Guild Cap for WvW is Too Large!

[neven.7528]

First off i'd like to say I am a fan of the world restructure system.  I am in two solo guilds, one of them is matched with a well balanced alliance (timezone + playstyles) and 1 other large NA guild.  We run 15-25 4 nights a week.  The other guild is on Lagula kraal, which is a heavily imbalanced server.  While quite a few are blaming anet for this, it is primarily a player driven issue, and one that anet could at least try to limit further.  As to why they are solo, its not really a hard lined choice for either, it just what they chose to do for the first iteration of WR.

The Guild cap is too large for the world restructuring system.  There needs to be a much lower cap, and I believe that it should be 200-250 members.  I understand why it was first set to 500, its easy, the already existing cap, and it is enough players to encapsulate almost any existing community there is.  How do you implement it? Guilds under the WvW cap already are opted in,  if they want to exceed the wvw guild cap and make themselves ineligible for members to set as a WvW guild, then the guild leader needs to unlock the upgrade in the guild hall.  It should be able to be reversed if your membership is under the limit.

So why is it too high? Its due to too many of the active guilds in WvW choosing to join up with multiple guilds of a similar play style and slimming down their rosters in some cases to do so.  Some have also treated it as finally a means to play with all their favourite guilds together, without the pesky server limit to keep them apart.  Nothing is wrong with this, but it can be a bit self defeatist in many instances when you have too many guilds in the same timezone.  Even if you do not play the same days, many members still log in and enjoy the game mode outside of official guild raids.

So if you have 6 alliance guilds with an almost exclusive fight focus, roughly with 300 active players in game daily, there will be 9 servers that cant compete with them (or more if 2 get teamed together).  Make the wvw guild cap 250, that will turn into 150 active players spread amongst 12 servers, which increases the odds of finding good content.   The smaller the alliances are too, the less impactful it is when multiple of them with the same focus end up teamed together.

Currently I know of 25 alliance guilds, and about 50 independant guilds on the NA side, but i am sure im missing a bunch.  I'll list the alliances i know about, its not to shame anyone, its simply to show the playing pieces anet has to use currently to try to balance.   I included timezones of the ones i know about.  Quite a lot of the alliance guilds are fight focused to varying degrees of casualness, others are friends made during linkings, or old server communities trying to replicate what they had.  There are also a couple who spread out their coverage to not queue maps, and some who paid no attention to how many guilds in a single time zone they could squeeze into a 500 person cap.

• [Btd] Battle Toads Alliance - BBC (NA), PPT (NA), JNT (SEA), MINT, rL
• [BGC] Alliance - ARS (NA), Blis (NA), LION (NA), Lost, PAN (NA), STAB (NA),  Sin (NA), TM (NA), VAL (NA)
• [BoBa] Boon Ballers Alliance - DC (NA), rV (NA), red (SEA)
• [CHZ] S M E L L Y Alliance - BOOK, CC (NA), CUTE, DETH (NA), ECK, SFC
• Cornerstone Alliance - APEX (NA), Bomb (NA), GOON, Hate (NA), KnT (NA), TKx (NA), TLC (Late NA)
• [DGEN] Ten Year GvG Vets Alliance - Bee (SEA), OP (NA)
• [FAM] Fellowship & Murder Alliance - NITE (NA), PACK (NA), PvD (NA), Rx (NA), SOCK (NA/SEA)
• [FITE] Alliance - BAAA (NA), BREW (Late NA), ERP (NA), Fin (EU), HoD (NA), KOHI (SEA), NEW (NA/EU), SMF (OCX), SUS (NA), Tv (EU)
• [GONE] Alliance - GONE (OCX), Oath (OCX), Rear (OCX), KAW (OCX), JIBY (SEA), FOXY (NA), KiLL (EU)
• [HEW] Honestly Everyones Welcome Alliance - AI (NA), CuR, NITE, SOAR (early NA), wHo (NA)
• [MAPQ] Even Numbers Alliance - CCP (SEA), DED (NA), EVO (NA), KnF (OCX), PTV (NA), RAWR (NA), UWU (NA)
• [MOAN] Perpetual Complainers Alliance - CO (NA), ShW (NA), SoX (OCX), WvW (SEA), ESP, Tofu (SEA)
• [NPC] Alliance - DTF (NA), Myst (NA), ROG (NA)
• [OJs] Freshly Squeezed Alliance - dfc, FAIL (NA), GOD, Grim (NA), HALO, JADE (NA), KOIN (NA), LATE (OCX), POP (NA)
• [OZ] Alliance - DOC* (NA), GOTL (NA), HELP, KUSH, Mist, PARA, TWIN (NA)
• [PAN] Pending Alliance Name - bad, DDOW, DUI (NA), eA (SEA), EWW, Kd, KND (NA), PUGS, Pump (NA), SC (NA), VIXI (OCX), XXX (NA)
• [PPT] Points Per Takedown Alliance - Salt (NA), FIRE (NA), Kill, AGM
• [Rats] Degene Alliance - GAL (NA), krew (NA), PoGu (NA), RISE (SEA), SF (NA), SPAR (NA)
• [SA] Sacred Alliance - BACK (SEA), BADA, BANE (NA), SV (NA)
• [SHNY] Alliance - BOOM (NA), FEAR (NA), GN, HaLP, inc, KOR (SEA), ND (SEA), SHLD (NA), TFOR
• [SKA] Sarmatian Knights Alliance - BQ (NA), HzH (NA), IoM (NA), IV (NA), JINX (NA), KoR, MoG, Sake
• [SoR] Shadows of Rall - FLUX (NA), DUSK (NA), Bana (SEA), FEAR (NA), GD (SEA), LEG, RE (OCX), ToA (NA)
• [womp] Wompwompwompwompwomp - AR, boys (NA), BOZ (NA), BUNI (SEA), EBG (Late NA), OG, PEKO, TWvW
• (unknown tag/name Alliance 1) - TFG, MAGI (NA), PB (NA)
• (unknown tag/name Alliance 2) - Xera (NA), SG(Skein Gang)

