The Parable of the Angel and the Devil

[Biazt]

The parable of the angel and the devil.

There's an angel and a devil that are constantly at each other's throats. The devil does everything it can to bring the angel down. The angel preaches to the devil to mend his ways. The devil sneers and snarls and throws things.

Then, one day, the angel sees the devil in the gutter. The angel picks him up, dusts him off, and pulls him to his feet. A passerby asks "Why are you helping him? What has he ever done to deserve it?"

The angel turns do him and says "Don't you see? Without him, there is no me."

Everyone in this game likes to hate on the raiding alliances. We're the bad guys, we're driving people from the game, supposedly, we're cowards, hypocrites, thugs, hooligans. No sin is too great to be put on our shoulders. No action we do can be pure of motive. We can be lied to, tricked, and destroyed, and it's justified because We're The Bad Guys.

And that's fine. No raiding alliance adopted its policy thinking "This is the easiest way to get love in the cyberverse". If you raid, you do so under the assumption and the implicit acceptance that you have adopted the persona of Bad Guy. In wrestling terms, you're the heel. All you need is a moustache to twirl, a girl to tie to the train tracks, and you're Snidely Whiplash. There are few deeds good enough to wash away the stain of being a tech raider.

Likewise, if you decide you want to be Dudley Do-Right, if your ambition in this world is to be the biggest and most heroic babyface imaginable, can you guess what step one is? That's right, choose the most generic alliance name possible and change your userpic to your favourite anime character! Wait, I got that wrong. What I meant to say was "Loudly condemn tech raiding!" Few approaches are guaranteed to polish your halo more than talking about boy howdy how much you hate those goshdarn tech raiders. And, much like there are few deeds good enough to wash away the stain of being a tech raider, there are few sins dark enough that the Clorox of Anti-Raiding won't shift them. It is not uncommon to see alliances that have extorted others, declared massive wars for spurious reasons, installed dictatorial leaders on conquered foes, and deliberately attempted to drive their enemies off the world entirely, line up at the moralist lectern to proclaim how utterly terrible tech raiding is and what a negative effect it has. And not getting called on it.

Before you think this is a complaint, it's not. It's the job of the bad guys to be bad, not matter what else they are, and the job of the good guys to be good, no matter what else they are.

Here, however, is the thing you don't want to think about:

You need us.

Tech raiding makes good bad guys for a number of reasons. First, it's really easy to condemn, a simple moral stance that takes very little explanation. Second, and this is the nice one, as evils go it's fairly harmless, and there are few consequences to condemning it. The alliances these days that are tech raiding are a terrible and disgusting menace... to microalliances. They're a horrible and unstoppable evil... unless you have 16 members. They will show no mercy... unless you do a picture of a cat in MSPaint for them. No alliance ever got stomped for talking smack about techraiders. Tech raiders didn't ever go to war with anyone for voting for the wrong senate candidate. Tech raiders do something easily condemned and mostly harmless. Thus the main moral debate in the game isn't between the moralists and an actual hegemonistic evil, it's between the moralists and Dick Dastardly. The people in the white hats aren't chinese students in front of a tank, they're Fred and Daphne revealing that the ghost was actually the janitor of the only funfair all the time. We keep the argument light. We keep the consequences of being on the wrong side of the argument light. We're still Lex Luthor and you're still Superman, but we're the Lex Luthor who steals 40 cakes.

That's as many as four tens.

And that's terrible.

And here's where we get back to the angel and the devil. If there weren't tech raiders in the game, if we all just vanished as I know some of you want us to, what would you all fight about? You know you'd fight about something, because deep down you know that fighting is what this game is about. You'd find something to fight about, and whhen you did, you'd find that a lot of the people in the white hats had learned to be cruel. They would have the tremendous viciousness of those who know they are Doing The Right Thing. I don't think you'd find it a very pleasant world.

So, what I'm saying is this: You need us.

Because without us, there would be no you.

