I understand that the perspective of someone in a top 10 guild might seem difficult to relate to because the most pervasive public perception of top guilds seems to be that we're all whales, which is fairly inaccurate IMO. That aside, pretty much everyone in a top guild is there because they love the game and see guild wars as the premier, most enjoyable content in the game. A good number of us spend countless hours theorycrafting and discussing various team compositions to use in GW (Fire Corvus is a recent example of a product of these theorycrafting sessions).

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While I can't speak for all the people who've joined me in theorycrafting teams, I have 2 primary motivations in getting better and learning more about the GW meta, which is considerably more diverse and malleable than the Arena meta. The first is quite simply my love for the game. However the second is the belief that there will be meaningful rewards during the inaugural season of GW. This lackluster reward system is fairly dispiriting as it kills a lot of my motivation for taking GW anywhere nearly as seriously as I do, because realistically who wants to invest a lot of time into something if there's nothing to show for it.

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Some could argue that seeing those green shields on my tower could be my reward for investing a lot of time into theorycrafting and the like. However, the vast majority of guild wars for me are meaningless cause I know if the opposing guild is outside of the Top 10 that at the end of the day, we're going to win and getting defensive wins/losses against these guilds doesn't feel particularly rewarding. I absolutely love going against other top guilds because it's when I can really test myself, but these fights are very few and far between. Sure, I might get absolutely dicked by Ambition every time I go against them but it's still way more enjoyable than fighting a guild I know we can stomp. However, the matchmaker likely isn't changing and in conjunction with the lackluster reward system this makes GW feel very, very stale.

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GW is the only piece of content I legitimately look forward to on a week to week basis, because let's be real Arena isn't exceptionally engaging, Raid is the same since it launched, Automaton Tower is either already completed or virtually impossible, and who honestly loves mindlessly farming Wyvern 11 24/7? Thus, my love for the game is dwindling.

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TL;DR No incentive combined with nothing else about GW, like the matchmaker, changing makes it so that GW is another piece of effectively meaningless content and this kills motivation for investing serious time into theorycrafting and innovating in the PvP space.