There was indeed an OOC conversation between myself and Tiberius, it wasn't addressed much publicly though which may have been an issue. But as a testament to the fact I really did want Irondale to succeed, and the war really was declared to allow their nobles that retribution and to spur some activity in both realms, as Thalmarkin was in a lull in activity at the time, I even assisted with the Irondale realm icon. To reiterate, I really do like Irondale, I want them to succeed and I want their merge to go well so that other small realms can look at their success through merges and see that as a viable option themselves.
I'm not so much excluding OS from it, but they aren't part of the unofficial alliance issue, but a separate one. They still saw a situation that was clearly not going to be fun, a complete stomp, and thought to add to the stomping. This situation was reversed a few months ago, where OS was at war with Nova, a fairly balanced war, and SV joint in to turn it into a stomp. Thalmarkin could have joint in as we were at war already, but we did not. We saw a stomp, and we began negotiations with the then ruler for Thalmarkin to actually come down and assist OS with their defence. We saw a crappy situation and looked for a way to make it more enjoyable, rather than a way to get an easy victory. It saddened me as a player to see so few other people thinking about anything other than their own success.
The line between IC and OOC, at least for me, is wherever the fun is. That's going to vary for different people. But if you're playing a Tyrant King, you can't play it fully IC... because a tyrant by their very nature is controlling and oppressive, which isn't fun for anyone, so you have to spread it out a bit, create vulnerabilities, sometimes you have to let some things go or pretend you didn't see something that you did. When it comes to wars, no war is going to be perfectly balanced and there will always be some people unhappy. This gets harder as realms get smaller, as I mentioned with Grehkia, because no war they can possibly get in would be balanced as they were that small. But a realm that small is really at fault themselves for not doing anything for so long that they lost noble support. But in general, if there are no options for remaining players, to the point that 30 nobles were just afk waiting to die because they couldn't move anywhere, something is seriously wrong.
