They were playing the game the way they knew to play the game and doing it to the best of their abilities.
No. The game, from the beginning and especially more prominently in the beginning, was very clear that BattleMaster IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON.
It truly was the best of times in one of the greatest continent-wide conflicts ever seen in the game, and the fact that someone truly did "win" and gain effective control over the entire continent was amazing.
No, it is *not* amazing to have won and gained control over the entire continent. It's not what was ever intended for BattleMaster. In fact, I would go so far as to say
this is a violation of the Social Contract by playing against fellow players to win an island instead.
Also, you probably weren't around for it, but EC from 2003 to 2007 was a much more dynamic conflict than the Atamaran conflicts.
I should have been saved for all time. I'm honest here. It should have been enshrined as one of the crowning moments of the game and saved so anyone could log in and look at it to see just what things were like. The database forever paused and never moving another day so people could pop in and take a look whenever they felt like it.
And then Atamara should have been reset on an active server like every war island ever was when someone WON THE GAME. But that wasn't on the players to decide to do. The admins should have done that. I don't blame them for not doing it either. They kept hoping if they tweaked something they could force the players to change how they played and do something different. But the players were stubborn and didn't cooperate because they didn't see the problem.
ABSOLUTELY NOT. How can it be made any clearer? It was one of the most disappointing, shameful moments in BattleMaster history and should never repeated. Nobody won the game. If anything, trying to win the game caused many people to lose the game by pushing players out of the game due to some players' selfish desire to play against other players in an attempt to win. If anything, these players were not playing BattleMaster, but playing their own game in BattleMaster. The continents are about the
living history and are not to be reset.
What the admins apparently should have done is to punish these shameful players for their despicable actions, but it should be noted that claims of 'winning' the game didnt begin until after their dominance was a fait accompli.
I didn't see the problem when I was just another player on Atamara. I didn't see the problem until I became Tyrant of Tara and looked around and thought...well...frak. This sucks. What do we do with this pile of crap? I've always assumed that is why the last Tyrant before me stopped playing. He couldn't figure out what to do. Honestly, neither could I. But I did know one thing after my third day as Tyrant. The Cagil-Tara Alliance had to die if there was too be any future on Atamara.
I'm sorry you as a regular noble experienced such !@#$ty rulers. All the more reason we need to address the !@#$ty rulers still around the game, because I doubt all those other regular nobles know any different than you did, especially newer players being introduced to the game and joining realms ruled by those more concerned about their titles, positions, character history, continental dominance, and 'their' fun, rather that experience a new player receives.
In the end, we did it. The players broke the alliance and started the biggest war since...well...the LAST big war on Atamara. And it was shaping up to drag the whole continent into it with fractured alliances that were going to blow the kittens out of the rafters.
Then the admins sunk Atamara on us.
Actually, we decided to sink it and *then* the players started doing something. Too little, too late. But hey, we need this *same* thing done across BattleMaster, not only Atamara. Maybe not specifically in terms of mega-alliance, but in terms of realms engaging one another actively.
I don't blame the players for winning on Atamara.
NOBODY WON ATAMARA. EVERYBODY LOST ATAMARA.
And I blame the admins for sinking it after the players did all of that hard work. They proved that they would punish the players even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do. And that object lesson was not good for the game. A lot of players left over it and never returned. And that's just a bloody shame in my mind.
No players were punished for doing the right thing. Players lost Atamara because of all the hard work they put into playing against their fellow players by attempting to play a different game than BattleMaster and trying to win an island. It's absolutely in the governments members' job description to fix it, the state of their realms and the continent as a whole has
always been their responsibility. A lot of players left the game thanks to those players with complete disregard for their fellow players and never returned and that's a bloody shame in my mind. Meanwhile, thanks to various changes that included island sinking, the playerbase loss was stemmed and a relatively more positive experience for new players was created. If the players had done the right thing at any point in the years they had the opportunity, Atamara would have not needed to be sunk. Atamara's closure is entirely upon the rulers of that continent forgetting their responsibilities to the game.
Finally, anyone attempting to win BattleMaster is to be adamantly discouraged and shamed. This is not, and never has been, what BattleMaster is about and most of the rules and policies that have been added over the years tend to be specific limits to prevent
exactly the attitude of trying to win an island.
In fact, this is one of the core rules from the Social Contract - "You can not win BattleMaster. Therefore, playing together is more important to us than playing against each other. We expect you to play the game as you would play a board game with good friends, and to value fair play above any victory or power. " So as far as I'm concerned, all claims to have won the game are a claim to have cheated and broken the rules.
