Best Of

I think I can see both the pros and cons of the envoy system, specifically when it comes to the Sentaari.

Pros:
-Forces most people to belong to Duiran. This helps us try to steer the guild more closely to that city, whereas it hasn't really been done since it was moved from Ashtan.
-Gives one org style to better align to, rather than the entire tether. Frees up more roleplay opportunities in that sense. This is allowing the guild to branch out and actually, soon, have some conflicting alignments that some Enorian people won't probably like.
-Causes less in-org conflict should the two larger cities come into conflict with one another over something.
-Stops situations like the Ascendril and Sentaari before, which was that most Ascendril were Duiran and most Sentaari were Enorian - so the guilds almost were swapped between cities at one point. Same with the Carnifex/Sciomancers in Spines/BL back in the day.

Cons:
-Forces most people to belong to Duiran. Means, less members because Duiran isn't that big and the Shamans/Sentinels are usually the gotos long before someone looks at the Sentaari. Unless some stray newbie wants to get in on that neutral class action. We've had a few newbies, most of which find out the guild is not neutral and bounce.
-Limits individual RP outlets to an extent, as someone may want to RP out being a Monk but wants to belong to Enorian so they can be all 'for the light' and not 'for balance/dendara'. Though, with multi-classing, they can still do this without the need for the guild. The guild is more for a theme than it is for the class alone.

Ultimately - I think that the guilds leaning into their home org is not a bad thing. It gives them a little more meat, whereas most guilds would not be able to hold up on their own without the home city. There are a handful that could, but they are the guilds that tend to attract more players on their own anyways and already weren't having theme issues before the change was made.

I hate to say it this way, but I feel that the issue is more that people aren't willing to take as much of a risk based on what their orgs are aligned to. They don't feel like taking the risk of losing an org for their own character's beliefs/convictions/wants. There have been numerous times in the Sentaari that players have taken leaps to do things that wouldn't necessarily work within the guild, or in the home org, but did it anyways because it's what their character would do. Conflict is what you make of it as roleplay happens, more than it being solely defined by the orgs you belong to. Those should be just stepping stones to a greater picture for your character, and help give your character some additional purpose if you want it.

Initially considering inputing this as an IDEA, but something in my heart is telling me that it'd get downvoted into the center of the earth for reasons I can't articulate or understand.

The idea, though, is pretty simple: the envoy system is bad and should be deleted. For those of you who don't know, the envoy system essentially means that 75% of a guild's active population has to be a resident of the guild's "home" city. This more or less irrevocably ties a guild to a city, which, I dunno, I have pretty complicated feelings about. Mechanically forcing a guild to be stapled to a city kinda inorganically cements RP into a single place, and makes certain plotlines/threads more or less impossible. An example, and this is going to be from my guild just 'cause I know the guild history better:

Way back when, there was some conflict between the Infernals and Bloodloch, which kinda became a mini-event. The Infernals abandoned Bloodloch for a time, holing up in a fort somewhere else, until the political tensions eased. They reunited, and we ended up owing Severn a favor (which he literally took like a decade to collect on, but it did eventually have some plot development even years later!)

This is the sort of thing that basically can't happen now. A guild is riveted to a city mechanically, which essentially dams off a lot of vectors for conflict, but more importantly, the stories those vectors bring, and the neat resolutions they may have.

There's other issues as well that are less about macro RP and more about Micro RP. Some people don't care what city they're in. Some people care a lot. It's a factor that makes a pretty big deal to a lot of folks' character identity, and the envoy system can put them in a place where they have to choose between their guild and their city. They have to choose not because of RP, but because some arbitrary mechanical system that lapsed because the guild is going through a population decline (which happens to all guilds) or god knows how many other reasons they might fail to keep their city quota. People invest a lot of energy in getting status and power in orgs, and having to possibly throw one or the other away because of some ticking clock gun that's been put to their head that was meant to force guild identity to be more tied to a "home base city" just feels like a really bad way to have a story run.

And, honestly, I'll admit that this is yet another small entry in a file folder labeled "I think the game has become too centralized around cities, and cities have too much influence on players and orgs both mechanically with regards to roleplay." I understand why we have this city-focused play (sorta), and why there might be an incentive to have guilds mostly tied to the RP of their "home cities." But I'm also not entirely sure who is hurt by, idk, 50% of Sciomancers living in Bloodloch, or 30% of Sentinels preferring the weather in Enorian. I'm not sure why guilds can't transcend their home base city if they want to, and I'm not sure I've ever heard a compelling reason that didn't boil down to "if we don't hold people hostage, we won't get the org populations we want." Which, I dunno, if the primary strategy for keeping people in your org is modeled after a hostage situation, I think you've goofed up somewhere.