ok, having skimmed the thread... sad to see you go TAN, obviously. Your contribution to the game and PDM is immense, regardless of the fact I flamed you for like 85% of it :)

So, just for you, here is a run-on rant post. Cheers, buddy.

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on the topic of PDM, I have pretty good insight into them from playing there, and it's a pretty simple formula: leaders who lead based on member wishes + members who primarily want to have fun + strong opinions or new ideas + an attitude of forgive and forget = low risk target. no one sees PDM as a threat because PDM doesn't want to play in a threatening manner. I hate to make this political in the two sections below, but I really think MD is a horrible ally for PDM and PDM keeps going back to MD time and time again. Nukevil mentioned LaF having big friends. If PDM could actually rely on MD since they came back, that would be great. During my time in leadership there I got all my MD intel from LaF before I got it from MD. That's pretty sad, especially since their planning included PDM hitting alliances PDM was pacted to at the time :p. Additionally, PDM did try to move closer to the bigger alliances (SoF and LaF), but SoF would have none of it even before PDM was trading hits with RD (now a key SoF ally who is still "landtrading" btw) and LaF clearly picks SoF over PDM because SoF will be more reliable in war. RD said all the right things, but was colluding with LaF behind closed doors and backstabbed PDM pretty thoroughly. Evo, my overtures to you were in fact genuine regardless of how you'd like to spin them. We wanted to move closer with Evo ever since we got over the hurdle of the open lists and everyone was happy with the grabbing situation. I definitely believed (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you guys feared SoF and PDM was willing to be backup to help keep us both netting. LCN actually did hit PDM for no reason -- there were no ingame issues, LCN won the last PDM/LCN war handily, there was no political illwill as far as we know or really any reason to expect a war was coming. A friendly war or at least a warning would have been a swell idea, but no dice.

So it's a combination of internal and external factors, but the bottom line is that PDM is playing the game like it's the early 2000's still and no in PDM is interested in playing like fluffs to keep up with those who do. They're a great bunch of folks, I really enjoyed playing there (and hope to again) and I regret that I wasn't able to spend the kind of time on PDM that I used to spend on LaF back in the day.


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On the topic of what's wrong with this server (as a player/former leader) is that, in my opinion, there is no honor left. This is a now race to the bottom. In many ways, it started in the 90's and it's still going today. The concentration of serious/elite players is such that everything is pushed to the nth degree. Too many people treat this game as more than a game, and I'm in that group too :-/

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On the topic of what's wrong with this server (as an admin) is that, in my opinion, there is a decreasing level of respect for players as folks who are here to enjoy a game and instead just see them as an abstract idea that needs to be snuffed out. On top of that, there seems to be less willingness actually resolve conflicts and move on, rather than just starting a new line of plotting against one another (or countering the plotting you KNOW the other HAS to be doing). On top of that, there's more of a willingness than ever to manufacture a conflict that's convenient for the aggressor while at the same time, the mechanics favour aggressors. It's a perpetual cycle at this point. Additionally, fighting a friendly war one round doesn't make it better that in other rounds clans take actions that leave many players with a bad playing experience. Fighting an arranged war isn't meant to be some kind of douchey version of emissions trading.

It is getting somewhere near the point that I feel that if we want this server to be successful and functional and be a place where new players will want to stick around, we'll probably have to start getting involved as an admins and doing more to keep help broker some kind of meaningful peace if we don't have time to actually code our desired war mechanic fixes (which I honestly expected both qz and I would have had more time for by now).