Aenemius.7609

Having had time to think, I feel like the best thing that could happen to encourage community buy in would be a staged roll out by feature. If this is dropped on us like a feature pack, it'll feel pretty bad, but if guilds get the tools to adjust to the change and ensure their people are ready for it, I think the changes overall could be really good. For example; drop the WvW guild assignation feature (perhaps even with auto-rep-over while in WvW) in April, then the Alliance system in May. Give people a month or so to set themselves up, while delivering ANet some initial adoption data for Alliance buy-ins, on which to base their first algorithm deployment. Once the community is ready, decide whether to go ahead with the new Worlds system - or, if it really doesn't work at all, just leave the new tools out there for players to use anyway, because those tools will be good news whether the new Worlds system is in place or not. Buy-in and adoption for this will be a really important indicator of whether it'll help or harm things.

This makes me incredibly nervous. WvW benefits a lot from stable, long-term commitment and coordination, the kind that simply can't be made in 8 weeks. How will we know which groups are good at what kinds of play? What happens if one world happens to get a load of highly active roamers, and another gets a load of zerg blobby guilds, based on the algo?Or worse, let's say I and my friends are both in multiple WvW guilds, which are cross-linked in a couple of Alliances, and we happen to get dropped into different worlds? Why would there have to be a transfer cost for me to play with my friends? Will there be an association system to ensure that people with a tangible link will remain so on a reliable basis?Who asked for this to be the answer? A reduction in reliability is going to harm strategic relationships and potentially damage the overall population of the game. Without more information on how this will affect the community I don't imagine a lot of people will feel good about this.Population clumping is a problem sure, but burning down block of houses to turn them into non-renewable-lease apartments is surely not the answer, and that's what this feels like.