As someone who's relatively new to the game (this will be my first full round when it's over), my perception of things is possibly a little different. I may well be wrong, but I will happily be corrected.
GC seem to be formed of the "elite", the pros - they played for the win relentlessly at the start, managed to stay together when Asphyxia split and are now just sitting back smugly knowing that no single alliance can touch them, and that rank 2/3/4 won't trust each other enough to team up and take them down.
The other alliances just aren't as serious and can't seem to get up to anywhere near GC level. The only other interesting part of the table is the rank 5-9 space, where there are power struggles going on between smaller alliances which make it more interesting.
I actually feel that smaller alliances would help, as it would be easier to get larger groups online to attack/defend, and you could have a multiple genuine FTW alliances where everyone is active and playing well, rather than alliances where you can just about get ten people online and all the others are just propping up land and taking your defence.
A closer table at the top would make the game more enjoyable. At the moment, it just feels like it's stagnating. I played in Max's private world for a couple of days at the beginning of the week and it was much better - I was 6th out of 30 players for a while and it felt like I really had the power to make a difference, rather than just sitting around knowing that not a lot can really happen to change the situation further up the table.
not to mention fill a couple extra 'ftw' competitors? I think you'd be hard pressed to do so!
