I would be in favor of either simply leaving out certain units like Stella, Takshaka or weapons like the magic wand, as in PvP!
Or another, also interesting approach would be that every unit, every weapon and every CLASS can only be used ONCE in the guild war for attack and defense teams in order to get the full bonuspoints.
This bonuspoints would have to be so attractive that there is no point in just playing with Stellarix every day!
I’d be ok with that too, just for practical reasons. However, at what point does this become absurd? Power creep is a thing. It’s foreseeable that that list of “troops we can’t use” will have to get longer. Maybe that is ok. Or maybe it will lead to a lot of confusion, later down the line. Not everyone reads the forums. I still see the occasional person asking why so many people use Prismatic Orb in pvp. 
This sounds good, but it completely erases the ability to build a team to counter an enemy team. Which is sort of the point of GW. I suppose it could work if we are shown every enemy we will face for the entire GW. If we had all of that information we could strategize. Without that info, it would be a lot of lucky and unlucky guessing.
At the moment, the game suits me completely. And I’m afraid of every update, because they always worsen the game and push us play more. New pvp seasons require people to play 2000-3000 battles to close it. Who needs it anyway? People pay for a season pass, but it’s not enough. You still need to spend 40-50 hours on monotonous boring battles. Who chooses the requirements? A very strange design.
Over the past year, there have been a lot of unbalanced troops and weapons. I definitely don’t want to play Guild War against Stellarix, Dragons and the Wand of Stars. Also, new gems turn any battle into random play. I’ve already lost the habit of guild wars and don’t want to play pvp a lot, it’s boring. If the Guild War will be in addition to current events, then it’s bad. And I as GM don’t want the guild war to come back. Everyone who wanted to leave because of the guild war has already left the game. But now those who don’t want to play guild war will start leaving. And according to the polls, they are the majority. Maybe 20 guilds from the first brackets still want the guild war. But here are too many battles in the game for me. And the fewer mandatory ones the better.
I also understand that each patch costs from 10 to 30 thousand dollars. And if something new is introduced in the game, it should be profitable. So any new version of the guild war will be pay to win as all game mode before.
So I’m glad that the guild war has been removed from the game. It was stressful every time. No one from my guild left because of the war. But some left because there were too many battles and it began to take a lot of time and feel like work.
Has it ever occurred to you - as a guild master - that guild wars are not a mandatory event? If nobody in your guild wants to play them, you simply don’t (and, in such case, why should it bother you whether guild wars return or not?); unless, of course, you - as a guild master - order your guild to play guild wars despite the fact that you are well aware nobody wants to.
I respect your opinion and also the fact that you don’t like the guild war! If you only have people in your guild who think like you, then just don’t play the guild war as a guild and the problem is solved.
Personally, I always liked the guild war and I think the time required is absolutely minimal.
5 fights per day is not a significant time factor. Then there is the time at the beginning of the week when you have to put together the teams once.
If that were all and there were no parallel events, I would get bored.
No, all events in our guild are mandatory, including the guild war. We played pretty well in the 3-5 bracket. If something is not played, then the guild breaks up. Guilds where something is not played are usually incomplete and semi-active. All the strong players leave where everyone is playing. I played almost every guild war at 5-0. In the beginning, it was unusual without war. And we was guild focused on war. But now, a year later, it will only add the problems if the war will be in addition to the 16 stages of events. In 1.5 years, half of the players in our guild have changed. And for the guild war, you need to specifically look for players with doomed tomes, necessary mythics, weapons. Players for war and for events are different players. Now there will be a big division into players who have collected immortals and upgraded them, have Stellarix, unique weapons and players who do not have all of this.
I remember voting for the return the war and it was funny. They wanted to show that war was very necessary, but the majority of those voting were against it. I can’t find this topic right now. 
In any case, the developers have their own plan for monetization and profit. And they never listened or reacted to this forum seriosly. Thousands of people have to write at once and they still won’t back down, as it was with the legendary tasks and journey. If we make a vote about the war again. Most likely, the majority will be against it. But there are 50-100 players who are very active on the forum and they are for war. Ok, that’s your opinion.
In the first brackets, 5 battles can take about an hour (maybe 20-30 min, if superfast). Because everyone needs to play 5-0 and you need to count every move. You must win the battle on the first turn or you will lose against doomed tomes. The defense in the first brackets is strong and effective as possible. You lose immediately, if you make the wrong move. The war in the 3rd bracket and in the 20th are two different events. I played on another account in the 30th bracket and yes, it’s very easy and really fun. No one has good defense. And in the 1-2 bracket is full hardcore. Maybe you didn’t know, but there are guilds there few people playing for the half of guild, because only they can play 5-0. Or they play online with share screens and tell you how to make move. Perhaps we are discussing a different guild war. 
