Our Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Horde

[Marokai Backbeat]

This, I feel, has been a long time coming. I joined Atlasia in early December 2008. After 2 years and 2 months of work and accumulation of experience, I've seen most of what there is to see. The cycles as they come and go, new people show up and shine, people retire, unretire, and re-retire. The countless potential secession crises, the economic issues that are dealt with in perpetuity, the legal issues that have been raised, dropped, and raised again.

I have been a legislator, an executive, delegate, party representative (for more than one!), a cabinet official, and a judge. I have seen the same game reform proposals announced, scrapped, and proposed again. I've witnessed people propose failed ideas and I've played the part of the arrogant old-timer who knows what happened in the past trying to educate the newbies.

I have seen Atlasia in all forms imaginable to me, and now has come the point where I recognize what the old timers talk about. Al, Lewis, Verin, Jas, and more. 2 years and 2 months, my mantra has been attempting to change Atlasia for the better, but it will not change, and I no longer have the strength to be persistent. I no longer have the undefeatable determination I once did. Purple State and I no longer have the strength to deal with the endless tsunami of unrelated non-issues or manufactured controversies. We are, to put it simply, tired.

This campaign was always meant to be our last hurrah. The thing we put our remaining strength into in our last ditch effort to implement the last of what we wanted. But the campaign has been a revelation to the both of us. I will not mince words. We did not get into this campaign for endless bickering and never-to-be-resolved personal issues. We both came into this race based on a past promise of support for one another, and a hope we could craft a campaign, one last time, on what we did best: substance and creativity.

But the way the campaign has progressed has opened our eyes, and finally made us decide to hang up our Atlasia work-hats at last, something I nearly did before Purple State asked me to join him on a ticket in June of last year. Purple State and I made our start at roughly the same time, and now we end our careers at the same time. We came in a productive freshman class from 2009, but now we step aside and force the responsibility of continuing our legacy and building a new one, onto others.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The last few months have made us old pessimists. I simply no longer believe that Atlasia can actually be fixed. Each major issue that has a proposed solution is met with crazed ranting over how that solution is unacceptable or wrong. We need to make foreign affairs matter, but efforts to solve that problem have been rejected. The Vice Presidency is a useless accessory that has no political impact, but any effort to strengthen that role to make the game more interesting is considered an evil expansion of executive power.

The Senate is an incredible bore, but no proposal to get new people in the body is ever accepted and people continuously re-elect the same people over and over again. The voting system we have is drab and predictable, but any proposal to shake things up is rejected by reactionaries who will not accept change under any circumstances. The people who clamor that "this is a game!" the loudest, never actually seek to keep the game interesting just for their own political benefit.

People claim they want to solve problems, but in reality, they never do, and I have no hope of it ever changing, anymore. I came in as a wide-eyed optimist, an idealist through and through, and I leave a beaten pessimist. In my retirement, I'll still be watching you all. As Purple State and I take our seats on the tired-old-veteran's bench next to the other old timers that have been here and felt the same way much longer than us, we will still observe Atlasia with that teeny tiny little speck of hope we have left.

And I hope you all prove our pessimism wrong. Someday.