-Lamuella

Edited October 2, 2010 by Biazt

[Sephiroth]

We don't need you if your going to bring in all your allies whenever you fight and complain or try getting out of it if it looks like finally some alliances are going to do something about the trouble you've caused after you've told them to do something about it repeatedly. In CN if you want to represent the devil by treating other players badly, you're going to have to deal with people treating you guys similarly. I'm not in favor of trying to force any alliances to disband, but I do think you guys would deserve it if you get rolled.

[Believland]

Methrage, speaking about your "crusade" again?

Someone put this on Sparklee and make it a sig.

[Sephiroth]

[quote name='Believland' timestamp='1285975098' post='2471596']
Methrage, speaking about your "crusade" again?

Someone put this on Sparklee and make it a sig.
[/quote]
I don't think I mentioned my war, I just responded to the OP which happened to be about GOONS and people not liking them.

[Prodigal Moon]

Hey, I don't think you'll ever see me complaining about "bad guy" alliances in an OOC forum. When NPO got beat I felt like an old man who's looked forward to retirement his whole life, only to realize he doesn't know what else to do.

So keep on being GOONS and I'll keep on hating as hard as a I can.

[ktarthan]

Aaaaaaaaaand Methrage misses the point by a mile.


For extra fun, replace the words "angel" with "Batman" and "devil" with "Joker".

Edited October 1, 2010 by ktarthan

[King Xander the Only]

I need you. And I need those 40 cakes. And that really is terrible.

[Sephiroth]

[quote name='ktarthan' timestamp='1285976892' post='2471641']
Aaaaaaaaaand Methrage misses the point by a mile.


For extra fun, replace the words "angel" with "Batman" and "devil" with "Joker".
[/quote]
Not really, you guys are trying to argue people shouldn't try to do anything about what you guys do since you think it makes the game interesting, but it only makes the game interesting if people decide to actually do something about you guys. If you guys are just oppressing weaker nations with no resistance you're not making the game more interesting for anyone but those in GOONS already, if you guys want to willingly be the target of people's hatred and see it through until a global war erupts to make the game interesting, then that would make things more interesting. What you guys seem to try doing mostly is oppress unaligned nations and micro alliances, then try avoiding the situation if it looks like the odds aren't completely in your favor when bigger alliances start getting fed up with you guys.

[Believland]

[quote name='ktarthan' timestamp='1285976892' post='2471641']
Aaaaaaaaaand Methrage misses the point by a mile.


For extra fun, replace the words "angel" with "Batman" and "devil" with "Joker".
[/quote]

Sir, you're completely wrong. Batman could survive without the Joker. He has other criminals to catch. Plus we all know Batman is too much of a ************ to brush the Joker off.

[Supa_Troop3r]

Good read, I must say. Although there some points that are off a bit. You equate tech raiding to be "bad" or "evil" when it is not, it's just how you spin it. My alliance are ex-raiders and we did it for the profit. Not for the fun. We viewed it as a profitable add on to this game. When the chance of not profitiing off of a raid become not apparent, we stopped. Tech raiding is like farming and you guys have harvested all the crops then started digging in the dirt looking for more. Granted tech raiding does spice things up.


And if we need you, then you need the good just as much. It takes two to tango.

[theArrowheadian]

I cannot take anything you do seriously with that avatar.

[ktarthan]

[quote name='Methrage' timestamp='1285978357' post='2471673']
Not really, you guys are trying to argue people shouldn't try to do anything about what you guys do since you think it makes the game interesting, but it only makes the game interesting if people decide to actually do something about you guys. If you guys are just oppressing weaker nations with no resistance you're not making the game more interesting for anyone but those in GOONS already, if you guys want to willingly be the target of people's hatred and see it through until a global war erupts to make the game interesting, then that would make things more interesting. What you guys seem to try doing mostly is oppress unaligned nations and micro alliances, then try avoiding the situation if it looks like the odds aren't completely in your favor when bigger alliances start getting fed up with you guys.
[/quote]
The point is that from an [i]ooc perspective[/i] there's no reason to want to be rid of us, but thanks for playing!

