Kyronix, can any guild that belongs to an alliance join VvV? Or do they have to leave their alliance? I believe the way it works today with factions, a guild that is already in factions can start an alliance with another guild that belongs to the same faction and additional guilds that are in the same faction can join that alliance. However, I don't think that the alliance can be extended to include non-faction guilds or that guilds that belong to a faction can join an existing alliance that only includes non-faction guilds (or guilds in another faction).
You are free to do whatever allying you want. The only time alliances come into play in VvV is determining whether there are enough guilds to start a battle (need to be at least 2 non-allied guilds online) and getting occupation points while in a City (allied guilds are all awarded occupation points if they are the only ones present).
You really didn't answer the question about whether or not VvV guilds can be part of an alliance and how it is going to work. This is important information for people who might be thinking of participating, especially very small PvP guilds.
See above
It's also important information for guilds that today aren't in factions but do PvP and are part of an alliance that includes non-PvP guilds. They will want to know soon whether or not they will need to leave their alliance to be part of VvV.
You don't need to leave an alliance.
In either of these two cases, people may need to make decisions about whether or not to exit their current guild to join a different guild or start a new guild if the guild leader of their current guild is inactive, the guild leader doesn't want to be in VvV, or other members of the guild don't want to be in VvV.
Also, I'm still confused about what is going to happen to a non-VvV character who is attacked first by a VvV character and chooses to defend himself by attacking the VvV character who attacked him.
It's handled under normal criminal flagging. The attacker goes gray if the victim is otherwise an innocent.
Is the attacked non-VvV character going to become orange when he attacks the VvV character?
No, based on the above situation.
I don't PvP all that often, and most of the PvPing I have done was inside of the faction system, so I'm really kind of fuzzy on this. It would give me and perhaps some other people a little more confidence in this system if you could provide a clear-cut answer that if you're in Fel on a non-VvV character and are not going out of your way to tangle with VvV characters but end up being attacked by one or more of them, that you will have the ability to defend yourself without becoming freely attackable with no consequences (i.e., no murder counts) by other VvV participants AND that you won't end up going into VvV skill loss if you lose in your attempt to defend yourself.
If you are an innocent victim, it plays out just like it does now with gray flagging/murder counts.
That's where I'm coming from with those questions and would really, really appreciate getting some clarity on this issue. It's important to me and I'm sure it is important to other people who may not have any interest at this time in participating in VvV but do have reason to be in Felucca, either because they play on Siege/Mugen, they have a home in Fel, they like to hunt in the Fel dungeons for the luck boost, or do champ spawns.
I really don't want to believe that you intend to force VvV on ANYONE who goes to Felucca and gets involved in a fight, even if they have specifically tried to avoid fighting with VvV participants.
Not the case. See above.
However, that is the conclusion I am coming to at this point because I can't get a clear answer on this. And yes, I could go attempt to try to puzzle it out by myself in Fel on TC1 trying to juggle between signing onto two accounts at the same time on one computer. But I shouldn't have to do that because these are important issues for many people and it is critical that we get straight answers to them directly from the designers/programmers of the system.
Thank you for your patience with my persistent questions. I'm not trying to be a pain in the you-know-what. Just trying to figure out if it's worth sticking around to see how this develops.
You're welcome. Hope to see you on the battle field!