If this was a movie the factions would...

If this was a movie I would be the character that is off to the side but appears multiple times in the movie because the writers are too lazy to write a backstory for me.

Deal with it.

In most respects, I would agree with you whole heartedly, and certainly for the last seventy years or so all wars have been fought for the reasons you express here. Though if you try telling this to an Allied war veteran of whom was a soldier during the re-invasion of Europe during the penultimate and final year of the Second World War, you will not receive a very welcoming response.

I would count the Allied Forces in the Second World War as a metaphysical "force for good", because the regime in leadership of Germany, (of which I will not name to avoid potentially offending forum members and violating the forum rules also), was a threat to the world and to humanity itself - suffice to say that most, if not all, of those who were a member of said party were complete lunatics. Though that's a very controversial subject, and I will refrain from speaking of it any longer to avoid massive arguments and violating the forum rules.

You are very right though: wars are fought with the interests of mainly corporations, lobbyists, and power-crazed Politicians nowadays, with the sole aim of furthering their agendas. You are correct here.

Ultimately, I like to regard the VS as being the baddies in PlanetSide because there's the line between fiction and reality; hence, I like the concept in Star Wars of blatant sides and their allegiance with morality and basic goodness. Because it's all pretend. In real life, it's much more complicated. To an extent, PlanetSide is realistic in the respect that there is no obvious force fighting for good. They have all presumably done good, and also bad, depending on your interpretation of what they have done.

For example, the discussion of the modification of organisms genetically that happens in real life is a controversial subject, which aligns itself with the VS' alteration of their soldiers - personally, I think that a species being so arrogant as to try and correct what they wrongly perceive to be nature's mistake is very wrong, and count the modification of soldiers in a form of augmentation wrong. Having said that, there's always a counter-argument of which I also agree with to another extent. Referring back to thinking that the VS are the baddies: it's fun and it's a method of escapism. Running around thinking you're a baddie has some satisfaction to it. And it isn't in real life, (as in, the good/bad guy principle), so you can choose in this respect.

However, do not bring the good guy/bad guy principles back with you into the real world once you finish playing. That is not advisable...

On the other hand, World War II was entirely the product of horrible post-war policies from World War I, and World War I was the fault of all parties involved, particularly the Triple Entente who determined the ending.

It is a bit difficult to argue that you are a "force for good", even if you are defending yourself from an existential threat, if you are the one who needlessly created that threat in the first place.

Which highlights why and how this topic is so fuzzy and there will never be a definite answer. I will argue that the Allied Forces were nonetheless more good in this respect, because I feel that what they did especially in the European theatre was necessary, as much as I hate to say that any violence is necessary at all. The threat of the regime there was substantial and needed to be stopped. Though, as you say, Britain and France especially were fundamentally putting down a monster which they had helped to create, (more so than America - Georges Clemenceau and Lloyd George wanted the Germans to suffer more during the Versailles Treaty than America purely because they had suffered more from the fighting; France especially).

I will not say that the Second World War was entirely the product of the Treaty of Versailles and the war repayments Germany had to make, which did sow the seeds for said regime's rise to power. There will always be more factors and more reasons. A matter of importance when regarding these factors comes down to your interpretation - there is no right and wrong answer here. Though I feel that the Allies were more good than bad, at least compared to what the regime they were fighting wanted to do and were already doing; regarding a certain attempted genocide of an entire race.

This area is far too grey and fuzzy to explore fully. Though I'm enjoying the discussion massively. It's important to talk about such things, to ensure that they never happen again.

On the other hand, let's assume for a second that we could definitively pin the blame on the Triple Entente (with the exception of the Americans under Wilson). So a 50-50 split between England and France.

If that was the case, then I don't think it would be unreasonable to also place responsibility for every subsequent act on them as well. Maybe for every death in WWII, England and France should at least be 50% responsible, because without their actions following WWI it is hard to say that WWII would have happened. Germany and their side of course would take the remaining 50% responsibility.

I mean had the Brits and French bothered to listen to the Americans, it is hard to say that WWII would have happened in the same way that it did. Not ruling out further wars, but most definitely the proximate cause of WWII was the actions of the European partners in the Triple Entente.

Oh, without a doubt, the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles are what sowed the seeds for the rise of the party and its leader's election to Chancellor in 1933. It provided fertile ground for the rise of the party, because times in Germany during the Great Depression were awful, unemployment was staggeringly high, and the German Mark, (if I recall correctly regarding currency) was worth next to nothing due to hyperinflation, which were all ultimately caused by the Treaty of Versailles anyway. Said party incurred hate for who caused it and provided hope to the German people, initially. Without that, the party would have had a much harder time coming to power than it did.

That said, who's to say whether the party would have become as powerful as it was, and such a threat to millions of people and to established world powers such as the US and the Soviet Union had the Wall Street Crash not have happened? The Golden Years during the late 1920s under Gustav Stresemann saw German economies thrive. Had the Wall Street Crash not have happened, would this have continued?

Unfortunately, time went wrong somewhere and allowed the mistakes of one generation to affect the futures of another, and in a horrendous way. To quote Stresemann himself: "If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support me. However, they (the allies) gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German youth, who we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein lies my tragedy and there, the allies' crime.".

The Treaty of Versailles and the unreasonable decisions of Lloyd George and Clemenceau, (and the fact that they ignored Wilson on the subject) left the ground fertile for the party in question to rise. Though in the time before and between their rise to power, the Triple Entente had plenty of opportunities to stop the Germans from becoming a powerful military force. Appeasement policies adopted by the British during the 1930s, for example, gave the party all the time it needed to build up Germany's military strength and invade much of Europe also. Had Britain and France intervened and stopped Germany's rearmament, (which started in the 1920s in secret), and their invasions of surrounding territories, I'm sure that the Second World War may have indeed taken a different route. There are other factors as well.

The Treaty of Versailles and what it demanded, in my opinion, sowed the seeds for this party to come to power given time's course. However, in that time, the British and its allies had plenty of time and opportunities to prevent the war reaching what it became, and they could have easily stopped Germany's rearmament and said "no" to their early invasions. Their appeasement policies also, in my opinion, are a large contributor to the start of the War. They only realised the intention of Germany's leader when it was all too late.



You, Sir, are a pleasure to have a debate with. You are polite, well-spoken, very intelligent, and are an all-round superb person to discuss things with. My hat, good Sir, is doff'd to you.

Well if I have to pick a faction in this war I'm going with the winning faction. Nanite Systems. How do they get away with selling weapons and equipment to all sides and build all the facilities on Auraxis. Controlling the flow of nanites ftw.

Suddenly this turned into a World War I/World War II discussion.