Proposal Overview
Allow some sort of affinity group identity for players or guilds in addition to simply guild identity so that different guilds can be grouped together into alliances on megaservers based on common interests without necessarily representing a single common guild. The goal is to provide a mechanism through which players can undo some of the problems they perceive with megaservers and to help ANet sort players by common interest into them.
Goal of Proposal
To allow smaller guild to maintain an independent identity while being able play with other smaller or larger guilds. To make it easier for guilds to group by play style affinity or any other reason without necessarily having to represent the same guild.
Players grouped by server identity before megaservers (so there was, for example, and “unofficial role-playing server”) but now players get mixed on megaservers with people and guilds who are often essentially strangers and who might not share the same play style. So players interested in role-playing could join a “Roleplayer” affinity group that would try to put them into megaservers with other role-players. One could create a server identity group to restore some of the server identity that was lost and perhaps such a grouping could be a default. Basically, give the players a way to sort themselves out by interest in a way that doesn’t involve joining a single guild and representing it because there are various reasons why people might not want to do that.
Then give the players a sort of affinity chat option, where they could send messages to members of their affinity groups or perhaps just an individually specified (like a whisper) group. So, if I wanted to whisper to other Eredon Terrace players and was part of an Eredon Terrace affinity group, I could chat just to those players on the map. Role-players could likewise communicate exclusively with other role-players, and so on.
In the future, this could be used as a way of letting WvW players group together independent of server identity, too.
Proposal Functionality
The game would start with a set of affinity groups by default. For example, each server could have an affinity group (that only players from that server could then choose to drop or maybe have to add to get it) and there would be affinity groups for Role-Players, WvWers, PvPers, Beginners, Low-Population, Medium-Population, High-Population, and whatever else seems appropriate. A guild or individual players (it could work either way) can then choose affinity groups that will have a large impact on what megaservers they are sorted on to beyond party membership. The Population affinities would let a player communicate whether they want to play on a crowded megaserver, a sparsely populated megaserver, or something in between to support different playstyles rather than packed megaservers as a default.
You could then allow guilds, with influence points, build their own affinity groups that either other players or guilds could join or that perhaps they maintain control of and have to invite people into. Overall, this would allow guild alliances without requiring the loss of individual guild identity. This could, at some point, be used as a mechanism to allow very large guilds to purchase their own megaserver instances, perhaps temporary, if not permanent, and allow other guilds to enter them through invitation to an affinity group.
Finally, through default affinity groups, ANet could use this to get some sense of how the players see themselves and their play and what they get out of the game. Basically, it could be used as a sort of player poll.
Associated Risks
There will still be challenges sorting players into megaservers, especially if they have conflicting affinities already split across multiple servers. Megaservers will still fill up isolating some players from others with the same affinity. Players choosing low-population megaservers will require ANet to have more megaservers available. Players may find selecting affinities daunting or confusing so they’ll need sensible defaults.