The alternate side of attracting cheaters is it results in relative abandonment of legitimate players, like myself.
The difference is that I'm a mature pragmatist who recognizes cheaters as an added challenge or obstacle to improve my playing. Many people when younger are more idealistic and prone to act upon their beliefs without hesitation.
My assessment is that cheating strangled the game and the social experiment it was intended to be. Obviously I'm attracted to the framework in its ruin. I'm a prolific traveler in the game and random around regularly. The game is in the saturated stage of many kingdoms becoming astonishingly similar in tactics and practices. Cheating has probably resulted in what can best be described as cultural inbreeding. The mutations are repeated over and over and this is what is different from traveling/kingdom hopping ages ago.
I'm not against Bart. I'm of the understanding he's moved on, but enjoyed interacting with him while he was here. Perhaps Steel is right but not in the context of success: It resulted in what we know. But like many things efficient they can have unintended circumstances. We have to approach cheating as devolving into animal law because that is what we're talking about: birds of a feather in a game designed for cultural enlightenment. The bullying pattern themselves after the unevolving prey-predator dichotomy. Do you understand how cheating undermines culture? It's illustrated in The 10 Commandments: an alliance called Absalom is likely aware that the essence of culture is rooted in the premise of mutual respect. When we forgo these basic patterns of culture we often experience decay. It's not a religious thing, it's a primer for how civilizations progress.
Another thing about Palem and TFC, we were not offered wars on even ground. If anything drives me it's to war "up". I'm not just referring to the stance of war, I mean the conflict in facing real threats where everyone is breakable on our side.
Imagine if you will big orcs hitting down and you're a faery. To say that the lessons learned in TFC were valuable is an understatement. Perhaps recruiters and even TFC players themselves don't know why they were top material.
Originally Posted by Bishop