 

Edited July 1 by neven.7528

[shinkamalei.2574]

It's nice to be able to know just how many people condensed into what. It really explains the disparity of numbers on some maps and at certain times. Thanks 😄

[Dawdler.8521]

What's the actual player number of those alliances/guilds? 

I'm fairly certain sure that if one crunch the numbers, the average will come alot closer to 250 than 500.

[neven.7528]

You seem to be misjudging the roster sizes many of these guilds maintain to keep their raid attendance stable.  It is not uncommon to have a roster size thats 2.5x - 3x the average raid size for a wvw fight guild.  The more casual guilds can have quite significantly higher roster hit for their raid sizes, which is why many arent in these alliances, or in ones with just as few guilds.  Im not here to list off what every guild runs, but i've faced many of them, or been allied with them.  Raid sizes of 20-40 from a single guild are pretty common.

Edited June 30 by neven.7528

[Twilightzone.7452]

Dont see an issue when some want to squeeze one time zone (NA). I know its an mmo and all but people seem to forget at least the NA servers, majority of it is umm i dont know NA....

Any who, given the meta is now blob your opponent down after you lost one fight, it is no wonder a smaller guilds wants to join other people that run a similar time as them. In turn other people guilds do it also and we get what we have now. The COMMUNITY likes to blob, that's what alliance showed us (well  we knew this before hand but shhhhhh).

Now we have alliances that could be 500 cause almost every guild from "fight" to casual wants to blob.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, neven.7528 said:

You seem to be misjudging the roster sizes many of these guilds maintain to keep their raid attendance stable.  It is not uncommon to have a roster size thats 2.5x - 3x the average raid size for a wvw fight guild.  The more casual guilds can have quite significantly higher roster hit for their raid sizes, which is why many arent in these alliances, or in ones with just as few guilds.  Im not here to list off what every guild runs, but i've faced many of them, or been allied with them.  Raid sizes of 20-40 from a single guild are pretty common.

Sooooo you’re saying that guilds really only field about a third of their size, meaning a guild even consisting of multiple guilds when capped at 500 is probably less than 200 effective players?

Wouldn’t a cap of 250 just make them kick totally ineffective players to make up the same number?

Then you’d need to cap even lower to discourage that. Like 125 players. But then again, if that’s also maximized by players it ruin the whole concept - they could still field like 5 raids at once!!!

Maybe we should just cap guilds at 25 and avoid all the headache and confusion. 

[TheIceman.1039]

In fact, since Anet gave up on launching real Guild + Guild alliances, the direction of development could be taken in such a way that we finally get a game called "Guild Wars". In other words, we could focus more on having wars between Guilds. Purely Guilds as such would also be easier to compartmentalize into servers on a monthly basis according to their activity. But for that the membership number should be really lower.

