FRIENDSHIP DOESN'T MATTER IN ALBION. A CASE FOR TERRY CONTROL CHANGES
I've been playing Albion since the free to play launch. It was really fun to play with all my friends that came from our "umbrella" gamer community (UBGE) which has over 6k members. On the world of Albion we were a guild consisting of players that knew each other from other games before Albion, therefore we were mainly focused on friendship and completely unaware of endgame mechanics (terry control, gvg, tiered black zones). We spent nights and days playing and dying like a bunch of noobs until somewhere after the a few months something started to happen.
As we grew stronger, we became acquainted to Albion politics. Members soon realized they were unable to grow anymore if the guild didn't join the bigger scheme of things. That's when we noticed that the endgame content was being "soft-gated" by 1-2 alliances. Not only this, but to be part of those alliances you'd need to sacrifice your own gameplay to basically serve as slaves for the leader guilds of those alliances.
So we begun to strategize how to overcome this nasty game mechanics. Some suggested we couldn't be a casual guild anymore, otherwise we'd never be able to play the endgame. Others wanted to remain just the way we've always being. And that's when we 1st split. At this point, I "lost" half of my friends to "bigger, stronger, endgame guilds/alliances". And while still viable to find parties to play with, it was increasingly hard to do it, causing some of us quit the game. Seeing our friends quitting was depressing, we HAD to do something. But what?
Well, long story short, after a few days of drama, turmoil and even our GM crying on the call we decided to merge with a bigger, better established guild. However, to our displeasure, the world of Albion stabbed us yet again. This guild decided they didn't want to be a secondary guild on a big alliance anymore and so they dropped tag. As they did that, players immediately reacted and started to snowball the exodus to __any__ other guild that could offer the endgame content they were used to have. It was just like dejavu to me. Just like before...
Seeing everything falling apart, our group started to diverge yet again. While some wanted to remain, others wanted to follow the pack. So I "lost" half of my friends one more time (between people quitting and moving to other guilds). And now we were down to 25% of our original group.
As it stands at the moment, I'm day by day loosing interest for the game. The people I used to play aren't there anymore. At first I blamed the guild/staff for not being competent enough to lead the players to the endgame content. But I see different now. It's clear to me that it's actually a major game design flaw. The mechanics of the game force the players to use the guilds like stairs and keep jumping until they make it to "better, endgame guilds". This leaves little to no room for newer guilds to grow, because once it reaches a certain experience level, the players will pack to anywhere that can offer endgame content. And it won't matter if they are called retards, monkeys or if they have to pay "taxes" or if they have to sacrifice their gameplay/reallife in order to have access to it. If you don't find this is f****d up, I don't know what else could be.
I rest my case here wondering how long are those players going to stay in such a hostile environment. I'm certain most will just quit when they look around and see no "familiar avatars" anymore, just like I'm about to do.