Vote on Land Claims

The following is my individual opinion. eCrow hasn't issued a public statement on land claims. You'd have to ask Angrim, Kenyl, or Bulax for an official statement.

My personal opinion is that territory claims are nothing new to this game. They have existed in various forms, and with varying degrees of success, for several years. The Colonist Empire has claims in Mal Motsha, for example. I have lived over the border from that region for a long time, and it has never affected my gameplay. That makes me very skeptical of the sudden strong beliefs that territories will end Illyriad gameplay as we know it. To date, people have just processed the information about the meta-game, and carried on with minimal incident.

Strategically, I believe there are gameplay advantages to maintaining an alliance zone. Sprinkling neutral cities through your hub makes it very difficult to group together over time. I imagine it is also a headache for military alliances to have potential enemies within their alliance core. So I understand the argument from a tactical point of view. We can also observe how certain tournament alliances dominate Farra Isle, Kem, Trome, and Stormstone Island. The home region contribution to their tournament ranking is very strong.

Overall I view the claims as a net positive for the sandbox, specifically because they have caused a stir, including the current political skirmish between Stomp and the claim-makers. Let's face it, this is currently the only relevant and interesting thing to discuss in the game. I don't view territories as anything relevant in the long term, except maybe to tournament scoring. The Broken Lands are so large, and the number of players relatively small, that it is always possible to settle elsewhere without difficulty.