*shrugs*

I'll respond to this from both an admin and player perspective! :p

As an admin...
I want to add in additional layers to DR or make a few changes to DR to negatively impact landtraders AND those who mega-farm small countries. Neither takes enough skill to warrant the returns you get compared to those who play more... let's say... moderately. We've discussed this and have thought about how to role it into other larger war-focused changes (changing the returns curve to make quick walling more effective).

Remember that the goal of ghost acres was to make the game a place where grabbing is a net-positive, not a net-negative like it used to be (no land created, but you lose military doing the hit exchange). Obviously our goal wasn't to make it so that people can find a buddy and play grabbing tag to get to the top 10, but at the same time, we realized that was going to be a byproduct of the initial implementation. It's not the worst thing in the world to see players working together to achieve high finishes -- this server is meant to be somewhat cooperative.

From an ingame perspective...
It's kinda funny to see Ivan threatening alliances that were being woo'ed by SoF as recently as a week ago. Does Ivan really think SoF has their 'side' shored up enough to start making more enemies? Or is this just Ivan's most recent blind action which ends up causing headaches for SoF's other leaders? If you don't want to host SoF's site anymore, I'd be happy to put it on the Boxcar box. You don't need to try and steer SoF into the ditch to get out of hosting it. :-)

I believe most of the folks who are using landtrading (that I know of) are enjoying it more for the learning experience of making grabs without the threat of being retal'ed by jerks (Evo and LaF back when I was doing FA) who shave their NW (or sandbag their retals, as I call it! :p) to max returns and make sure the attacker loses out on non-agreed upon exchanges. I think that sort of attitude -- that all grabs must be retal'ed with the most malice possible -- is the reason some alliances needed to move to a landtrading model to teach their members how to grab effectively.

Don't blame the mechanics, don't blame folks for looking inward to learn about grabbing, blame the jerk ass netting alliances who have turned this server into a place where the sky is falling when fragile countries absorb a single hit. Why are we sticking with the politics of failure which made the land situation what is it today? (i.e., fluffty)