Thats prolly true on many cases, on my case(Not having any position in Darka, and i guess many other old Darkans) is that 10 years of "habit" to be Darkan is about to disappear. Culture which had grown along with us. I guess thats what has kept me playing past few years, along with this pesky war with CE. Overall, i'm not that worried about the results of this... but we prolly will lose many old farts who are playing just for the habit of playing.
So playing for the habit of playing is better than playing for the sake of doing something constructive? With your own time in the game, let alone everyone else. Do what Barca and Asylon in Dwilight are trying to do - Hijack some land, relocate. Or what Niselur did - ask an ally for a place to stay, tell their invaders to piss off, get land afterward and relocate.
Viewing this event solely as the death of a Realm is simply ludicrous. You're basically giving up. People love to apply real world history to events in BM, this is one of them. Europe and Asia have been conqured how many times? By how many vastly different cultures? How'd that turn out for them? Pretty damn good considering. The clingyness of players to their specific realm's ideals and politics is what's killing the game, not this event. Realms seem to VERY rarely merge for any reason outside of dwindling populations or simply getting their asses kicked in a war.
Someone has to give up a title in a merger, but a step down from ruler to Duke of the new lands you bring to another Realm isn't that large a gap in power. How many realms are basically Run by their dukes? Quite a few actually, I haven't seen many absolute tyrannical states in BM. They tend to not be a lot of fun for the players, so they don't really exist.
