Before I begin, let me say that I don’t want to support either candidate, I play games to get away from politics and other real-world issues and venom they bring, but here’s how I view the candidates:
Ellen Kiel is apparently the morally “good” and “for the people” candidate, as we have seen in southsun cove where she frees the refugees from the legal trickery used by the consortium, and how she intends to return the possesions stolen by the aetherblades to the rightful owners(candidate trials), her interest in fractal research seems to be more in using it as a tool for future disaster prevention (using the fractals to gain more information on what caused the thaumanova reactor to meltdown, to prevent it happening again), as well as investigate the inquest’s activities further.
Evon Gnashblade is the more typical “buisnessman” politician, by appealing to people’s greed (slashing prices of black lion keys), he is prepared to use stolen property to fund his election campaign (he says as much at the beggining of candidate trials), his interest in the fractals is either historical, personal, or more in the interest of the Charr to better understand humanity (It wasn’t long before Abbadon’s “fall” that humans first gained magic, this would be an interesting point for Charr to know about, as it was the human’s powerful magic that made them dominant in that time, it would also tell the Charr what sort of power it would take to kill the human gods.)
Now, I didn’t think it was going to work very well when I first saw the signs during Dragon Bash, but after the addition of cutthroat politics I can see something very nasty coming about in the community.
Seriously Anet, don’t ever do this again. As interesting a social experiment it may be, it creates a very hostile environment in the game, as people frequently argue over political candidates and their choices, much like they do in real life, and I have even seen real life political situations discussed in game, this is not a suitable environment to simply play and enjo the game and relax, im pretty sure most people play a game to get away from real life issues, not have them simulated in the game world.I’ve experienced first-hand how damaging this can be to relationships with guild members, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some major guild drama in other guilds caused by this content. It is not enjoyable.
Why is the happening? Because there’s long-term consequences caused by this content, we do not know how major or minor that will be yet, but it still means that there will be a permanant change to the game depending on how people vote. Naturally, it isn’t surprising that people will fight about it if someone else isn’t voting for how they want to see the game world evolve.
Before anyone brings up the political system in TERA, that is not the same thing, as it does not affect the story of that game, it is not run by an npc. Also, guild leaders in TERA pretty much always had to have low taxes etc or else they would never be voted in again, and re-elections happened on roughly a monthly basis, it was not a system that promoted the sort of vitriolic attitude in the playerbase as Cutthroat Politics has.
TL;DR: Putting Politics (and politicial process) in a game with permanent and long-term effects on the game’s storyline turns a community sour and venomous towards each other. please leave this stuff in the real world, I play GW2 to have fun, not have politics and other touchy subjects slapping me in the face every 5 minutes.
