A Pyrrhic Victory

[Aesop]

A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way. However, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

Sharknado/Tune/Vapo your scorched earth policy inflicts more damage upon you than us. The reality is, we don't care that much about loot. Sure we raid, it is fun to beat mobs with strategy and execution but at the end of the day if pixels is what we were interested in over anything else, we would have already joined Apex. That's the easy path, but not one most of us are interested. We won't kiss the ring because you don't share our values.

Loot is the mortar that binds, we get it.

Everyone who values loot over community has already jumped ship and in most cases quit after they got it.

You wanna feed your sickness? Fine. Most of us couldn't do it anyhow, my playtime is such that I couldn't raid with Empire, I can barely handle Thunderdome's schedule which is mostly "raid whenever we got the people." We try and schedule shit but most of our members just don't care that much, so if something comes up IRL they don't login for the raid. Great, more than anything else I want happiness for us all really.

We might get ugly with you guys, but you got ugly with us first. You fucked with our raids, you get super salty over pvp. You get insane if we dare to touch golems even though pretty much everyone has AoNs -- we get that too. If we had the advantage of AoN's on all of our toons you guys would probably never win another pvp battle again despite the huge loot disparity.

My favorite lesson I ever learned from the bible, and it's not one you'll hear from many other people was the lesson about how to conduct yourself when you are the powerful one. I hesitate to use this analogy because it might inflate your tiny little egos even more about your "server dominance" about being the "apex predator" in an fantasy emulator that is over a decade old. I think in your heart of hearts though, you know just as well as everyone else the only way to win EverQuest is to walk away so I'll continue on because the lesson is an important one.

Turning the other cheek, it's an act of great power. If you are weak, and have no power then turning the other cheek is almost an act without meaning. You have no other choice, you can't beat the person who has given offense so you turn the other cheek. But if you do have power, and you can crush the person who has offended you -- well then turning the other cheek is a powerful gesture, a powerful act.

Go ahead and keep killing all the Kunark dragons in frustration that you don't get Vulak. We don't need the loot either.

Keep dreaming about AoW and Tunare, it's not happening anytime soon and even if you do win this war, and we all decide its not worth our time to keep fighting...

The victory will be pyrrhic. You'll be left with nothing but raid artist challenges because you'll have no choice. You already don't. That thread is just Tune looking for a silver lining in a cloud. Which is fitting, because it has just about as much substance.