I agree that 500 is too big of members for wvw Guild. Rather, it could be 200, and it doesn't even need to break the existing  Guild systems. (No one bothers in Pve if there are 500). Rather, give the  Guild leader the right to determine who will be among the 500 members who will make it to the 200 members who can join that X Guild in wvw. The other 300 could not.

[One more for the road.8950]

So, eh, I am not on NA but... how many of those guilds with "exclusive fight focus" actually had a lot of the same ppl on the roster when they made an alliance guild?

[Mabi black.1824]

5 hours ago, neven.7528 said:

The Guild cap is too large for the world restructuring system.  There needs to be a much lower cap, and I believe that it should be 200-250 members.

Welcome to the Common Sense Club. It's always nice to see another player join in on this blatant reasoning. Some of us have been saying this since day one we announced WR. Even the development immediately declared this number ''suspicious'' is ready to be changed. Here we are just waiting to see the development ''act'' when they have sufficiently observed this cinema. 

[Dawdler.8521]

24 minutes ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Welcome to the Common Sense Club. It's always nice to see another player join in on this blatant reasoning. Some of us have been saying this since day one we announced WR. 

Get all those saying 500 is too few in there and you can have the Common Sense Fight Club.

[gofriccurself.9037]

You don't like guild vs guild vs that one dude who killed your leader/egorl?

[Chaba.5410]

8 hours ago, neven.7528 said:

its simply to show the playing pieces anet has to use currently to try to balance.

I don't think the list shows what you intend to show too well.  It's just a list of names.  Doesn't show sizes or talk about how often they play or shared rosters, as Dawdler tries to point out.  Without better analysis, we still can't say what is typical.

[Ronin.4501]

9 hours ago, neven.7528 said:

Currently I know of 25 alliance guilds, and about 50 independant guilds on the NA side, but i am sure im missing a bunch.  I'll list the alliances i know about, its not to shame anyone, its simply to show the playing pieces anet has to use currently to try to balance.   I included timezones of the ones i know about.  Quite a lot of the alliance guilds are fight focused to varying degrees of casualness, others are friends made during linkings, or old server communities trying to replicate what they had.  There are also a couple who spread out their coverage to not queue maps, and some who paid no attention to how many guilds in a single time zone they could squeeze into a 500 person cap.

57 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I don't think the list shows what you intend to show too well.  It's just a list of names.  Doesn't show sizes or talk about how often they play or shared rosters, as Dawdler tries to point out.  Without better analysis, we still can't say what is typical.

 

Exactly what Chaba said. I'm a part of the [PAN] Pending Alliance Name alliance, which lists 12 guilds. What it doesn't list is our roster size, which currently is around 350 players. And the other night for reset, we rolled out two squads to cover 2 maps, one consisting of 40 players and the other consisting of 30 players. I was part of the 30 player squad and we were getting steamrolled by another alliance squad that consisted of 55-60 players on the map that night. But that's the community-driven meta now. If you don't bring a full map blob out to fight you get run over. Making alliance guilds smaller isn't going to change that.

You also seem to be excluding the fact that these alliance guilds are not the entirety of their shard. So making them smaller accomplishes what? The shards themselves are much larger than 500 players. But outside of the alliance guilds themselves, Anet's algorithm has never taken into account timezones, and this is likely where you're finding your great disparity amongst the shards. You currently listed 23 different alliance guilds, but breaking them up into smaller alliance guilds will have no bearing on whether or not they're all stacked during NA timezone, EU timezone, or SEA/OCX timezone.

[One more for the road.8950]

One of my accounts has a WvW guild with players a bit more skilled than your average random to say it that way, but is not a fight guild, more a roam guild. Where on average during an evening we have 5-9 players online in WvW. Now, the guild itself has more than a 100 ppl. Not everyone can be on at the same time due to work and other RL stuff, some can only be on at specific days, or have different times they're available, etc. And way more than half is on other teams or set a more fight based guild with steady raid or scrim times as their WvW guild, but we keep in touch in case we end up in the same team later on and we like playing with each other, and sometimes do small fights that we set up through guild chat when there's nothing else.

Just a random number of guilds without saying anything else about any data says absolutely nothing.

Edited June 30 by One more for the road.8950

[neven.7528]

1 hour ago, Ronin.4501 said:

Exactly what Chaba said. I'm a part of the [PAN] Pending Alliance Name alliance, which lists 12 guilds. What it doesn't list is our roster size, which currently is around 350 players. And the other night for reset, we rolled out two squads to cover 2 maps, one consisting of 40 players and the other consisting of 30 players. I was part of the 30 player squad and we were getting steamrolled by another alliance squad that consisted of 55-60 players on the map that night. But that's the community-driven meta now. If you don't bring a full map blob out to fight you get run over. Making alliance guilds smaller isn't going to change that.

