioned issues; and will continue to exist even in alliances. PS. Pretty sure half the pipfarmers on my server spend as much time as dedicated players. There is literally 0 difference (in activity / play hours per week) between someone afk flipping camps and someone who's 7k rank playing throughout the weekend to reach their pips. And both are fairly common. But that veteran who's actively playing is obviously WAY more helpful than the pipfarmer, who's just taking up a spot and a lot of play hours for his alliance. ah you're talking EU, I'm talking NA, the situations are different.It's almost like we need to design a system that works for both ;)But surely, the same sized groups can dominate NA if needed. Would you rather have an alliance with popular pugmanders and some of their following or secluded low-end PPT guilds? Replace ravya with some popular and active NA pugmander. I don't know. Sehoon? Cloudfly? Would you rather have 1 sehoon who tags, or 100 pugs as active as sehoon who won't. What do you think will be the most active after 2 months, the server with 1 sehoon regularly tagging for them or the server with 100 pugs who are usually active but have nothing to do other than roaming / PPT / small scale. I think 1 sehoon >> 100 equally active pugs. I also think after 2 months, the server with sehoon would have more active players than the server with 100 (!!) more pugs. Population inbalance creates itself : most pugs who don't auto-win log off or go back to PvE.

Well, if the large guild want to, they can just create a wvw-only sister guild just for their wvw players to select as wvw guild. Of course technically that eat up another slot.WvW guild isn't that hard to run either and I am sure any large real pvx guild leaders, if they really want to, can easily build up a large 500-man active wvw guild. Fortunately, I believe the leaders find no fun in that since the whole purpose of creating a large guild is to able to play all game modes while having social environment of consistent faces. However, the real concern shouldn't be any kind of 500-man active wvw guild but rather, a combined 500-man active alliance of same timezone, especially non-prime timezones since we don't really have much people in non-prime. Of course, some people downplay that concern, I am interested to see if such alliance really get formed and if it does get formed, how the players gonna react to it and how anet gonna handle it. bear in mind even if it is 500 active, that's not 500 in WvW everyday for hours each day, the majority of those maybe in WvW for an hour a day or less with a smaller minority in WvW for 3-4 hours or more each day. If anything an alliance made up of a single PvX guild would be weaker in real terms to an alliance made up of multiple smaller WvW focused guilds. That's where the WvW playtime considerations will take effect in future. Where the algorithm balances around both raw numbers and playtime. Bear in mind you can fully dominate a server even with 200-300 active players. If your alliance has 5 pugmanders and 200 players that will follow these 5 pugmanders, you already have more power than the 1.000 pugs. Because half the pugs will just follow and listen to those pugmanders, and the other half you can reliably kick because you don't even need them. You can literally control half the gameplay because you're the group that organises things. And most players in GW2 will not organise anything. They'll just scourge around looking for something to join, jump into. Even PPT wise, 200 active players are more than enough to dominate many pug-dominated servers. Sure, you lose coverage 600 vs 200 at first. But if you have 30 capable players online, you can farm virtually any pug blob and after hard-farming a server over the weekend they tend to magically all dissapear. By monday it's 300 vs 200 with one side having way more skill. And i'm talking about the 200 vs 600 scenario. In reality, it'll be 200+400 vs 600. A group with a strong, 200 man alliance is going to faceroll over ANY pug-based alliance without any issues. And most alliances will be nothing but that : pugs looking to jump in and leech. Because that's what WvW is nowadays. I don't disagree with what you're saying in theory, but that's just a L2P issue and pugs are not likely to be spending as much time in WvW as dedicated players so once they put in play hours into the algorithm/equation those will get balanced out. And my point still stands, a 500-player alliance won't have 500 dedicated players. And both sides will have multiple alliances, I seriously doubt there will be an alliance that is 100% random pug players, you might be looking at scenarios of 200 + 400 vs 100 + 500 sure, but your scenario above is unlikely to happen.Maybe you disagree with my terminology. Maybe you consider different skill levels. If I look at EU WvW, I don't see many organised communities and guilds left. If you look at "stacked fight servers" like WSR and vabbi we're talking about a core with maybe 200 players. 500? hahaha. Yet this core is enough to hard-farm virtually any other EU server if they want to. The same is true for some other servers. The majority of their kills and progress comes from the guilds and players that carry the community. Against pug zergs you need 5 good players and you win by default. Because GW2 WvW relies on organisation. And almost all the players in this game are casual pugs refusing to organise. They need other players to do it for them. Hell even then half of them won't. You need other players, communities, ... to tag, tell everyone what to do, teach them, make them play and so forth. If nobody does, then most players don't even bother and you will lose a LOT of pug activity. If players do all this and make players want to play, then you gain pug activity. Let's ask it in terms redditors would understand : Would you rather have 1 ravya on your server, or 100 pugs who play as much as ravya? I'd rather have ravya than 100 times more players. Because truthfully, he's worth more than 100 players. And I assume that, after 2 months, the alliance with ravya will have higher pug activity. Because he'll lead them, teach them and make them have fun. They'll come into WvW MORE because they know it's nice. Meanwhile 100 players without someone leading them can roam and man siege at best. You'd be lucky if you have 10/100 players capable of being useful without them being told what to do. Anyone who isn't interested in solo play won't stay / play because they don't enjoy their alliance. They won't suddenly become commanders that can stand up to experienced players. So as always, an alliance with commanders and the players to follow those commanders will GAIN ACTIVITY because pugs LOVE TO WIN.An alliance WITHOUT commanders (or maybe not so good ones) will continue to get rolled over because they don't have anyone to teach them better; nor to carry them. And slowly but surely, their population / activity goes down. Spreading out the "population" is irrelevant. The population itself is mostly irrelevant. Population is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. The population literally follows around "strong" servers and "high rated / PPT" servers... Yet you'll regularly see T1 "strong" servers lose their core only to bleed out within no time. Even now, the issue is not "population balance". The issue is a huge skill difference between players. Different expectations and playstyles which don't match. Population balance is only the result of the above mentioned issues; and will continue to exist even in alliances. PS. Pretty sure half the pipfarmers on my server spend as much time as dedicated players. There is literally 0 difference (in activity / play hours per week) between someone afk flipping camps and someone who's 7k rank playing throughout the weekend to reach their pips. And both are fairly common. But that veteran who's actively playing is obviously WAY more helpful than the pipfarmer, who's just taking up a spot and a lot of play hours for his alliance.

