Answering specifically to the does it harm or hurt the game? Several things I would say it helps. The bankers/wealthy being pro-active by finding others who have a small unit and give them gold without asking is good as it helps out players who are busy and can't ask or think it would be wrong of them to just ask for gold (helps out the lower class of the realm who also don't get as much info due to being the low knight I see as a good.) The war of Aurvandil-Madina I see as good since except for the Lurias and the new Teran Kabrinskia war there hadn't been much on all the continent.
Penchant, you have a misconception here about the Banker
My character Brock is Fontan Banker and he is no rich if 50-70 gold is the average. Please explain your definition of rich. Not all Bankers are rich, as I no play my character to be the evil scheming Banker who eat gold like he eating food
Even Fontan Trader do not give my Banker character a slice of their profit although Brock helps them find sources of food trading income
Perhaps we are too quick to jump the gun on clannies in Fontan. Either my character awareness there is pretty bad there or we have some mind confusion on how clannies is defined.
1) If there are clannies as what some of us say, why not teleport those 12 nobles who are pointed to join Fontan in the last 2 weeks? Why teleport randomly? For all it worth, you may cause those innocent characters to leave the game just because of a select few do not have their way.
2)
If we measure clannie activity by IC/IG messages, there are 50++ messages flying around in Fontan nowadays.
3)
If we measure clannies activity by unexplained gold income, I believe I tried my best to explain in my Fontan posts earlier. We conduct looting on Westmoor land, wealthy ones(even the average income Banker who can pass only 50 gold instead of 100 gold) pass gold to those who need gold.
4)
If we measure clannies activity by military strength CS rising without IG explanation, I believe I have answered sufficiently as well. Fontan army has been training since the conclusion of the great war with Sirion and Westmoor. The CeaseFire with Westmoor is a prelude to things to come, to IG events. IC-wise, we have seen how Fontan people see Westmoor refusal to compensate for the damage done to Krimml city, Oberndorf, etc. IC-wise, we also have seen how Westmoor people think of the discussion. My guess is Westmoor is caught planting flower when its army should be ready. Westmoor lost a slice of their army strength by wasting the 13K CS against Fontan 19K CS. Coupled with IG demise of Ibladesh and people like joining a realm because of war(game retention, people hate boring realm), there you have all the answers needed.
Mod: You can remove my post if you find my this post has nothing to add on