My guild is nowhere near as active as it once was. I would like to have the option, as a Guild Leader, to de-register from the next Guild War (or any upcoming Guild War) so that we don’t cause other guilds to go through the same pain of wading through proportionally much less active guilds that we did.
I would also like to prevent our guild from dropping down in the rankings, in case we become more active again and want to take another shot at it.
Obviously, to be Registered for the next Guild War in the first place requires someone of Rank 3 or higher to click ‘Register’ at some point in the preceding 3 weeks – so one available solution for the following Guild Wars would be to demote any remaining members below this level (Rank 2) or below. I don’t really want to do this, though, for sentimental reasons that I think anyone who’s been in a guild for a while might understand. (I guess there’s an implicit assumption that if they’re trustworthy enough to be Rank 3 or above, you can trust them not to Register for GW if you don’t want them to. I’d probably challenge the universality of this.) It also doesn’t solve the issue for the most imminent War (which would also be the case if a Guild experienced a sudden drop in membership, or one of the 29 other possible members inadvisably clicked the button, or for various other possible reasons); nonetheless it’s an option.
Quite a while ago, a request (or more than one) was made to have more customisable Guild Ranks and permissions/privileges – this would also largely solve the issue for me (as I could simply remove Registering privileges from all Ranks except for my own).
Ideally, de-registering by a Guild Leader wouldn’t be able to be overridden by a lower-ranking member, as otherwise I’d have to constantly monitor our registration status and be liable to a back and forth registration competition with other members.
Alternatively, if Guild War brackets were more mobile or experienced seasonality (i.e. refreshed/reseeded after a given period of time, be it 3 months, a year, etc.), I’d be less concerned in each respect.
If we became more active again and wanted to take another shot, it wouldn’t take too long to find reasonable competition and rewards for our performance.
We’d also drop down quickly in our current situation due to our inactivity, so I wouldn’t be concerned about giving a deficit of competition to others in our Bracket and/or depriving other, more active Guilds of better rewards for the next year or two.
So you deregister and the game fills up your slot with another guild, 2 GWs later you want to come back, you register and your bracket would have 11 guilds. Who do you want to knock down just to preserve your ranking?
Tbh, I’m not really seeing any contradictions. The game already has a system for determining who goes into which Bracket when a Guild doesn’t register and then returns, and I’m not suggesting any changes to that. Each Guild is given a ranking after each GW, and I imagine (I don’t know for sure/exactly how it works) they’re just slotted back in at that ranking if they’ve sat out any wars, with Brackets adjusted accordingly. After all, if all the Guilds below got to move up one place for the next GW, having them (or the newly-ranked Guilds in those positions) move back down one place once the returning Guild is slotted in makes sense.
The idea is that the Guilds below get a chance to play in a higher Bracket, get (potentially and marginally) better rewards and then potentially move up more easily than would otherwise have been possible. If the De-registering Guild comes back and is an active competitor in their Bracket, I don’t see that as a bad thing or undeserved. Realistically, if they come back and score poorly, I’d like to see them drop down appropriately. If one of the other Guilds moves up above that ‘preserved’ ranking, they wouldn’t be affected by the re-insertion, either, meaning they’ve had an easier time moving up than if there was an additional Guild clogging up the works there that they had to climb over. I hope that makes it a little bit clear why I don’t think it’s a contradiction and that it does actually make a difference, particularly if it’s more than just one guild.
It’s also possible (not something I’ve tested or watched for, and may be old) that an unregistered guild will still fall down Brackets anyway:
In that case, the question becomes irrelevant (as the ranking wouldn’t be ‘preserved’). The fact that joining and getting 0 is encouraged is a whole other issue…