Update: Apparently Guild Rank calculations do scale somewhat, including idle-to-active ratios with alts.

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Most MMORPGs have what I'd consider a flaw: Being a member of a large guild is a huge advantage. Guildless players and small / medium sized guilds often feel outright punished for their social choices. It's the zerg dilemma but reaching into every aspect of the game.

WAR favours the large guilds as much as any other MMO, perhaps even moreso. Take the Guild Rank system for instance. Gloomy Bears just recently opened up the Guild Vault, we're Rank 4. Casualties of WAR is large but not huge and they're Rank 12.

Keeps are obviously designed for large guilds to hold. Capturing could be done with a small guild, I have no doubt of that from what I've seen, but they wouldn't be able to pay the hefty maintenance fees (barring nefarious gold dealings, ugh).

Alliances are good for small guilds, but so far it looks like Alliances are limited to two guilds pairing up and I'm not sure what Mythic's plans are down the road with this feature.

Unless I'm mistaken, all of the high level Public Quests pretty much require a Warband, although perhaps not a full one.

I don't wish for Mythic to change their core mechanics (although the high gold fees are a welcome invitation to gold sellers) and I don't expect them to work around the inherent ability to form up groups, but there are a number of things they could do to make the unguilded and smaller guilds feel more welcome:

• Alllow guild-to-guild / group-to-group Scenario matches. Premades could face premades in Scenarios and PUGs would face PUGs. Individual players would feel a lot less like suckers facing groups tactically coordinating on Vent. Scheduled guild matches would be nice, although I wouldn't want it to become an e-sport.
• Scale the Guild Rank system. Scaling could still be ramped in favour of larger membership, but it could be curved enough that it wouldn't be so discouraging to small guilds.
• Scale the Keep fees. If you can take it and defend it, you should be allowed to keep it.
• Balance out PQ choices. So far in T3 it looks like they all require Warbands. There should still be PQs that are doable with a few players, even less than a full group, just reduce the chances for blue & gold bags to drop.

These changes could put large guilds in an uproar, I'm sure some of them expect their advantages as an inherent right, although hopefully that'd be a minority.

I love the close-knit camaraderie of smaller guilds. When I've been in a larger guild, even a friendly one, I've always felt like it could just as well be a bunch of people in general chat. I don't mean to offend anyone in them, but it doesn't suit me. It doesn't suit a lot of players.