Caliburn.1845

So RPers don't want to meet new people every eight weeks with the option/chance to RP with them, because those people are probably not RPers. But the RPers also don't want to go to the trouble of making a RP alliance because then they lose the chance at spontaneous roleplay and it would take some effort to actually make the alliance. So lets hold up the progress of a non-RP gamemode(WvW) so that RPers can have the chance to pretend to be a dolyak or a skritt with another player in WvW? By this line of reasoning we clearly need to make PVE raids and PVP more friendly to roleplayers. There isn't enough chance to spontaneously roleplay in PVP, and PVE raids need to remove all boss time limits so that roleplay is more encouraged. My tongue might be in my cheek. Maybe.

But roster size is related to guild purpose and how WvW functions. GvGs are small, so you keep a small roster. When winning doesn't matter, you prioritize other things such as GvG. But under this new system, at least when it begins, people will care about winning. And what do you do when winning matters? You run as many people as you can on one pin. First few months after release I was on Darkhaven, no where near a top tier server. And we still had 5+ guilds fielding rosters of 60+ members a night. As GvG has faded we have already started to see the return of mega-guilds that field 50 or more a night. SF, and TSYM for example. When this new system goes in, we're going to see more guilds break from the traditional 20-30 man roster, and get real large real quick.

Actually pugmanders are going to return with a vengeance if winning matters again. Guilds can only typically rally for a few hours, but pugmanders can rally for much longer. Within the secret places where alliances are being forged pugmanders are already being recognized as being extremely valuable, and each current successful pugmander is going to be courted by different alliances. Especially because a pugmander doesn't take up the alliance manpower slots that a guild will take. The most bang for the buck so to speak will be a popular pugmander.

That graph from Raymond is the best smackdown of Blackgate I've ever seen. But aside from any petty satisfaction from seeing our assumptions about population confirmed it leads into a feature that I don't think many people have grasped yet. Playtime, activity hours. So I get together with a bunch of hardcore players. We make an Alliance of 500 players across all timezones. To be in the Alliance you have to be in in WvW 12 hours a day at minimum. We dominate in Season 1, we have 250 players online at any point in the day. We queue all maps. We kill everyone. And the matching algorithm notes that. It assumes we are going to be putting in that level of performance EVERY season. So in Season 2, we get linked with a bunch of NA primetime players who play for 1 hour a day. They take queue space, they don't stay on pin, they don't run good builds. We lose Season 2. And that is what this new system if designed properly will do, create more balanced matches, more balanced teams, and more balanced population.

When the game first launched Titan Alliance won every match in NA. Week after week, month after month. Supposedly they had 15 guilds and 3000 members. They dominated everything. And then they started having internal issues, drama. Burnout. They realized winning in WvW didn't actually mean that much. So they broke up, scattered to different servers. I have no doubt someone will try to make an Alliance under this new system who's aim will be to win every week. And maybe they'll get all the hardest core players and best commanders. And maybe they'll win season 1, and season 2, and season 3. But they'll have to do with perhaps only a 3rd of their world's total population, while other Alliances will get formed to topple the first Alliance. I have never been more bored in WvW than when I was on the winning server. Winning is boring. Trying to beat an enemy that you've never beat before is fun. Sign me up for the Rebel Alliance.

Sure, you can build your alliance however you want. Be as inclusive, or exclusive as you want to be. You can have your super tryhard, only fight guilds and WvW veterans with 5000+ hours in WvW make one alliance. And you can have your random militia, small guilds, casual players without any sort of requirements make their own alliance. And then based on what you want from WvW, you go and find the alliance that is the best fit for you.

So lets look at how to keep a server community together under this new system. At least in so far as we can see of the new system. We'll go with the idea that you can have 1000 members in these new alliances. We don't know how many guilds will be allowed, but let us go with a safe 2 guilds. First thing I do is create two new guilds Crystalgate Dragonpeak Alpha, Crystalgate Dragonpeak Beta. I max them out to 500 roster slot size. I then add everyone on my server to these guilds. They do not need to rep these guilds, or play WvW under these guild tags. All they need to do is accept the invite into these server guilds, and opt for them as their designated WvW guild. It costs them nothing but a guild slot. Poof, the community remains intact and together. And now they have an informal server chat using the /guild chat in each of these guilds, promoting an even tighter better sense of community. Why are people scared of this? It is going to foster stronger more cohesive communities. And before you argue that some megalomaniac people are going to run these server based guilds, so what? You get to pick one that is run by someone you agree with and respect.

Considering that you can at a minimum take 500 players into your Alliance, you should be able to fit the bulk of any server community into your WvW Alliance and continue playing with them. You'll just need to have someone take the time to invite them to the same guild/alliance. And honestly if your community can't be bothered to hit the "accept" button, it probably isn't as tight a knit community as you think.

This is exactly the sort of structural change needed to vastly improve WvW. I support it wholeheartedly. Two general points I'd like to add. There will be stuff in this new system that isn't going to work right out of the gate, so please design the particulars of the system with flexibility in mind so we can fix problems quickly and adjust things later. Basically don't make the new system as monolithic and hard to alter as the current WvW system. Not just in terms of balancing a granular population, but also scoring etc. Second, since winning may actually mean something again. I suggest banning transfers to all winning worlds during the 8 week period. Basically this would help prevent a bandwagon effect. Transfer to 2nd or 3rd place world? Absolutely. Transfer to that world that is winning every week? No.