I'm of the mind that it would be awesome to be allied to no one. Or at the very least reduce the dependency in the alliances. It practically is two empires composed of semi-autonomous city states butting heads all the time, never getting anywhere.

It has been the hallowed mission of my Hallifaxian character to try and push Hallifax as much towards isolationism and xenophobia as possible, not because that would work best (lolno, it would be downright stupid in fact) but because it would be -awesome-

Who needs foreign alliances? Bah, barbarians, the lot.

Not working :/

Not as stupid as you might imagine!

Consider:

1. Out of the entire populations of Gaudiguch and Hallifax, a grand total of 2 people were alive for the last war. Absolutely everyone else is either an immigrant or the children of immigrants. Thus, the reason "because we've always been at war with " is out, as the people involved actually haven't always been at war with
2. Everyone involved is aware of how incredibly bad the last war went for everyone involved. Saying "We should avoid starting another war with in order to avoid being displaced in time and everyone in the city dying." is a perfectly reasonable political position.
3. It is abundantly obvious that neither Gaudiguch nor Hallifax is tainted. This was the original reason for Hallifax to initiate Project Crucible, so that the Eternal Flame wouldn't open up onto Astral and let loose another Taint Cloud.
4. Hallifax and Gaudiguch could easily make a few concessions to eachother's lifestyles, with Hallifax giving up slavery and Gaudiguch helping them secure a gem mine.
5. The Institute should, at least in theory, be open to outside scholarship, if only to mock it scornfully. The Illuminati should be open to collaboration with outsiders when they stand to gain from it.
6. Neither Vortex nor Continuum has an agenda independant of their respective city. If the Illuminati said today that they would not longer accept the Master Spheres, that would be the end of the conflict and the Fleshpots would not (and could not) complain about it.
7. Neither Hallifax nor Gaudiguch have mutally exclusive objectives with the other. Freedom and Enlightenment do not preclude Truth and Beauty, and vise versa.

Sure, I'm all for no alliances. You guys first.

But seriously, you don't have to be part of Hoaracle's order, SW has more than enough Mayleans/Lisae/Charunites to do the shrine work if you need it. Many of you complainers simply want to have an active god too.

@Iytha

Yeah, see, I know all that. It is not going to convince Llesvelt, though, and he will do his best to make sure it does not convince anyone else either.

Ultimately, because, friction. Blind hate, ignorance. I find it to be an interesting thing to portray and react to.

So I made a character who is a horrible person. It's great fun.

Well, that's what they said.

Also, totally not slavery, "indentured servitude"

Semantics! SEMANTICS!

EDIT: Theres also some deeper ideological reasonings behind this unflinching hatred to all things Gaudiguchan, I should really write a book about that one day ingame.

Yeah, I'm in Auseklis' order. As long as the other orders don't interfere substantially with non-order business, I'm cool with being separate from them. Forbid defending other order (ew, who would want to anyways, Fain, Raezon and Morgfyre?) but meeehhhh..

I'll be honest, I would rather fight Mag at its best than Glom in general. In fact, I'd rather fight ANY OTHER ORG, just because no other org has the amount of obnoxious group combat powers that Glom does. That was originally part of the equation of me going to Celest. I don't have to reset my enemy list all the time! Instead of getting mana killed or otherwise wailed on while stuck in choke, I just get plain ol' monked or TK'd, which is preferrable to me. I still die, but with the latter it is less annoying.

Until the admin take a real good look at group combat, which needs it, and not throwing it to the gross fraud machine that is envoys? I've no interest in shaking things up. A Glom/Mag alliance, for example, at this point, would pretty well turn the game to utter crap for everyone not in the combatant-katamari that hypothetical joke would be.

And that to me, if anything, is what engenders a sense of staleness. Most of the long term fighting power in the game is jammed in to two orgs. Celest is spikey in activity levels.- some days we're solid, others, hollow. Seren's idea of a won fight usually seems to be not getting run over yet again in their own territory. Gaudi and Hallifax verge on background noise at best most days.

Want to shake things up? Fine. But merely alternating the faces who get stomped by the same two orgs isn't going to fix anything for said faces. You can't do anything about cliques as a practical matter, but we could create positive mechanical incentives that might appeal to some. Without that though? It'll just be mag and friends vs. glom and friends, or far worse, Glom+Mag remind everyone where most of the games fighters, and loudest envoys, are located.

I'm pretty sure Charune's order is effectively dead. Sarrasri tried to get me to keep it going when she left, but I saw absolutely no point to it. There are no active members in the order, as far as I'm aware, especially none who could use a shrine in any way.

That's what got me to switch to Hoaracle's order, until I was basically asked to leave because I was helping the Taint and Hoaracle disapproved. Imagine how much fun it is to finally have an active god again, and he hates your best allies. So, yes, there is some resentment over our Pantheon.

Will take credits to move orgs, is that what you're telling me to do Akui

Come to jojobo Shuyin, I'll give you credits.

Of course, you'd have to also be envoy, to protect the new skillsets from being torn to ribbons, lest they compete with Night/Necro whatever winds up wailing on them.

If you can think of a more awesome guild name than Honeyguard, I'm in, otherwise, I'm afraid my heart wishes to go down the path of the Sweetest Warrior (HG champ title).

All right, on another serious note:

The idea of no alliances is great and all, but it is simply an unrealistic playing style. All it takes is for one org to obviously realize that working together makes things easier, then it all falls apart again. I've had my share of working alone (there was a brief period of time when Glom had no allies fighting Mag+Celest and our alliance with SW collapsed during the Hai'gloh) and it was honestly very miserable, especially for someone who does a lot of the...we'll call it dirty work for the org.

And again, I've not heard of a compelling reason why any SWer should stay/join H's order if they wish to help Mag. Nothing's stopping them from doing so, considering it's not SW law not to help Mag, and of course their alliance dictates that they do so. If some of you are arguing that going against Hoaracle's wishes like this will cause repurcussions given he's the patron of SW, well then that's quite the dilemma, given the issue with orders/cities.

So in conclusion, blame affinity.

Bad ideas stay bad ideas no matter how you build a system around them.

SHHHH!! It can hear it's name being called and can instantly locate whoever says it.

It's really easy for you to say just quit Hoaracle and join another/go orderless when you have three orders that are full of people who have access to those powers. Serenwilde is unfortunately just not in the same position. It's not really anyone's fault, but you can't really blame us for wanting to hold on to the only somewhat active god we do have.

Regarding Hoaracle:

This would be more easily resolved if the other Orders had any players who actually had power left in said order, and had an interest in keeping it going. No, it's not the same, but a single HP can do a lot for appointment and such, and if it's just a matter of having people who can use shrine powers, well... that's all you need. If that is lacking, however, then I can see how there might be some sense of grievance.

This is still absolutely nothing compared to old school Viravain, though, ha.

That's also true, why can't Lendren or whoever else is an OH of X order simply do the appointing themselves (for powers), heh.