Dear players,

Based on all the feedback received since our announcement on the alliance cap test, we are considering a different approach to our test to restrict alliances.

The fundamental reason for the adjustment is that we fear that the test in itself would trigger a “purge” of more casual players from their existing guilds and alliances, cutting them off from their in-game friends and destroying their daily gameplay routines.

Such a purge, once it has been carried out, would be very hard to reverse. This means that if we run the test as planned, and it does not work out, even if we adjust or reverse the changes after 2 weeks, a lot of permanent damage might already have been done to the game.

At the same time, we are committed to limiting the power of Alliances in the game and opening up more opportunities for smaller player groups.

So we took a step back and discussed how we could modify the test such that it can achieve the same goals of tackling the huge alliance power blocks without causing permanent damage to more casual players and guilds.

As we see it, there are two main issues with the large power blocks:
They are too dominant in large scale fights
They hold huge interconnected areas in the Outlands, effectively pacifying them (aka “Too much hand holding”). This can lead to stale gameplay and high barriers to entry for new groups.
Based on our analysis of feedback received, we’ve compiled a list of measures that we believe to be effective in tackling these issues.
Introduce an Upkeep on Territory control based on the number of territories held by the Alliance.
This upkeep would be paid in siphoned energy
It would begin to apply when an alliance holds 10 or more territories
The amount of upkeep per territory would increase the more territories are held by your alliance
If upkeep cannot be paid at the region time, your guild will drop the territory and receive no season points for the territory ownership that day
Our expectation would be that this causes alliances to focus on quality of territories and defense of mages over quantity at some point, potentially breaking existing large alliances into multiple strong groups which own 10-20 territories each
Introduce an income penalty to player in Alliances based on number of territories held by the Alliance.
All players within an alliance would begin to suffer from reduced silver & fame (gathering and PvE) income if the alliance holds more than the threshold value territories
This penalty would start at 1% when holding 10 territories and increase by 1% per additional territory in the alliance
Our expectation would be that this causes players within the Alliance to consider whether they want to be part of an Alliance which incurs such a penalty. It means players have to share the load of upkeep in an alliance holding many territories and adds some consideration to simply joining a "winning" Alliance.
Improve the power of disarray to already have an impact in medium scale engagements.
Our goal would be that players can already feel the impact of disarray in fights of 25 vs 50, and 50 vs 100 would become significantly more even that way
Introduce a Cooldown of 7 days to re-joining the same guild after leaving your current guild to prevent guild-drop exploitation of disarray.
Introduce a Cooldown of 7 days to re-joing the same alliance after leaving your current alliance to prevent guild-drop exploitation of disarray.
Through the above measures, we think there would be a very good chance that we can fundamentally tackle the issue of power blocks getting too large in the game, while minimizing the unintended damage caused to more casual players and guilds.

So does this mean that alliance caps are off the table in principle? No. Depending on how the modified test would go, it could very well be that we’d re-visit the hard cap idea in the future. However, also based on feedback received, we’d put in the necessary tech work first to make sure that such a cap would be based on the number of accounts and not on the number of characters, to make sure that people can keep their alts in the same guild as their main accounts.

Very much looking forward to your feedback!

Sincerely,

Robin 'Eltharyon' Henkys
Game Director