Re: A simple recipe for victory
Again, this is just 'hypothectical'. AC has not implemented thier proposed changes yet, so the impact of those have not effected the current situation.
If you have a softball league of 10 teams, but 3 teams are so much better then the others, that they always beat them with the 15 run rule in the 3rd inning, the league would be imbalanced.
The 7 'ok' teams can't win when faced with any of the 3 good teams, but they have fun when playing against the other 7. The 3 good teams only have fun when playing each other, but also don't mind having batting practice against 7.
So after the first season, the 7 teams realize they have no chance of finishing in the top 3, that 30% of their games are basically wasted, so some of them choose to go play in a different league. The top 3 are bored with 70% of thier games, they aren't going anywhere because there's still a little challenge in the game.
Leagues will disband the top team and require them to join other teams, or to find a new league. Because getting rid of 10% to try and make it fun for the 90% is what's needed to save the league.
Of course this analogy has lots of holes when applied to an MMO, but the general point is if the company has changed the rules around and made many attempts to fix the game so that it is fun for a majority of the players, but it hasn't worked. Then they have to either accept the game has failed or take drastic measures to try to save it.
There are still so many things for AC to do that that, again, this isn't even on the horizon as an option yet. Adding in 100 new Islands with no direct travel between groups, and starting players in different corners of the world would be one direct way to avoid the new vs vetern issue.