Casuals: There's no need to worry.
Leaving the whole freehold situation aside, and speaking as a guild leader of a large competitive guild of over 1600 members;
We often see conversations here that come from both casual and hardcore players but most often than not, they reflect worst-case scenarios of both sides, both of toxic guilds, griefers, as well as lazy or entitled solo players and are simply not reflective of an MMO's community overall.
Yes, there are toxic players, griefers, and guilds that enjoy dominating and pushing away casual players because they feel superior - and there are also casual players who want to get everything without having to actually play the game, and want large groups of players to be punished by a game's design, but this is not reflective at all of the 2 groups of players.
My guild for instance, and many, many other large guilds getting ready for AoC, want to compete for the highest objectives, my particular goal is to compete for a castle - and in a game like AoC, it would be very stupid to not look after the casual playerbase in our castle's region - by game design, we will be protecting casual players in our Region - and attacking players from Other regions - the same will happen with guilds in these other regions.
I feel confident enough to say that most likely, the most successful Large Guilds in AoC will be the ones that actually understand that without support from the casual players in your region, you will not stay at the top for too long.
This, of course, applies to freeholds as well, if a big guild is trying to dominate their region's economy getting all the freeholds they possibly can even tho it is not a necessity why should players in those regions support them? and why would the other big guilds not fight back? this makes no sense - and this is why conversations about these particular systems also don't make any sense
and even for the largest guilds, it is absolutely ludicrous to think there will be +1000 or +2000 player guilds that are Only made of hardcore players that play 12h a day, tbh I don't think there will even be 2000 hardcore players in any server, usually the biggest guilds have a core for a few hundred HC players and the rest are *dedicated players that play for 3 to 4 hours a day, making them what most consider as a "casual". This is the case even in the most hardcore games like EVE, ARK or Mortal Online.
AoC will be a game where politics is involved, and the best, biggest guilds that will "be in charge" won't be the guilds that push away casual players, those won't remain in charge for too long - and probably guilds that do that will probably be the smaller to medium "pk" or "red" guilds that will be constantly being put in their place by the top dogs.
Remember, to hold the castle, there are weekly events that require support from other players in your region, there will be mayors that do not necessarily belong to your guild, and there will be world events and content that require good relations with other players, there's also guild drama which is responsible for 90% of guilds failing, and most often than not affects these guilds that are hated by their server even more.
So I'd like to leave this message to reassure the casual players reading through these discussions, don't worry, you will be protected and you will be a valuable member of your node and community, and the best guilds on your server will make sure of it.