[xoindotnler]

Sorry don't need you, when GOONS isn't there I have enough hate left to hate myself and probably start a civil war to free me from my puppet master called "relntodniox".

[HalfEmpty]

Am I allowed to submit a picture of a cat even tho we're not at war? Could I use GIMP? Does it have to be Sylvetererus Africaus?

[Choson]

[quote name='Believland' timestamp='1285978971' post='2471687']
Sir, you're completely wrong. Batman could survive without the Joker. He has other criminals to catch. Plus we all know Batman is too much of a ************ to brush the Joker off.
[/quote]
Good sir, if it weren't for the Joker, there would be no Batman.

[Tulak Hord]

I don't need you.

Now that we've cleared that up you may now feel free to go away without the world collapsing on itself.

[Believland]

[quote name='Choson' timestamp='1285985204' post='2471785']
Good sir, if it weren't for the Joker, there would be no Batman.
[/quote]

Riddle me this, sir. Can a bat survive in the cold? Can it survive in a jungle?

[kulomascovia]

I didn't know that tech raiders had such an inflated sense of self importance.

[Unholy]

Tech raiding makes terrible bad guys. You are way too simple to be interesting. Furthermore, you make terrible bad guys yourselves. The constant hypocrisy of 'We don't care what you think, if you have a problem, do something about it' then, when someone does something about it, you throw up a thread like this which pretty much reveals you do care what we think. If you didn't, you would have never posted it.

You also evidently misunderstand this conflict, they're not attacking you because you tech raid, they're attacking you because you tech raid like total idiots. In fact, you just do everything like total idiots. So trust me, it isn't because you are raiders.

We fought about something before you, there will be plenty to fight about after you're gone. So sit down, and quit whining about how you're the saviors of the game because you give people a (rather pathetic) antagonist. You aren't as significant as you think, GOONS.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Unholy

[ktarthan]

Hey guys guess what. This thread isn't just about GOONS.

[Unholy]

A post from GOONS, about things GOONS does, and things people do in response to GOONS. May not be the only subject, but it is definitely among them.

[Dochartaigh]

i still find it amusing that GOONS members continue to cry on the forums over people posting stuff bout them. now, to the point the OP is trying to make. 1) not all tech-raiders are harped on as much as GOONS. in fact, most tech raiding alliances never hear a peep as to their raiding. 2) well really, that kind of trashes the whole OP as it is not all tech raiders that are evil. it is just GOONS mostly. why, ya'll act like big tough guys and talk smack all over the forums but can't back it up when it comes down to it and must have 5-6 allies pull your asses out of the fire when it comes to taking on an alliance that has only 13 members (last i looked). well that and all the other crap you do repeatedly.

[Joseph Black]

This is a very very good point, I agree with you 100%. In terms of the interaction between good alliances and bad alliances, what makes the game interesting is the diversity. Maybe the lack of diversity is the leading cause of people leaving the game, nobody is really that different and those that are, are few and far between.

[bzelger]

This is a bad post and you should feel bad.

You're fooling yourself if you honestly think you're doing anyone but yourselves a service. Tech raiding is not an interesting way to divide the world. Griefing new players and mounding the forums with !@#$posting isn't doing anyone any favors. You're trying to substitute being jerks for being political antagonists but all you've succeeded at is being jerks.

[Biazt]

[quote name='bzelger' timestamp='1285993792' post='2471929']
This is a bad post and you should feel bad.

You're fooling yourself if you honestly think you're doing anyone but yourselves a service. Tech raiding is not an interesting way to divide the world. Griefing new players and mounding the forums with !@#$posting isn't doing anyone any favors. You're trying to substitute being jerks for being political antagonists but all you've succeeded at is being jerks.
[/quote]
Please post examples of us !@#$posting all over the forums. Tech raiding is not griefing. You seem to have a misunderstanding of griefing and/or tech raiding.