Lions And Sharks

There are a couple things you do not do in a player group.  One of them is lie to people when things are not going so well.  It cheapens their sense of value and integration and costs more in loyalty later once things hopefully get better and you suddenly lift the curtain and reveal that it was all smoke and mirrors.  People deserve the truth, be it obfuscated to protect them or not, they deserve to know when things are not working as intended, because they are the only ones who can change it.  Leaders only provide the path, it is the people who follow it.  The second, is you do not take one format, and replace it with another.

There are as many types of corporations and alliances in this game as there are fish in the sea, but one thing remains true, if you recruit casuals, the chances of them becoming hardcore through their own volition or your persistence, is about as good as the chance I'll land a hot date with Katy Perry and find myself messing the sheets up with her an hour after posting this blog, wish as I may.

For every ten people the AU-F itself has ever recruited, maybe, maybe one of them has persevered and become a regular fixture and consistent presence in the game, let alone grown into a veteran player, capable of holding their own entirely, independent, self-supporting, and experienced, as is always my goal, I do not need followers, I need brothers.  The rest, well... if they do not quit the game, they simply fade away over time, leaving the corporation, and flitting from place to place, and as far as I can tell, never really doing much in this wild game of ours.

So, what happens when an alliance made of mostly casuals with limited experience, solid experience, in combat tries to change the formula?  A whole lot of nothing.  You can make casuals into fighters, but you cannot force them to it, that's why they are casual, they did not sign up for an account to this game so you could be their overlord and they your serfs.  But members of the alliance we were previously in, save the executor himself, who all my members, myself included, are convinced is the best alliance leader any of us have ever seen, these members were convinced they could force casuals to be hardcore, with little to no leverage, to boot.


Leverage, it is an innately hideous thing, that lets you pretty much dictate terms, to just about anyone who has any stake in it, that's why it is called leverage.  Well, how exactly do you force casual players, who are just here to yuck it up and have a good time, to pit themselves headlong into battle night after night, week after week, making little to no income of their own, having little to no real entertainment because they and the FCs are so inexperienced that it usually means a quick and expensive death?


The answer is, drum roll please, you don't.  But oh will people try, and try they may.  When a vacuum in power opens up, the hounds move in, and what you find is, the people who left, were the ones who deserved the power, because they were also willing to give it up when it became clear their positions were compromised for any reason, and the ones who snatch it up in their absence are the last people you'd ever want to have power over others.  I call it, personally, though I have no idea if it has been coined already, The Caesar Complex. Successors, in general, are a bad lot, all the work to get the great machine churning has been done, and they come along, and lack the awareness and hindsight to know and actually understand what came before them, they have a point of view disparity, and eventually over time you find out that the Prodigal Son is in fact the Infernal Son, lusting for power and influence, convinced with a grandiose sense of entitlement that they are the only ones who deserve the power, having done so little of the actual work to get there in the first place, etc.


Well, before I ramble on about stuff that probably only interests me anyways, that is, the way the old phrase, absolute power corrupts absolutely is such a morbidly true cliche, let me say this, when you give people an environment like the internet, where there are no rules, and you give them power, they could be a living saint in real life, but on the internet the moment the world's laws and consequences disappear, you find out what is lying dormant in that saint's heart, their true nature.  The old excuse that nothing matters here, is true, it does not matter here, but it matters out there because if these same people were to make their way into CEO positions of multinational corporations in real life, and the like, what you find is what you would expect, the limitless power and sway they find themselves with, and the feeling of invulnerability and being above the laws of society, turn these otherwise caring and genuine people into monsters.  I think all of us with any interest at all in the world at large have seen plenty evidence of that in the clear light of day in the past few years alone.

As a philosopher, I find it exceedingly interesting and poignant to watch these things play out.  Sometimes I interfere with the natural course of things to see just how much it would take, if anything were enough, to change the inevitable outcome of giving someone who is not prepared for it, absolute power over others, or even the illusion of it within an illusion, having not been given any actual power, but not having the semblance or notion of it taken away either.


This probably makes little sense to anyone but myself as it is really my own grand experiment, but suffice it to say, I am always, always curious to see whether the will of one person can hold at bay the will of the hounds that constantly lurk in the corners, waiting for their opportunity to fulfill their own sense of entitlement and grandeur at any to cost to those around them.


Hundreds, hundreds of people in our previous alliance, deserved a lot better than they got from a select few members of the alliance, who decided that it was their job to speak for people, when they understand people the least of anyone else.  If the alliance had started with a hardcore platform then the sharks would have been right at home, and no one would have any reason to say they weren't justified with trying to use people up like Kleenex, but the alliance was more of a large extended family, the same as the AU-F itself, which is what made it such a breath of fresh air when we first joined,  and a family needs lions, not sharks.  I am afraid to say, our previous alliance has only a handful of lions left in the fight, and the sharks are winning.


What happens to a pride of lioness and their cubs when the lions that protect them are killed by hyenas, I wonder?


I will be waiting, and watching, to find out, as always.


One of my favorite passages in all the literature I have read, sums all this drama up entirely, in what I hope will be a final chapter on our corporation's eternal struggle to help build something from the ground up, as I think we have all given up on that notion and are instead going to seek an established alliance the next time around where there is not, hopefully, an eternal power struggle over scraps and bits.  Even if there is a struggle over actual vast wealth and assets, that I can live with, but this never-ending struggle over what to me is a parched man slowly dying in the desert, is folly and I will not be a party to it any longer, whether I was trying to prevent it or not, it is like watching strays fight to the death over a discarded apple core.  There are so many more entertaining and amazing experiences the alliance could have had but instead an unfortunate number of its members decided they would rather fight amongst themselves over scraps.  So this passage, for me at least, coming here to play this game not only for entertainment but also camaraderie and brotherhood, and if only more could really understand it, especially those who would benefit from it most, means the world to me in a situation like this:

The old man said, 'I see around me here
Things which you cannot see. We die, my friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed, and very soon
Even of the good is no memorial left.
The poets, in their elegies and songs
Lamenting the departed, call the groves,
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,
And senseless rocks - nor idly, for they speak
In these their invocations with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel
One sadness, they and I.

The Ruined Cottage
William Wordsworth

You cannot take the game with you, folks, so be sure those arduous endeavors you take upon yourself will result in fond memories, rather than self gratification or validation, as no one ten years from now but you will honestly care whether or not you conquered an internet game and lorded over hundreds of people like a despot as the right arm of an entire alliance or more.  If I told you that I led a guild of almost fifty people when the original Diablo came out and that at the time it was a wildly new phenomenon for me at the tender age of 16  and for the time itself in '97 to do so would it really mean anything to you?  I didn't think so.  So remember, you will be alone with your memories, so make sure they count.  Personal thrills are a dime a dozen and you can just as easily get them by popping in a Halo disc and shooting some grunts or laying the pimp hand down on some tool with an online moniker like xXKillYouDeadXx, but having fond memories of experiences, meeting good friends, and achieving amazing things together is by far the most precious of commodities.