You also seem to be excluding the fact that these alliance guilds are not the entirety of their shard. So making them smaller accomplishes what? The shards themselves are much larger than 500 players. But outside of the alliance guilds themselves, Anet's algorithm has never taken into account timezones, and this is likely where you're finding your great disparity amongst the shards. You currently listed 23 different alliance guilds, but breaking them up into smaller alliance guilds will have no bearing on whether or not they're all stacked during NA timezone, EU timezone, or SEA/OCX timezone.

While your alliance is sitting at a reasonable number, others are not.  Some are full and several are just at the point they cant squeeze in another active NA guild.  What the smaller cap does is spread out the NA guilds into more groups that can then be weighted as their own block by the algorithm.  It wont fix the over stacking blobs, but it may end up shaving comped players off several of them.

Here's how the alliances sorted this time around. 

• Abaddon's Prison - BONK, FAM, NPC
• De Molish - OJs, PPT
• Domain of Torment - MOAN
• Dwayna's Temple - SA
• Hall of Judgement - BGC, BoBa
• Lagula's Kraal - Cornerstone, CHZ
• Lutgardis Conservatory - WOMP
• Mithric Cliffs - OZ
• Moogooloo - FITE, SHNY, unknown name 1
• Mosswood - MAPQ
• Rall's Rest - GONE, unknown name  2
• Ruined Cathedral of Blood - SoR
• Throne of Balthazar - Rats
• Tombs of Drascir - Btd, HEW, PAN
• Yohlon Haven - DGen, SKA

Generally every server got 1 large alliance guild, but where the problem start is where the 16th/17th/18th (and so on) alliances are placed, so servers will have a greater chance of being overstacked in timezones if they are unlucky enough to be placed with another similar structured alliance.   The largest alliances are more likely to prevent this from happening atm as their block of players is too active to fit any other decent sized alliance with them, so their servers end up pulling from either the pool of large solo guilds and small alliances only.

Couple examples:
Mithric Cliffs: OZ alliance + WAR, SE and KSC
Mosswood: MapQ + CL, OhMy, UWU
(i do have breakdowns of every world, just send me a dm and i'll shoot you a link)

When we go back to 4 tiers, this will no longer hold true though, as the alliances need to go somewhere, and once again, the pieces to sort are just too big, like with the original host/link server system.

[ArchonWing.9480]

I don't think this is viable since we've already established guilds to be 500 and people are not going to want to split up guildwise. There have already been server communities that have been forced to split up already and splitting it up further would cause even more chaos. . Not all alliances take the form of guilds and shouldn't be balanced around that either. We are only using guilds because they are the current only viable method of making an alliance atm.

Also if we're talking about NA, as Ronin noted, this isn't indicative of time zone spread.  Keeping this focus on guilds is generally a heavy bias towards prime time.

Plus we cannot ignore the fact that some matchups are bad because they added an extra tier. Regardless of what you piece down there, of course population balance will be worse than before.

Besides, historically speaking what you wish to happen, will probably happen anyways-- as time goes on, things tend to destabilize and downsize on their own.

It is my personal opinion that this population balance act is a futile act-- Anet has neither the skill nor will to make it happen. It will inevitably where a case where everything stacks to the top and also traditionally the best method is just to let bandwagon alliances rise to tier 1 and stay there. Unfortunately with 4 week linkings this will never balance out. If this is the case, and Anet has no real intention of trying to make this more then at least allow people to play together because balancing this (especially ppt-wise) will never happen. So I think letting people play with those they want to play takes precedence over random empty borderlands being overrun when nobody really cares.

 

Edited June 30 by ArchonWing.9480

[Cael.3960]

Players who aren't in alliances, who aren't in guilds, who don't want guild-based communities or anything remotely like them have no idea what the population is like in many of these alliances.

In most cases, none of them have reached the 500 account cap they're permitted. One, because the guilds which form those alliances aren't big enough or active enough to have that kind of membership in the first place, but also because many alliances also want space to add other guilds at a future date. That means many run less than 400 just to have the freedom to include other guilds without forcing said guilds to kick players to fit. 
 

