What a great thread!
I am the guild leader of NoMercy. NoMercy has been a guild since April of 2017. I was very vocal in the past about how changes over the past few years devalued guilds and the competitive integrity of guild ladder. (1, 2, 3, 4)
As others in this thread have expressed, I was also very excited about initially proposed idea of the Guild Island. What we got is different, so I will only focus on what is actually present instead of speculating the initially proposed. June is the first month I am getting to experience the Guild Island. I don't think it's that bad so far. I see nothing wrong with pushing it live with the bare concepts (spawns, tutors, tms) and adding features as they are coded (boss). I prefer to be optimistic and presume that is the plan. Everyone should keep in mind PRO is run off volunteers, not paid professionals.
That said, the requirements to gain access to Guild Island have further exacerbated my concerns about guilds in PRO. It is absolutely true the social ecosystem of guilds have completely changed since the introduction of Guild Island. Immediately, we saw guilds start to merge by distancing themselves from players who did not want to or chose not to pvp. Even worse, the rule allowing players to pvp on two accounts also creates incentives for guilds to invite alt accounts with pvp rating in order to unlock Guild Island. Additionally, we see many players in two guilds to increase their odds of getting into guild island. For all guilds with aspirations to unlock guild island, the favoring of alts or veterans will continue to grow. A majority of the players left guildless during these merges or favor towards alt accounts are new players. I believe this to be very, very dangerous to the grow of PRO.
Quick Solutions?
Calculate guild rating based on the top 50 players within the guild. This would reduce the incentives of alts and necessity of filling your guild with veterans or pvpers.
Allow access to the guild island to be purchasable each month by the guild leader. I can see a few options:
A flat fee of 5m for the month, no matter your guilds placement in the ladder.
If your guild finished in top 10, you can enter guild island for the month for a fee of 100k. Top 5, 50k. Top 3, free. ( fee per member)
Eventually, I would like to see PRO implement a more sophisticated way of dealing with alt accounts. I understand the suggestion that follows potentially requires a lot, but I think it would dramatically improve the moderation of the game throughout many aspects.
Every player must create a profile.
You must then link your accounts to a profile. An account that is not linked to a profile will not be able to trade, pvp, etc.
Only four accounts can be linked to a profile.
Profiles will join guilds, so all your accounts will be in the guild of your choice. The account with the highest rating applies to your guild rating (not all four). Your accounts will not share pvp rating, but instead share the same "ELO" of the account with the highest rating. Example: Lets say "teerav" and "vikingman" are under my profile. "teerav" has 300 rating and "vikingman" has 1 rating. Assume I pvp with "vikingman" and the opponent has 400 rating. I win, "vikingman" will gain rating based an 1 rating winning against 400 rating. However, the opponent's rating change will be based on 400 losing to a 300. Its a big difficult to explain, but hopefully you (the reader) understands. This would mitigate "sniping" at the end of the season. And it would still allow players with pvp anxiety or veterans looking to test still use multiple accounts to pvp on, but it would remove a lot of the negative aspects effecting guilds described earlier in this post.