Staff is a utility weapon. It gives the kind of utility nobody needs in PvE, but everyone wants in PvP / WvW.

Well, if the large guild want to, they can just create a wvw-only sister guild just for their wvw players to select as wvw guild. Of course technically that eat up another slot.WvW guild isn't that hard to run either and I am sure any large real pvx guild leaders, if they really want to, can easily build up a large 500-man active wvw guild. Fortunately, I believe the leaders find no fun in that since the whole purpose of creating a large guild is to able to play all game modes while having social environment of consistent faces. However, the real concern shouldn't be any kind of 500-man active wvw guild but rather, a combined 500-man active alliance of same timezone, especially non-prime timezones since we don't really have much people in non-prime. Of course, some people downplay that concern, I am interested to see if such alliance really get formed and if it does get formed, how the players gonna react to it and how anet gonna handle it. bear in mind even if it is 500 active, that's not 500 in WvW everyday for hours each day, the majority of those maybe in WvW for an hour a day or less with a smaller minority in WvW for 3-4 hours or more each day. If anything an alliance made up of a single PvX guild would be weaker in real terms to an alliance made up of multiple smaller WvW focused guilds. That's where the WvW playtime considerations will take effect in future. Where the algorithm balances around both raw numbers and playtime.Bear in mind you can fully dominate a server even with 200-300 active players. If your alliance has 5 pugmanders and 200 players that will follow these 5 pugmanders, you already have more power than the 1.000 pugs. Because half the pugs will just follow and listen to those pugmanders, and the other half you can reliably kick because you don't even need them. You can literally control half the gameplay because you're the group that organises things. And most players in GW2 will not organise anything. They'll just scourge around looking for something to join, jump into. Even PPT wise, 200 active players are more than enough to dominate many pug-dominated servers. Sure, you lose coverage 600 vs 200 at first. But if you have 30 capable players online, you can farm virtually any pug blob and after hard-farming a server over the weekend they tend to magically all dissapear. By monday it's 300 vs 200 with one side having way more skill. And i'm talking about the 200 vs 600 scenario. In reality, it'll be 200+400 vs 600. A group with a strong, 200 man alliance is going to faceroll over ANY pug-based alliance without any issues. And most alliances will be nothing but that : pugs looking to jump in and leech. Because that's what WvW is nowadays.

