Vita. Good post.
I have this to say in answer to it. If setting up a condition where one alliance WINS an island is considered a violation of the social contract...then I would say that is how the devs should step in. Make an official ruling on the problem and say it needs to be fixed or said group of players will be punished. One issue with Atamara is that nothing like that ever happened. There was a lot of sniping about Atamara, but never anybody in position of authority saying "do this, or this will happen." With an explanation of why of course.
I don't think there's any question in anybody's minds that Atamara should have been fixed years ago.
And I'm sorry that I wasn't involved in the effort to do that years ago. But I never recognized the problem until I became a ruler. I never looked at the continent in that way. And honestly, for a lot of years there I was burned out and only going through the motions of playing. The only reason I really kept playing was because one of my character was the only elder priest of what has become one of the largest religions in the game. I didn't want to abandon it or the other players who were part of it. If I'd had any other position I would have logged out and never returned honestly. Years ago.
Then I realized that Tara was falling apart. Only a handful of our oldest nobles remained, and we just weren't doing anything. I didn't know why. I just knew it was wrong. We couldn't have fought off a determined Girl Scout troop. Rielstone could have beaten us in battle. I'm not joking either. I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew something was. So I did the one thing that I didn't want to do at the time. Because I was still burned out. I volunteered to run for the Tyrancy of Tara. And when I figured out what was wrong, I realized one very important thing.
I could never tell Tara what was wrong. I couldn't tell ANYBODY what was wrong. Because if I ever said it publicly, the Cagilan-Strombran faction of the federation would either destroy me or they would destroy Tara. One thing that everybody here says is very right. They did not accept people not towing the line. Miskel proved that. A succession of rulers in Cagil showed that again and again. Just as the succession of Tyrants before me had shown that. Ottar the Great he is known as in Tara. One of our greatest rulers. To the League he was a traitor because he didn't tow the line. His player left the game because of that. And then one Tyrant after another retired within a week and never came back. Never spoke again in the realm. Just stopped.
So when I became Tyrant and was told what to do, I did it. I gave up Carelia in a heartbeat. My sole rebellion was in granting every Carelian a place in Tara. The League wanted them banished from the island so they could never threaten Cagil again. So I gave them a new home, and I searched out everybody else I could find who I thought had a chance of doing something about the federation. They were out there. There were a lot of them. Both inside and outside the League. And sometime in all of that I realized that I liked the game again. That I enjoyed it again.
We pushed to pressure the alliances and break them. And we pushed. And we pushed. And one by one, alliances crumbled and people started to realize the truth. And in the end we made the entire League realize that the continent had to change because it couldn't stay the same.
We did it. We won the battle that was really worth fighting. We broke the federation and put Atamara back on a path to total war without the League being in charge of it all. AND WE GOT THE BLOODY LEAGUE TO AGREE TO DO IT! That's the most amazing thing of all.
And then the devs just sunk it all. But they should have acted long ago. When players were being pushed out of the game entirely for standing up to the power bloc, the devs should have stepped in. It should NEVER have been up to a literal conspiracy of players to try to talk them into making the change. In the full knowledge that they could be driven from the game. Knowing that some already HAD been. The devs should have stepped in long ago. Because the rest of us players were at a severe disadvantage there...
