Thulsoma's scheme also involved a lot of players being really well coordinated, acting together towards a common goal that was perfectly legitimate IC.
It was still 100% abuse.
1. Motive is irrelevant to whether something is abuse or not. Abuse is almost always done with perfectly legitimate IC motive.
2. Were it so easy to pull off with nobles, it'd have been done through nobles. There are a lot of reasons it was done with adventurers, and a lot of them help explain why it was abuse.
3. That's not really what's being done when nobles are handing over realm-destroying capabilities to a bunch of them.
4. I disagree, hunting rogues is all the purpose adventurers should have, just as it was when they were first created. This is essentially a slight passive defensive buff: play nice with advies, get a bit less rogue spawns. Low-scope, and zero offensive capabilities. Adventurers aren't meant to be the stuff of horror, they are supposed to inspire disdain. Because of this, the game actively hides adventurers from us on many pages. Where a noble would be spotted immediately, on most pages the adventurers will simply not be displayed anywhere at all. Combined with the fact that they don't act on turn change, this makes them arguably more powerful than the infiltrators of old, who were actually invisible from scout reports.
In any case, it boils down to a simple question: Are adventurers meant to be able to bring realms to their knees?
The answer is, and always was, clearly a resounding "no". They were meant as a side-game that nobles can and should ignore. That's always what all the official pages, Tom, and the dev team always said.
You talk as if Bara'Khur was on the verge of collapse, a single unit from dying. It wasn't. It had high walls. Lots of militia. And an army. Was it struggling? Sure, being central, all of the continent's rogues pass through BK on their way anywhere else. But BK wasn't dying, Wudenkin was solid. But what those advies did, no human army could have achieved. At that point, with the hordes being what they were, I don't think any human army could have even successfully reached BK. So not only could a noble army not have made the trek, but they'd have exposed their realms to the rogues, causing them to lose a bunch of regions. Adventurers were chosen for reasons, the very same reasons that made it abusive.