For many of these guilds having a 'stacked' WvW roster is less important than simply being big enough to be fully inclusive for the players within the Alliance umbrella. They don't want to tell guild members they can't WvW together because there's no room in the Alliance, so every inactive guild member or barely-active WvW'er is usually included as an active roster in the alliance regardless of how much they play. That often means 100+ members don't WvW every week, or even every month... but they're taking a slot regardless. 

What does this all mean?  Put simply, your 500 account alliance ends up having 200 or less 'regular' players, many of whom belong to multiple guilds within the alliance and that overlap fudges the potential numbers to be even smaller in practice. That's 200ish members who, if the alliance had any kind of planning, are separated among multiple prime-times. That means you might, if it's a particularly heavy stacked timezone, see 100 members online at that hour. Is it enough to que multiple maps? Definitely. Will all 100 of these members be available to play every single night at that hour? No. In practice you end up with 50-60 if they're particularly dedicated. More than enough to que a map, more than enough to put pressure on ques for a second map. But not so many that they'll easily overwhelm a matchup by pure numbers. In fact, the singles and non-aligned guilds who fill in the gaps will have just as many, or more, players when taken across all maps as the dominant alliance. 

 

Ultimately the choice to cut Alliance caps ends up having no practical effect on competitiveness of a matchup, but a significant impact on the wellbeing of the existing communities which keep WvW alive. Many of the complaints come from players who were accustomed to the background support of large, interlinked guilds which formed the backbone of their particular servers. They were dependent on that structure for years; relied on them for a stable population base, for guild claims, tactics, buffs and commander tags to rally around or take pressure off of friendly objectives by striking enemy groups/structures. Servers are gone but most of those communities remain, they simply go by the name of an Alliance. The choice to tear down the communities which supported them in the past because they couldn't be bothered to ask for a spot in the new one is beyond me. Literally a choice to bite the hand that fed them. But entitlement is strong with many of these players and maybe that's a reason Alliances is a bad fit for them. Communities grow when their members make an equal contribution to the greater good, most of these players can't be bothered to be that selfless. 

[Mabi black.1824]

12 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

It is my personal opinion that this population balance act is a futile act-- Anet has neither the skill nor will to make it happen. It will inevitably where a case where everything stacks to the top and also traditionally the best method is just to let bandwagon alliances rise to tier 1 and stay there. Unfortunately with 4 week linkings this will never balance out. If this is the case, and Anet has no real intention of trying to make this more then at least allow people to play together because balancing this (especially ppt-wise) will never happen. So I think letting people play with those they want to play takes precedence over random empty borderlands being overrun when nobody really cares.

Thankfully it's just a personal opinion. So let's see, let's set in motion the new mechanic of WR, which manifests a series of problems, whether unconsidered or unforeseen, with the result of obtaining a ''balance'' as before if not worse, while at the same time we erase any form of purpose/motivation of a server-based PvP game. And the answer here is that time will make things better? Shall we leave it in this state? Do we let everyone stack up? Also no, thanks

[Mabi black.1824]

2 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

In most cases, none of them have reached the 500 account cap they're permitted.

I guess you have no idea what's out there from your specific alliance.

 

2 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

That means you might, if it's a particularly heavy stacked timezone, see 100 members online at that hour. Is it enough to que multiple maps? Definitely. Will all 100 of these members be available to play every single night at that hour? No.

I prefer not to go into the numbers you indicated. But I can tell you what I've been seeing for the last 2 weeks. If your team queues a map, it's perfectly fine when their opponents queue only 1 map as well. But what we've seen is your team with 1 map in the queue while your opponents queue 3. If you see it happening all the time, morning, afternoon, evening, without ever alternating, then something is not right. I suspect your 500 player pieces somehow don't work as they should.

[ArchonWing.9480]

10 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

Thankfully it's just a personal opinion. So let's see, let's set in motion the new mechanic of WR, which manifests a series of problems, whether unconsidered or unforeseen, with the result of obtaining a ''balance'' as before if not worse, while at the same time we erase any form of purpose/motivation of a server-based PvP game. And the answer here is that time will make things better? Shall we leave it in this state? Do we let everyone stack up? Also no, thanks

You know that's a lot of words to say "You're wrong" There is literally nothing but rhetorical loaded questions tangentially related what I said, so I can't say much. Though I strongly recommend writing a real response if you want to continue.

But I guess that's a personal opinion too. Thankfully as well.

Edited July 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[Cael.3960]

12 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

I guess you have no idea what's out there from your specific alliance.

