To be clear, I am not a member of Thalmarkin and do not even have a noble on the continent at this time.
I was a former ruler of Caelint but left the continent due to the actions of Thalmarkin and their (then) allies.
PolarRaven,
My apologies; I did only skim your earlier message, and thus ended up with the wrong impression. The point I made was still important, but apparently you were not the right one to address it to!
The real answer to that question is this:
Thalmarkin has "bullied" most of the continent for quite some time now and it is not hard to believe that many people/most realms have an understandable dislike for the realm.
This is the first time, in quite a while, that Thalmarkin has been vulnerable so why wouldn't realms with a past grudge not take advantage of that?
And I fully support realms in banding together to give a bully a good hard knocking. I will repeat to you (paraphrased) what was said in an earlier conversation I had with Vita on this subject, as we were working on hashing out what our positions and official policy should be:
We need to be very careful in our approach to shutting down unfair play, making sure that by doing so we're not also shutting down legitimate IC consequences for realms' actions.
That said, there is a very real ceiling to "IC consequences"—that is, a level of consequences above which anything more is meaningless. A realm that is at war with enough other realms that it is
guaranteed to lose has found that ceiling.
I would never even try to suggest that a realm that pisses off other realms should be immune to getting beat down for that—but that beatdown should
never be so utterly hopeless that it destroys the interest of the people in the realm getting beat such that they stop having fun, and stop caring about the game.
There was no sympathy or concern for the fun of players in Caelint when Thalmarkin decided to "support their ally Gotland".
Although they were only one realm, they far outmatched Caelint in all aspects, but decided to join and skew what would have been a fairly evenly matched one on one war.
Even after Caelint's allies joined the fray, Thalmarkin (being only one realm) still outmatched our side in resources and nobles.
Now, I'm going to have to step out onto a limb, because I'm not 100% sure of your intent in saying this, so first let me qualify my words by saying how I'm interpreting yours:
It seems like you're upset that Thalmarkin, as a huge and dangerous realm, is able to throw that weight around and, simply by joining a conflict that's otherwise pretty ordinary, turn it into one that's hopeless and demoralizing.
If that is what you mean here, then I completely agree, and that's why I have, for over a decade now, advocated for restrictions on realms being able to get so much larger than other realms that they distort continental politics.
And now they cry fowl and threaten to leave the game because everyone else has decided to pick on them for "no reason".
Yep. And that kind of behaviour, frankly, pisses me off. It means that they're not even interested in considering the possibility that being in a situation where you lose something IC could still be fun OOC—or, to turn that around, that they've gotten so used to being the "big dog" IC that they think they can only have fun when they're able to dictate the terms of everything that happens around them.
The unsportsmanlike conduct here was (in MY opinion) when the former ruler of Thalmarkin publicly accused basically every player on the continent of POWER GAMING and then quit the game.
Apart from one word ("
The unsportsmanlike conduct"—because I saw people on both sides being unsportsmanlike in the Ruler/Admin channel), I agree.
I think Zatirri overreacted seriously to this, and I hope that he'll come back after he cools down and be open to being shown another side of what happened. I would much rather have someone who's frustrated with IC situations and wants to see them change come to the players with an open mind, looking for solutions, rather than angrily, just looking for people to blame. I don't want to sound like a self-help book, but the concept of being "above the line"—open, curious, willing to put one's own ego aside for the sake of finding a solution—versus "below the line"—closed, stubborn, seeking to prove that one is right—has been one that I've really come to see as having a lot of use in cases like this. If you're at all interested, I would urge you to listen to this podcast:
https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/jim-dethmer/That single event has ruined this particular war and discouraged many players from wanting to be involved.
It has also ensured that Thalmarkin will survive, likely with little damage done to it, to avoid further accusations of "power-gaming".
From what everyone was saying, I'm pretty sure Thalmarkin was going to survive either way—that was, in fact, one of the ways in which Zatirri seriously overreacted, assuming that Thalmarkin was going to be destroyed. I understand
why he felt that way, but assuming that that's the case and ignoring people telling him OOC that it was not is counterproductive.
I hope that this has clarified where I stand on this subject, and shows that I bear you no ill will.
