It is at least forgivable in so far as the Nakba of '48 hadn't happened yet and an interracial utopian socialist Middle East was functionally in the cards.
If anything, this is more the fault of Truman and the rush to mobilize into a Cold War footing. Had the US and Russia not pivoted into conflict after the war, the Israel/Palestine dispute could have been one of those disputes a peace-inclined UN hammered out before copious amounts of blood got spilled.
Yeah. There are definitely better reimplementations of the PvP model, too.
I was really excited for Crowfall, for a while. Then I blinked and missed it. Ah well...
I dipped my toe into UO, got really excited about the sequel, but spent most of my time in the Asheron's Call Beta and then Dark Age of Camelot.
Compared to what you could get on a console - stuff from Mario 64 to Halo - it all felt kinda mid. But it was definitely the visual edge of the 1st-Gen MMOs.
Can you imagine having sex with either of them?
I'm just imaging the male-equivalent of the Ellie Kemper "Crazy Girl Blowjob" sketch. Ben promising to gnaw on your clit like he's a feral racoon. JBP making honk honk noises as he squeeze the air in front of him at chest level.
Ben, you're not bored with sex. You're bored with being a man. You have a latent suppressed craving to indulge yourself in alternative expressions of gender. What you need isn't some kind of radical reworking of your relationship with your dry-pussy wife. Its estrogen. You need to take estrogen, Ben.
Just two grand alliances spanning the entire Colonial Era world in overlapping multiple defense treaties.
One rogue actor in a small Mediterranean state pops a visiting dignitary. The state marks this as an act of war and threatens to invade the tiny Mediterranean country. This triggers a domino of allegiances, as all the regional neighbors are drawn in.
But it gets more complicated, because the war can't play out in Serbia. A war in Serbia means a war with Russia, which means Germans need to mass-mobilize to counter the less-developed-but-far-larger Russian army. And they can't do that if they've got a war on their Western front with Russian ally France. So... QUICK INVADE PARIS! GO GO GO!
The international equivalent of a Mexican Standoff with hair triggers, but also machine guns and mustard gas.
Also, what's stopping them from doing this now? The state is too powerful? One organization seized enough power by force that they can now stomp out any competition that challenges their authority?
Yes, but that organization is actually BREAKING THE RULES which were established by our sanctified Founding Fathers. Normally, everyone obeys the rules, so Anarcho-Capitalism can work. Its just that now we're being occupied by an ontologically evil conspiracy of quasi-human master manipulators who have tricked us into the Woke Ideology of Far-Left Socialism. And only by rising up, overthrowing our lizardfolk overlords, and reestablishing the natural, just, and equitable rule by Old White People can we recreate those initial primitive conditions of utopian self-governance through free association.
Yeah, now, a full twenty years after the MMO genre has burned out.
One of the saddest gamer moments of my life was finding out they cancelled UO2.
You could have played a cat-person. In 2001. Literally the saddest thing to happen that year.
I still have a Grim Faeries mix CD hiding in my house somewhere.
What every man longs for. What every woman aspires to be.
Nah. This is just a Sword of Damacles suspended over the organization's head. They'll keep coming back and issuing new tickets under new rules that have to be re-litigated. And folks doing food distribution will spend more and more of their time in court proceedings rather than doing the thing they signed up to do.
Then everyone just waits with baited breath for a judge to decide "Actually, this arcane interpretation of a rule about a rule about a legal decision about a rule means we CAN fine you $10,000 for every crumb dropped on the sidewalk" and that raises the stakes until the organization is smothered to death.