I'm also on the fence. I think both Dodger and Chenier have good points. On one hand, I like that a realm has to 'invest' in maintaining infrastructure with its allies and actively seek cooperation, providing a soft strategic advantage to alliances able to cooperate more efficiently. On the other hand, I like the idea of providing more alliance-wide military contacts akin to an alliance-wide battlegroup, taking the pressure off any one person to respond with orders promptly.
A compromise would be a new guild type where positions can be tied to titles instead of (or as well as) characters. Gets ride of the tediousness clerk job burden on players to keep all the guild ranks up to date, without removing the costs and logistics around founding, enlarging, and maintaining such an institution.
