In the spirit of discussion, I want to point out that while you aren't directly impacting the game world or "gatekeeping" anything inside of it intetionally, an Alliance server does affect Ledger Reputation. And since that tiered reward system is entirely based on the mean or average of the entire player base, it is heavily skewed by the "whales" who are earning absurd amounts of rep by doing literally nothing as their allies sell-off vast sums of loot, always with a max flag. If you do more than hop on a max level boat that is literally breaking the server under the weight of all the loot on-board and start working that grind on top of all the passive benefits... you can probably start to alter where the line between Silver and Gold rewards is all by yourself.

Now with all that said, I have used alliance servers before and I will again, I'm sure. Certain events and achievements are next to impossible (or literally impossible) to earn solo, so I take the help if I need it.