Vendetta wrote:I see it as 2 things. The creation of the GA, this isnt a shot at them, sure it was a good idea and move for them at the time. But it inevitably would cause the huge gap and inbalance among players and alliances, which lead to tension and problems on the forum, which contributed to the servers uprising against CoP, causeing the current stagnent state of the server among the 1st page and the current cold war of the top alliances. And as such people take what they cant ingame, to the forums, find excuses to hit people not in the top alliance and try to push them into a corner to give them an excuse, if they cant find one as is.
That, and Psi leaving, he kept this forum in line.
I know what you are saying - but disagree - partly because most people don't really know what the GA was about, and any conflicts that it's members had were more often than not resolved without involving the other members. I can only think of 2 major incidents when the whole GA went to war as the GA - and both times it was against other aggressive coalitions. The same can be said of CoP.
However, I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the main reason for the fall from grace of the game (and also, to a degree to the formation of GA type coalitions) is ill-perceived updates to the game which were seemingly done at the behest of a small minority of players who knew no better. Some of the updates would not have been so bad on their own, but it was the combination of a number of updates which really killed off the game and led to hate-fuelled rants in the forum.....
1. Making UU unkillable - The game was truly better (in my opinion) when UU could be killed, but some people moaned that it wasn't fair if they had spent cash to build their army only to see wiped away. Some, such as me, might say that it was their choice to spend the cash. However, the real players at the time (the3rdlibra, THE SAZ, opticallove, Lord Dougy, me, JaseB, Salvo, viperman, ELUSIVE etc, blah, blah) were forever being reduced to zero and never complained once (except in player to player or alliance to alliance bravado)!
2. Raid - was a disaster first time around - better implemented the second time, but it's negative effect came from the availability of turns on the market and the fact that UU was unkillable.
3. Market - specifically the high number of turns on it - no great problem with the market, or even the number of turns that were initially on it - the problem lays with the constant whining regarding the unavailability of turns and the cost of turns, and the subsequent capitulation of the Game Administration to provide more turns and/or change the prices.
NEWSFLASH - turns were/are meant to be a limited resource.
The list could go on, but these are what I would list as the main ones - each on their own not so bad, but when combined have led to the decline of the game from a turn based strategy game in which some thought and skill actually had to be applied to be successful, to a game in which the thought/skill required has decreased to be almost non-existant and success is more reliant on how long you are willing to spend in front of your PC participating in the monotony of buy turns - raid - buy turns - raid, buy turns - raid. This in turn has led to the increased hostility within the forum - both directly and indirectly.
I said I had said this before, and I make absolutely no apologies for saying it again because quite a lot of people predicted that this sort of thing would happen as a result of many of the updates - but were either ridiculed, told to shut up, or ignored.
A shame really!
Having said all of that - it isn't just the combination of the updates - but also how people react to them, and how they then react to other people.
It's also a shame that I wasn't around when the latest wave of Quantum was launched - is it really as old school as I've heard? If so, it may be worth a visit......