"Laki's reign"… of what, terror? Or is there some new revisionism going on that he's been shadow president since February 2023?
I'd like Wulfric's input on when exactly "a while back" was.
Laki controlled or played a major part in basically every outcome the left achieved from February of 2023 to February of 2024. From you not getting a third term as President, to Peace's dominance over other leftist parties in the Senate, to Tim's election as President, to the fact that Peace still controls the PPTship today, Laki's fingerprints were everywhere. He also spent pretty much every hour of the election pming, discord dming, and on at least one occasion, even actually making a phone call to get people to vote.
The Game died sometime around the Kansas Crisis. Laki revived it, but it was never going to be forever. This was the first cycle since October 2022 where Laki played literally no role, and now we see the true state of the game.
I like how in order for the narrative to stand this post has to skip over pretty much my entire presidency, lol. Did all of us stand around after Kansas waiting for Laki to come back and revive it? Was YT taking instructions from Laki to push the idea of buying Greenland? Convenient memory holing going on there.
Correction to your post. A group of malcontents decided to try killing the game for the first time during Kansas, tried to justify it because the game was going to die anyway, failed, and quit. In particular to this day they insist that the game ended when they left. So excuse me for not liking that you're picking up their narrative wholesale.
Anyway, hilariously insane to insinuate that Spiral is PPT because of Laki's influence and not, you know, being president. Or that spamming people worse than any other player in living memory was what kept the game alive.
I did not make a phone call to turn out people. That wasn't me.
With regards to the state of the game, i don't even think the game is to blame. If you notice the number of people that registered for the forum in 2016 compared to now, you'll notice a big issue and you have to consider that a lot of the game always relied on was newly registered people getting active. Eventually forums like these are a bit old-fashioned and new young people probably talk rather on discord or other social media about politics than internet forums which is a more of a 00's-10's things. Most people active here are ones that have been active for at least half a decade, some way more than that.
Few people back in 2016 were still participating in 2022. And a big reason for the 2020-2021 revival was lockdown and the pandemic. And YT having a wide connection circle on Discord for his elections.
This game is intensive, everyone needs a break or is at some point less active, barring perhaps a few exceptions. And burning out is easy. I'm no exception to that. Though in my case - there are other reasons as well that played a factor.
February 2023 also wasn't personal, like if you ran for your first term i probably wouldn't have opposed you but a lot of the game is about elections (probably the most fun part of the game), and I provided a competitive election. Labor - especially Pericles - also helped Tack at the time too, but without Peace it wouldn't have been enough.
A lot about the motivation was self-redeeming myself - because virtually anyone else didn't take me serious - and having a project or a goal in making Peace the most dominant party in Atlasia for a while and electing the first Peace president via an election which Spiral eventually did twice. Him and Tim are both what I consider atlasia institutions, you are as well ofc (you are a two term president too).