 

I prefer not to go into the numbers you indicated. But I can tell you what I've been seeing for the last 2 weeks. If your team queues a map, it's perfectly fine when their opponents queue only 1 map as well. But what we've seen is your team with 1 map in the queue while your opponents queue 3. If you see it happening all the time, morning, afternoon, evening, without ever alternating, then something is not right. I suspect your 500 player pieces somehow don't work as they should.

I can't speak for EU, so your mileage may vary if that's where you play. Maybe there actually are Alliances over there with 500 always-on members with absolutely no life at all beyond the game. That seems not only unlikely but grossly impractical for a number of obvious reasons, but I'm not here to debate outliers or lifestyle choices. The other option is that you could be one of those jaded players who didn't join an alliance and found yourself as filler in a bad shard. Rough stuff for sure, but that's a choice you make by choosing to go solo. Or by not caring enough to choose at all. . 

It seems shameful to point this out as I'm sure you should already be aware of this point, but if none of those players que'ing all 3 maps were members of guilds but were all sorted into the same team anyway.... you'd have exactly the same situation even if alliance guilds were capped at 100 or nonexistent. There's an element of randomness in matchmaking which can create 'stacked' teams with excellent coverage just as easily as alliances built for that same purpose. This often happened with links prior to WR.

 

Something else to bear in mind is that success creates success. If your team is winning the PPT, isn't getting stomped in fights, and has multiple tags on multiple maps instead of just one or two.... casuals will play. The fairweather players who won't play in a hard matchup will swam an easy one for bags and gifts of battle. With full populations across multiple maps even casual players can create the kind of relentless PPT pressure that makes a poor-coverage team in an unwinnable situation. That's why you see PPT teams with atrocious KDR climbing the tiers; their squads might not be able to fight, but they have multiple tags to gathers casual players and with enough supply in squad you can siege down/siege up anything. If you're already losing and the filler players don't want to play... you're left with whatever alliance landed on your team. If you thought winning against the odds was impossible with 500 of them on your team, I can assure you it'll be even harder with 200 or less who may have no interest at all in organizing randoms when they had to cull their friends just to play together. 

[neven.7528]

5 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

It seems shameful to point this out as I'm sure you should already be aware of this point, but if none of those players que'ing all 3 maps were members of guilds but were all sorted into the same team anyway.... you'd have exactly the same situation even if alliance guilds were capped at 100 or nonexistent. There's an element of randomness in matchmaking which can create 'stacked' teams with excellent coverage just as easily as alliances built for that same purpose. This often happened with links prior to WR.

While they may not take into account when people play, they definately take into account how much people play.   Splitting people into more groups will cause the groups who raid nearly daily to be distributed amongst the 15 world's first. As their wxp gain per member will be the highest.  Bag farmers outpace ppt players in wxp gain so they will be distributed first, more casual  guilds will be distributed last regardless of play style.  While we don't know the exact method of their distribution, it should still be distributing the most dedicated first no matter what.  There will still be some groups who just have too many variables in common on some servers just by bad luck, but the impact should be reduced compared to now, especially when time if day is added to the algorithm.

[Mabi black.1824]

8 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

The other option is that you could be one of those jaded players who didn't join an alliance and found yourself as filler in a bad shard. Rough stuff for sure, but that's a choice you make by choosing to go solo. Or by not caring enough to choose at all. . 

Our guild currently has 200 players, but I'd like to understand what you're writing here. Even if I'm in a guild of 20 men who choose to run alone for what reason do you claim I'm going to end up in a dead server? WR should match these 20 men with many other alliances, guilds, and individual players. Wasn't the goal here to get servers with similar activity?

[Mabi black.1824]

8 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

you'd have exactly the same situation even if alliance guilds were capped at 100 or nonexistent.

Of course, it depends on how well WR works. But I want to repeat, it's not a problem to play with an opponent who has 3 maps queued from morning to night, as long as your server does it too. From what I've seen, I think the system still has some issues (bugs?) on how players are counted and then matched, or, what we're saying here, 500-player blocks, they're too big and make things even more complicated for Anet.

[Mabi black.1824]

11 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

You know that's a lot of words to say "You're wrong" There is literally nothing but rhetorical loaded questions tangentially related what I said, so I can't say much. Though I strongly recommend writing a real response if you want to continue.

But I guess that's a personal opinion too. Thankfully as well.

I'll try again right away.

I'll try again right away. You argue that it is your opinion to let players play together with their friends, because balance is impossible. Okay, then explain me better, we can break server communities (friends playing together) and we can't break the limit of 500 (friends playing together). I'm sorry but that's why I can't agree with your personal opinion.