The game has a lot of problems that could be solved. Classes, Alliances, Journey, the gap between beginners and experienced players, the lack of real rewards and motivation in most events. Personally, I’m not really want the war anymore. The old Guild War had a lot of problems too and obviously devs won’t be able to solve them. But no, we will have to play the war to survive in game as active guild.
But if I summarize your statement, it sounds more like you have a problem with your ambition.
Where does it say that every player has to invest an hour of time to achieve a 5-0?
Those are your personal, ambitious demands, but that’s not the game.
I would say that anyone who just plays the game to have fun thinks differently than you.
Over the years I have gotten to know various guilds and almost all of them, including my own guild, had the requirement that the guild war battles had to be played, but there is no criticism if the result is not particularly good.
Our ambition = our problem. Our enjoyment of the game = our pleasure in the game! 
OK, I’m not a fan of Guild Wars either, at least the “plan at length which team to use”, “train for an hour against the opponent’s team*”, “hold a Zoom meeting among guild members”, “stare at the board ten minutes before moving” type of Guild Wars competitive player.
BUT some are.
And you know what, for the ongoing success of GoW we need those players.
The strength of GoW has been its ability to attract a broad range of players, including those who love GW, those like me who are ambivalent and those who never intend to go near it.
I simply ask that the devs keep this range of players in mind as they recreate GW. Please ensure it doesn’t attract one set of players while chasing away another. Stay away from exclusive GW-only resource and troop rewards.
Hey, maybe consider adding some special schmancy emblem to the shield of the very best GW guilds or extra swag to the guild members’ costumes.
Sidebar - Do we even have a Training mode anymore?
Related to Guild Wars, but a bit off topic from the current discussion…. @Kafka can you tell the devs to fix the PSN achievements for Guild Wars? Some of us have been waiting for a year to try and achieve them.
If they are completely reworking Guild Wars as you say, it’s not unreasonable to think that these achievements won’t be obtainable in the same way they were prior. I imagine (as you guys do with every single little update), you will add even more achievements related to the new Guild Wars that we will have to grind out.
I wish you would stop adding achievements all together as the game has way more than enough and more than 99% of psn games, but I have seen enough to know the devs use the achievement system as a means of hooking people into the game and not allowing them to leave (if they are a player that really cares about that type of thing). It’s gottten so bad that PSN achievement hunters on popular sites explicitly tell people to avoid this game for that very reason.
Since I know the devs won’t stop adding them, please kindly ask them to correct/adjust the current unobtainable ones. There are plenty of ideas for replacements under the current PvP mode. Thank you.
I genuinely appreciate your detailed post here, there’s just one thing I wanted to call out because I think it’s an important point to clarify. I don’t think we really do expect you guys to play this game a lot. I certainly don’t. But what I (we?) do expect is for you to understand that there’s a significant difference in experience depending on how many hours you spend on this game in a given week.
Accordingly, I expect you guys to put significantly more stock into our feedback about how the experience feels for the players who do put more hours in. Including the feedback that our daily “workload” is excessive.
Listen to us. Hear us. Don’t assume we just want something for nothing but give us the benefit of the doubt that something may really be fundamentally wrong with portions of the system. And while that may float for a while, it’s hurting your retention in a big way. It’s also hurting your recruitment of new players because so many of us can no longer, in good conscience, recommend this game to our friends in its current state. I’m here due to the recommendation of a friend who explicitly told me that she would no longer recommend the game to others. And I certainly wouldn’t anymore, either. That’s a big problem. I’m still here because I retain some hope that maybe you guys see the problem and are genuinely trying to fix it. But there’s a limit to the amount of patience humans have and our patience has been tried pretty hard of late.
54 [GUILD_WARS_UPCOMING_RESTRICTIONS]
Upcoming Restrictions
If this will be more than color restrictions we will have to say goodbye to the competitive spirit of Guild Wars: if the team creation is limited to kingdom or troop type the pool will be too narrow and the player will not have enough discretion to bring out his strength with a inevitable downward leveling of performance
I’m looking forward to the Talismens 
50 [GUILD_WARS_PASS]
Guild Wars Pass
This spoiler sounds kinda frightfull)
I’m actually okay with different restrictions but am probably in the minority. Is there a poll feature we can make to see how people feel about it?
GWs is a difficult experience for me that literally sends me into Afib. So, not fun. It’s something I get through for the sake of my guild.
Would be cool if a guild could decide among themselves which of their best players they want to have do a guild wars. Say, 5 players can participate. Each of those participants represents the best of the best the guild has. The rest of the guild could do tasks to earn bonuses for their elite champions.
That way we are all contributing, but not all under stress. Teamwork!!
I would love something like that. (Maybe more like 20/30) I don’t see that ever being the kind of thing that gets implemented, however. Mainly, I just don’t see them shutting out so many players and leaving it UP to the players to fight that out.
Even 20/30 would be good. I am a sucker for teamwork. 