How many WvW guilds with 500 people do you know? And how many of them are raiding guilds that would create an alliance because the guilds want to be together? 500 people is a ton of people and there is currently only one type of guild that could reach those numbers - and that type of guild is quite literally what an alliance is. Let's say we wish to have 10 guilds for an alliance. We give each guild 50 slots for players to fill and hopefully give them room to recruit or add members who return at a later date. We hit our cap immediately. If one guild thinks they don't need 50 slots and gives some back, but then suddenly discovers that they need them back it is now too late since the other guilds may have used up the slots. There won't be 500 players all on at once, and not every day/night either. Of those 500 players their times will be spread out over the week. By limiting that number to such a low number friends who show up in the a guild who have not yet been added to the slots allowed are now left out. This will split not only servers up, but guilds as well. This is a game killer overall. The server allowed all members of a guild to most likely be on the same server and be on the same side if they went to WvW. With the system being considered this will no longer be the case. Guilds will be separated by this alliance system. ANeT you really need to do some more thinking on this. I'd like to see this alliance system implemented with as little pain to actual guilds as possible. Which again begs the question... how many 50 man WvW guilds that want to be together do you know? Really? I can barely name 5 "larger" guilds (ie those that can field 15+ active people in a raid) on my entire server and I can guarantee you most of them wouldnt work together in an alliance. That's also linked servers, so we're looking at 2 servers... IMO you're giving a scenario that doesnt exist in practice and one that the alliances actively work to prevent - too much stacking. It's the same thing players have complained about for years and want to reduce, especially raiding guilds so they can "fight" (or at least that's what they say). I could also easily say well if 50 guilds with 100 players each want to play together, they cant under alliances, that's bad and limiting! But the very point of alliances is to make smaller chunks of players. Instead of one massive 2500+ man chunk like the current servers, Anet wants five 500 man chunks. The cap is there for a reason. Also in your specific scenario and if we're assuming active players and raiding guilds, even at a "limiting" 10 guilds with 50 people in each you just created an alliance that would DOMINATE any current T1 matchup on its own. That's how many people 500 really are.I agree with your point. There aren't even 10 guilds with 50 members actively raiding left on EU. That said, of course you can't name 5 guilds on your server. Every single guild except KALE left your server because of the amount of super-demanding overly casual pugs that would stalk them 24/7 but refuse to do anything that is asked of them. Sound familiar? Your pugs literally bullied the guilds they relied on to carry them out of the server, then cried and went back to PvE / moved out as soon as stuff imploded. Now your server might become a link server (soon tm, lul) instead of the stacked server it used to be. Your server had 5+ guilds that had 15+ members to guildraid for YEARS. It was literally the guild graveyard for GvG guilds for years too. I agree with your point, nobody has 10 guilds with 50+ members that actually raid WvW somewhat actively. But the idea that you can't name 5 guilds on your server is way too funny. You're a huge advocate of the gameplay these guilds dislike. You play on in the opposite style of what this server has been for years, until the guilds that made this server leave because it's literally an awful place for them to be, and then you state you can't name any guilds on your server...Probably shouldn't have created an environment in which no guild wants to play? Half a year ago you had RT, Kale, Kill, TS and AmP all actively raiding with 15+. All veteran guilds playing on your server with a pretty good quality too. It's not my fault the only guild left is Kale which is now 1/3rd kale and 2/3rd pugcloud chasing them.

500 "good" players is... the entire high end EU population. And most of them hate eachother.500 players is what... Everyone in plat + legendary in NA? xD 500 players is more than enough to beat EVERY OTHER casual pug server in the game reliably, nearly 24/7. So how on earth you think 500 is too little for "competitive groups"... no clue.Besides, if all good players fit into ONE alliance... Who's going to fight it? ;) It won't be the thousands of casuals; they're too busy throwing a tantrum as to why it's unfair they're not getting rewards for awful gameplay.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah sorry, I didn't see ANY alliances refuse players because they're women. I have seen huge zergs of male players following female commanders, where if it was a male commander instead most of them would have logged off. I don't even know the gender of many of the players I regularly play with and lead for. If they don't speak and tell me, then it doesn't matter to anyone. Most WvW elitists judge based on what you say / do / play / ... and not based on your gender. I'll be elitist and toxic, sure. And I give no kittens about carebears demanding babysitting them and hteir special snowflake builds should be my hobby, because improving at their hobby is too hard for them. But sexist or racist? Nope. The only ones anti-communication are thin skinned pugs crying fire as soon as someone says they're not super duper amazing and the bestest pact commander the game has ever seen. If you're actually good, nobody will call you out on anything. There are plenty of female high end GvG players both in EU and NA. Every single GvG guild i was in had several female players. If you want people to agree with you, I hear twitter has lovely SJW armies.