I'd like to remind
Leading is responsibility at the first place.
Especially when you have several WW cities.
Praehelios plays this game darn too long and should know there is vacation mode option in settings.
He could've hit VM and buy whatever furniture he wanted.
The reality is: he didn't want to play Sinope, but still happy in Abdera.
Just admit it openly.
The Merge project didn't work.
Till Erik had time to watch it, basically living in the web (which was unhealthy considering he has a family and kids), it had worked.
After Erik was cured and came back to RL, The Merge project was doomed.
1. Too many oceans
2. Too many players and 50% of them are noobs
3. Too many unmanageable alliances
4. Too many leaders, who didn't want to lead
5. Too many bragging on forum gave an energy to enemies
6. Too many motivated by The Merge enemies
7. Weird WW plan, when cities were given to 2 players who didn't have time to monitor it
What started once as an destructive mission for Holy and Fluffs (just to block The Merge from crowns), became an ideology one day, and they were highly motivated and played much better.
Despite Prae's hypocrisy about furniture, unintentionally he ended that mess and it was to the best. Due to 7 reasons above it was doomed anyway. In fact nobody wanted to lead it. Because when you got all those reasons, you got to live in grepo to make it right.
It was doomed after the day when Coming Soon forgot about ocean based tight core strategy and took in The Black List guys. Then more and more alliances with all baggage of 6 city players. Forum became unreadable with "dfeef, gefrd, ndge, gedr, deg, defag" threads for defending different oceans. Fingers of all players ran with blood to scroll it, so finally nobody even tried and The Merge lost several cities in the REAL core, ocean 65.
If CS had taken in only the best players, had kept selective recruitment, it could've worked.
Finally numbers and promise of crowns to 1000 players helped to win "Master of the World" award, but couldn't defeat highly motivated competitors. Many players were satisfied with that award and didn't want to try for crown, because they had already had one.
Probably it's to the best and even saved grepo for many players, gave them belief that spending money and 1000 players won't garantee you the crown.
Meanwhile I hope it's not the end of Sinope and it's interesting to see what way it will go. Will Holy, TUS, Fluffs and Mongols share a bed and crowns (in the merge style) or give it the proper fight in the spirit of the game?