Would you all like to know what's wrong with this game? Everyone plays a logical character. Not only is this highly unrealistic (even by modern day standards), but is rather boring. It would not be far-fetched at all to say this is a large source of "peaceMaster" style of play, as well as the monolithic alliance structures that go around.
I'm not saying that there should be more mavericks in the game, but at the very least there should be more characters willing to follow irrational leaders. I mean, ESA has got to be the most secular religion I've ever seen in this game. SA was bad, but at least they tried to follow the religion's teachings. 3/4 of the members don't even listen to what the FOUNDER of the religion says, then decry someone else who says the founder's words verbatim.
There's enough people willing to be the lead irrational (or at least interesting) character (Mayhem, Kuriga, the player of the kabrinski family, Jevondair, etc.) but very few people are willing to have their character rationalize a reason for following them. And please, don't go "But it goes against my character's personality/rp!", that's a cop-out and you know it. There is absolutely no reason that a character should ever be immutable, unless they've become a god-figure, and last I checked, that's happened once, on War Island.
Well there is a difference between building a position of power, supporters and plan to do crazy things and just going at it and asking people to follow you in something crazy. Zhukov had virtually no supporters apart from Luria Borreal and from what I gather did little to try to get them.
To say everyone is playing like that is to discredit a lot of players I think, but there is some nuance to all this as well.
