I tried to make this as fair as possible, there are lots of people I really don't like and I'm going to try to ignore that in this post. Trying to be objective.
1) Kratos - Golders and spammers but have a lot of cities which at this stage will help them for a while, they will burn out as more of their players quit. Their forums are (were) pretty tragic with like, noob helping starts. Also taken in a lot of the UN players, who are all awful. They have a few good players and obviously know their stuff, but it won't last as players start to quit. Sadly due to the nature of grepolis their insane amount of gold will keep them going for a while. Really not a fan of cheda at all, he's a massive hypocrite and a bad person, but his actual team themselves are alright Sink Eventually, unless they ditched cheda, then everyone would hate them less.
2) Alien Abduction/ Area 51 - Solid team, lots of old time faces and good players. Really hope the rumours about them hugging kratos arent true, if so, its pretty obvious that this will be broken off and they are just buying time, although kratos might not be willing to accept this yet. Swim
3) KoV - Have done well so far although I'm not quite sure they have the punch needed to make it, wouldn't be surprised to see a split somewhere down the line and lots of their players could end up succeeding, I just don't think that will be within the Knights. Float
4) Strange - Dont look too shabby, but as chuckey said, bears are next to them - Russians are the biggest cheaters in grep so sadly, Sink
5) No Mercy - No idea about these guys so I won't pretend I know anything. Undecided
6) Send Noots - My alliance so I won't write too much because I'll just get accused of being biased, so instead I'll let the stats speak for themself. Swim
7) Dragon - meh, very meh. Could go either way to be honest. Undecided
8) JFL - Who doesn't know JFL...lots of good players there even if their ethics leave something to be desired. Charlie is worshipped and I'm sure it gives him a lovely kick. Will probably just be near the top all server and then some big event will happen and they will either all leave the server or take it by storm, its gonna be a polar one imo, so Ill put them as Sink or Swim but definitely not float.
and just like chuckey, I'm bored.