Medron, I think part of the issue is that while being one of the people at or near the top of certain Atamaran realms was probably pretty fun throughout (even if frustrating from time to time), being someone lower down, especially in one of the realms with less power, was absolutely maddening.
Feeling utterly helpless is really, really bad in a game.
So when you say that you "won" Atamara, what you actually mean is that you made everyone else lose Atamara. Except that where in a game with normal win/loss conditions, once you lose, you get to end that game and start a new one (if you still want), in BattleMaster, if you've "lost", that means you are continuing to lose, every day.
Honestly, I am not entirely happy about the fact that when we sank Atamara, it was, indeed, just starting to rev up for something. But...it started to rev up for things a few times in the past, and each time, however promising it looked at the start, it still ended with CE crushing everything else, one or more of the rebellious realms crawling to them and begging to be allowed to be a vassal realm, and the status quo either unchanged or one step closer to total Cagilan domination.
And given the results, there is no doubt in my mind that what we did was the right course of action. Since we sank Atamara and the FEI, the player numbers have stopped falling, and I've seen (anecdotally) more interest in the game than I've seen since well before the (ill-advised) Ice Age.
