alrighty then. How about the only non-Avalon Morrigan beta tester weighs in on this?
Yea, I play on Morrigan. Yeah, I think it sucks that most of the server is outgeared and that we have not gotten our acts together to provide Ava with competition. I will say here and now that the we non-Ava folks own a good portion of the responsibility for that. Sure, there are servers where groups play more cooperatively. I happen to live on a server that is pretty much dominated by a single clan. I can change servers, or step up my game, or change what my goals are in the game (ie having fun with my friends no matter what we are killing). End of story.
Avalon did have a lot of testers. Ava also has a lot of very smart, dedicated, serious gaming geeks. Maybe not a coincidence that people who game so hard and contribute to forums ended up as testers.
By no means was there an Ava consensus except on the silly issue of "your group killed" which 98% of ALL beta testers hated and which grew into a completely ridiculous, vitriolic, and amusing attack on Avalon. I was completely against hoenheim's opinion on that and was therefore lumped in as a dps goddesses and one of aileron's sheep.
I never really felt that things were dominated by Avalon. I did sometimes feel that there was an over-preponderance of beta testers who are endgame gamers (from many clans and servers). I felt that there was too much focus on endgame play and that we sometimes risked alienating the lower level, less geared, and more casual players. Several of us spoke up about that repeatedly. Rather than crying about Avalon and giving up on testing, I chose to stick with it and try to represent the non-dominant, non-endgame players. I jokingly called myself the official Clan Beta noob and am damn proud of taking on that role.