Instead of reducing alliance sizes or limiting medals you could always pre register teams for the wcs, max 50 players but reduced availability for participation of alt accounts. maybe this could be done in forum with an agreement to use max 1 alt each or none at all. Try allowing only one team per sector, max 50 spawn locations in a given sector could eliminate the alt abuse. obviously the pro player base is limited and most of the players know each other and are on good terms so assuming pvp would not be happening at all until the center is reached, i think it would be the best way to determine which groups deserve the medals.
The best part of this game when it was young was the way diplomacy could upend the global order. In world 5 there was an alliance called NBD, player jecole may remember, they were quite prolific at recruitment of allies while holding the top score and had all other top ten ranked alliances tagged with NBD. All it took to bring the entire conglomerate down was for me to attack them and show others they were easily destroyed while suggesting to other nonaligned alliances that they would be destroyed soon if they do not help me. In less than a week all of NBD was gone from the server and It only worked because there were 100 alliances or more on the map and at least 5000 players were active, i think the world may have even had slots for 10-20 thousand.
Maybe slap a coat of paint on the god awful art in this game, maybe retract a few patches that diminish the interaction of pvp and rerelease it with a small advertising bid on youtube. maybe a future wcs could spark the interest and excitement in players it once had. The biggest issue so far in this game is not being able to compete with the best players who all work together, it made the last wcs invalid if you ask me. project can say all they want that its not their fault nobody else showed up to the wcs, but it is entirely their fault that no group of 50 players wanted to play against the whole rest of the game. but project would have never needed to be formed if the german version of it wasnt so dominant for the first 8 years of this games life.
Now that everyone seen the results of mass cooperation in the last wcs they have the chance to change it for the next one. my suggestion of 3 medals per server could also be healthy for the wcs environment as a lack of reward for simply following the leaders may inspire new divisions and new tactics from those of us not included in the mass cooperative scene. the biggest downfall of this game is that pvp had been frowned upon for so long by players that development was forced to reduce its viability. many enthusiastic players preferred pvp as a method of gaining a dominant position. Russian players especially could be counted on to aggressively expand their territory, now they are way more passive though they were still the only ones to offer resistance to the wieners of the last wcs.
The dynamic of having more than one opponent has been lost in this game as most servers consist of one mega alliance against a select group of pros with perhaps 1 or 2 allies. team building could be helped with fewer badges even if it only happens in one server type but it should come with some sort of reduction of power from the advantage of having scripts because they are what truly separate the pros from the joes besides the mastering of an unchanging economy. whatever happens i know i wont be a part of it so good luck in the new year to all and hopefully you get to enjoy the next wcs.
