Cantr Is Dying. What Then Shall We Do?

[Zanthos]

the best villans are the ones who are good, but want to expand their territory.

[Xanalsir]

Well, if you're willing to kill people just for the sake of expansion, then in my book, you're evil. Period. But a sort of anti-villain, as it were, someone who's really quite nice as a ruler and even as a person, but who also happens to be a megalomaniac bent on conquering as much of the world as he possibly can before he dies, would be interesting. Deep villains, ones who have redeeming qualities or a Freudian excuse (though that doesn't really work in Cantr, what with there being no childhood), are always the best ones and thus the ones most likely to attract interested players who want to become bold heroes to form La Resistance and bring the Evil Empire crashing down (and then, having made no plans for what they'll do or what kind of government they'll set up upon victory, promptly cause a state of total anarchy as the remaining Imperial garrisons and regional commanders attempt to seize power for themselves. But don't tell the aspiring heroes that. "Try to make an idealistic republic but cause anarchy that's worse than the Spartan society you destroyed" is not a very good recruiting pitch).

[CantrFreak]

Evil is relative.

I like creating "evil" people that are just brutal and cold but have good intentions. For example, one of mines. A split-personality guy. One side of him would abuse anything and anybody to glorify the state and expand so that one day... everybody would live peacefully. He'd use propoganda and flowery speeches saying that all of the people sacrificed would be a hero to the Golden Age. I wish Cantrian governments were more realistic and they would fight to control certain resources.

[playerslayer666]

well yes good and evil doesn't really matter in the end. it's all in opinion. one persons definition of evil is another persons sense of justice.

but in cantr a guy who kills for the sake of conquest or pleasure is evil beyond a reasonable doubt.

[Zanthos]

how can you say someone who kills for conquest is evil? do you know what they conquest for? perhps they wish to make life easier for their people, and the town next to them outright refuses to trade. its all relitive. Not even someone who kills for pleasure is evil, although Jingo killed for pleasure, he only did it when someone broke the law. it was part of who he was, he was spawned in the midst of war, and war was all he knew. peace made him uneasy, so any chance he had to bare his battleaxe he took. was he evil? no, if anything he was extremly good and kindhearted. he devoted his life to a group whose mission it was to protect the innocent and care for the less fortionate, all the while taking great plessure in digging his battleaxe in a foe's body.

[Xanalsir]

Someone who's willing to kill for the sake of conquest itself, i.e. just to make their territory bigger, is evil. I define an evil act as one that is bad for humanity and freedom in general, and an evil person as someone who willfully commits those acts, knowing the consequences of them, and does it for the sheer joy of being evil. Thus, someone who wants to conquer the world just to conquer the world is evil. Someone who wants to conquer the world to set things right is not, but is probably going to perform a lot of evil acts in the process.

Of course evil is very relative when you don't have an actual definition. That's like saying that Floopulah is subjective. Floopulah does not exist, and is therefore undefined, so there is no way to back up any argument that a particular person is Floopulous.

[Cookie]

So is cantr actually dieing now? I noticed the forum posts arent exactly as frequent as they used to be.

[Helmaroc]

Cantr will never DIE unless the server is shut down. As long as the site remains, players will remain as well. Sure, it's outdated and non-graphical. Sure, the next generation will have even less interest than the WoW fans do these days, but Cantr will never run out of players.

[Cookie]

k, but I take it theres not many players now? right? wrong?

[Dogonabun]

Cantr will never DIE unless the server is shut down.

Which will happen if we lose a few more players and our single coder leaves.

[Money]

Cantr cannot, I repeat cannot die! This is the only game on the internet that has really captured my attention for more then a month!

[Xanalsir]

One person is not enough to sustain an entire continent of activity. It is possible that you may eventually become the only player remaining, after even Jos leaves, free to break the CR at will, until, years later, a new wave of players stumbles across Cantr and gets addicted to it. With no coders around to enforce any kind of Capitol Rule, it rapidly degenerates into a massive frag-fest between warlords who coordinate their actions via OOC. Some of these tiny empires consist of ten to fifteen characters played by the same person.

Then Jos returns and the great purge begins, as a small society of returning Cantrians who observe the CR and enforce it in one town suddenly find themselves in control of nearly the entire world as hundreds and thousands of CR-breaching characters are deleted from the game. Many of the CR-breachers return, now abiding by the Capitol Rule, and the new loyalist Cantrian Empire rapidly disentegrates as they pull various rebellions and the understaffed loyalists are unable to maintain global domination in an active game. They retreat to a small region and become what would be, today, a superpower, but something which is pathetically small compared to the massive empires of the past.

Multiple CR-abiding warlords now spring up, trying to create a return to the war-filled days of the past without breaching the CR. Eventually, these sort themselves into regional powers, and then trans-regional powers. In the end, each continent is divided between two or three massive superpowers, each constantly trying to one-up the other through superior logistics and propaganda. As the nations rapidly max out their soldiers abilities and equipment, it becomes a war of attrition. Spawning points become areas of great tactical significance and see much warfare between the struggling factions.

Then the entire internet is wiped by a cyber-terrorist named Simon who lives in Quebec and has never even heard of Cantr. The mass suicides from not only Cantrians, but also players of WoW, Guild Wars, and Runescape cause the younger generations working class to be wiped out almost entirely, so that even when the internet is finally restored four years later, the upcoming working class is decimated, causing a massive economic super-depression throughout the western world approximately a decade later. This is when China and the recently reestablished Soviet Union move in to take over, putting an end to the free market and, thus, Cantr, forever.

[Helmaroc]

Exactly.

[saztronic]

Zanalsir, you sound just like Schme.

Except without the ghettofabulousness.

I miss Schme.

[Surly]

We have 1167 players.

I remember it being a lot more than that... but I have no idea what's going on now.