I would think a veteran server would have players who already know how to play well with each other so alliances would be pretty much how they were.
I've never seen a top alliance not have the same list of players they pick from once they join the server. It always came down to playing style at that point but you could just about guess that a player would be somewhere in a top alliance with accuracy.
The recent top alliances keep winning because the old habitual server winners do not play any more to challenge them for some reason. The game has never been better in my opinion but has never had less players?
There was a time when a server would pick up most of its players after the first fortress win since the top players had moved to the next available server.
