It is Time to Make a Choice

Day 1,583, 20:55 • Published in USA USA • by RalphyNoPants

If you have been paying attention to the world news recently you know two of the major alliances in the world have been having problems recently. EDEN has had what can best be described as a fiasco with the long conflict between Bulgaria and Turkey, neither of which are currently part of the alliance in any way, to the best of my knowledge.



After getting Turkey's trial membership revoked, Bulgaria continued to make troubles for EDEN and then decided to leave on its own before facing a vote of expulsion. Additionally, at some point in the mix, someone tried to start an impeachment against everyone's favorite bear piss drinker, our Secretary of Defense and the Secretary General of EDEN, TTi09. While the US is not a member of EDEN, we do coordinate with them quite a bit and they too have come to rely on our support and that of the other members of our alliance, TERRA.


TERRA has been having problems as well. Recently a member of the alliance, Chile, was expelled from the membership for having worked against the alliance's goals and allies. This has exacerbated the tensions in what was already a powder keg region of the game. Many people do not believe that representation of the situation to be true and this has caused a great controversy in the American media and in Congress as to whether or not our President, Oblige properly handled the situation. With the temporary loss of full bonuses, domestic issues and ONE no longer rolling over in nearly every battle the administration has come under fierce criticism in many different ways.



Molly Emma's sister reads the news, do you?


This leaves us with many tough choices and questions.
*Can we expect TERRA and EDEN to hold?
*Where will Bulgaria go?
*Were the choices we made correct?
*What can be done from here?
*Should we lead or follow?

In an ideal situation, all of the choices we faced would be like those on this sign; good, better or best. Instead we face the choices of bad, worse, even worse and who knows. EDEN and TERRA are having problems internally and with each other and no one really seems to be remembering what they all taught us in early primary school. There are ways to work things out and you should try more than one before you completely give up.

I believe that working through the problems the alliances face as reasonable adults would yield much better results than much of the petty bickering that has been going on in the media and in many different IRC rooms these past few weeks. This is not to say that all of these problems could have been resolved but many of them were not given the time or the effort to resolve some of these problems.


Unfortunately, the game has experienced a profound lack of adults recently.

A speedy resolution to these types of problems does have its advantages but in their haste to resolve some of their internal difficulties TERRA and EDEN may have caused more problems by acting quickly than taking their time. As a smaller alliance TERRA is feeling these new problems more profoundly than EDEN and is at much greater risk of being divided in a way that exposes its members to risk. For those of us in the United States this means the chances of us losing our full bonuses is increasing as members contemplate leaving the alliance or clinging closer to older friends.


Speaking of old friends.
Always a bit unpredictable due to some of the meta-game aspects of their culture, Canada has been having its own internal problems recently which have made their future even more unpredictable. Consternation with the current Canadian administration has led some Canadians to make the choice to fight against their own nation in Resistance Wars that start in the colonies with the hope that Ireland will later attack these freed regions in order to keep the UK wiped. This strategy makes a profound point against the current administration of Canada but at the same time has opened the possibility that the UK might have a Congress for the first time in months. If that is the case, the fighting there will only become much more difficult as the UK gains the ability to fund its soldiers and pay for mercenaries.


All the choices we face right now are bad ones, there is no denying it. We can cling to what is left of TERRA and EDEN, we can try to find a new set of partners, reorganize what we have or go down the tunnel of who knows and embark on a path that could change Foreign Affairs of the world as we know them. Even more terrible than those choices is the path that we are currently on.

As it stands now, the US has been reacting to events as they happen and not following a cohesive or coherent plan that I know of or can discern and this worries me. What we need now as a nation is a plan to go forward. A way to make sure that we have the help we need to achieve our goals and that this help is coming from people who also have achievable goals that we can help without remorse or hesitation.

Whatever choice we make, be it the bad choice, the worse choice, the even worse choice or the "who knows?" choice would be better than the non-choice we are currently making. This reactionary path will lead to nowhere but certain failure as the alliances we work with continue to spend more time fighting like children and breeding further hostilities that may cause more members to leave.

It is time for something different. It is time for a choice. A hard choice that is possibly even a bad choice and one that would have been unthinkable two weeks ago. Action may bring us success while inaction and reaction will surely bring failure. I am on the side of action, what do you say?