Greetings all,
It is with sadness that I have watched the events unfold leading to what is now quickly becoming the largest war Illyriad has ever seen. It is the turning of friends that causes my sadness, but the complete lack of restraint in the execution of this war that has forced me out of hiding today, making an announcement I wish for all your sakes I did not have to make.
From the beginning, Harmless have upheld wartime standards that - like our peacetime standards - focused on fairness and preservation of a healthy game where people would feel safe to stand for something...even if it meant standing against us. We fought tactical wars, targeting active combatants, decision makers, and members who actively supported their alliances' war efforts. Even among those, we limited any one man's losses both from wartime action or postwar retribution. Throughout our history, I can think of only one account we sieged out of the game, and only because it unshakingly threatened to plunge the server in unending darknes back in a time when that was a very real possibility.
We preserved our own enemies, ensuring they could rebuild and fight another day, for their sake and ours. No doubt a few voices will chime in here regaling you on our offenses and their unthinkable grievances contrary to these standards. Be sure to note how the accounts behind those voices in fact still here, healthy and thriving. I must exclude of course the ragequitters, who simply cannot bear the slightest consequence for their own actions - I cannot bring myself to apologize for their departure.
We always strived during both war and peace to nurture the game itself, and most recently even humbled ourselves and sought peace where none was deserved, to prevent the fallout a server-wide war would inflict. Our opponents had no such concerns. Thirst for glory and revenge for past grudges so vastly outweighed the consequences to the game itself that peace was not even an option to consider. Instead, when resolution seemed imminent between the supposed catalysts of this war, higher powers intervened to prevent it. Never before have we faced enemies who so overtly demonstrated a common cause universally rooted in jealousy and greed. But I digress.
Here, today, we are at war, and it seems the rules have changed. Our opposition has no thought for the server-wide consequences, or even what they will do with themselves once they become the new warlords of Illyriad. They will be satisfied to rule an empty wasteland, and no matter how Harmless and our allies restrain ourselves, a wasteland is what their scorched-earth policies will create. The standards to which Harmless hold ourselves are now but a liability only to ourselves, failing to preserve the server-wide diversity and autonomy they are designed to promote. Some of our members, even those who are away or otherwise inactive, are going to be sieged out of the game for the cardinal crime of being vulnerably located according to the current battle lines. Not that we're surprised. After all, Harmless is in this war in the first place because someone was tired of being embarassed by a smaller yet more capable alliance, wanted to obliterate it without restraint, and expected its allies to stand idly by and just let this happen.
Perhaps I've become a little calloused, because I watch my enemies targeting inactives, engorging themselves on targets of opportunity, wiping players out of the game over the slightest perceived offense from the
last war (or piling in against us with no greater cause than having lost a war 2 years ago), and I think to myself so be it. If the victors of this war are to rule over a wasteland, better for it to be OUR wasteland. It's actually a rather easy stance to take. I've been inactive for nearly a year and stopped truly caring about the game's future long ago. It is our enemies who should care whether there's anything left when we're done, while Harmless members are languishing away in boredom that could be easily solved by taking one fling of wanton bloodlust and then leaving the pickings for whatever vultures survived our onslaught. Harmless no longer needs a future-minded endgame.
Yet neither I nor my fellow Directors wish to sacrifice the standards and honor Harmless have so long upheld quite so easily. If for no other reason, then for the sake of tradition we are here making one last appeal to reason, and in so doing leaving the blame for this ultimate outcome squarly in the hands of our enemies. I have always liked the idea of mutually assured destruction. The civilization that chooses destruction over peace deserves the result it creates. But to our opposition I say this: the decision will most assuredly be yours.
As of today, Harmless is adopting the following new policies for this war:
- We will capture/destroy no more than the highest percentage of a player's cities that the enemy does to any of our own. (Examples: If the enemy never takes more than 25% of any player's cities from us, we will take no more than 25% of any one player's cities from them. If they destroy an entire account - even just once - we shall take free license to completely destroy any of their accounts.)
- We will not attack inactive accounts unless they continue attacking inactive accounts.
- We will not conduct war-related actions (of any type) using alt accounts in non-aligned alliances unless they continue to do so.
- We will not prey on non-combattant targets of opportunity unless they continue to do so.
In other words, Harmless shall seek to uphold the same quality of standards we always have. But only if our enemies extend the same decency to us. For every act of depravity to which they descend, we shall step down with them, and it will be they who set the new standard. You may think Harmless are most talented at war, but this is only secondary. Our true talent is in record keeping.
In this, we are quite happy to let you take the lead down this dark path. Wherever it takes us, rest assured it will hurt you more than it hurts us. Heck. I probably won't even be around paying attention, so knock yourself out. We don't mind rebuilding. Its time for us to stop minding whether you
can rebuild. Enemies can be replaced, after all.