It seems there are two fundamental issues here: bias and legitimacy.
Several people have taken offence at perceived bias, which genuinely surprised me. We were unprepared by how much players would themselves directly identify as a fictional superpower so far as to take umbrage on its behalf.
To be blunt, Alliance-pledged players of Elite Dangerous do not equal the fictional political entity of ‘the Alliance’. They are different things, in the same way that the Imperial Senate is not made up of players who identify as Imperials. Frontier own these entities. etc
Yeah - Nah.
Imperial Senate is not how players identify.
Imperial High Command - that's players.
People always say "These entities belong to Frontier"
That's rubbish.
"Frontier" is a big, messy, disconnected, inconsistent, mob. They work in silos and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
They are along for the ride as much as the rest of us.
They have better agency about some stuff, but they don't make the best decisions and they don't have all the agency.
They have to pretend that huge amounts of Player activity didn't happen just so that they can keep their lore roughly how, uh - the guys that took over from Michael Brookes thought it might go, err minus the changes that they made without really understanding the implications. "Did you check the Thargoid Bible before you wrote this?" [lying] "Yeah"; "Fine carry on"
"We did all this work on the Guardians Content and no one really engages with it".
Welcome to our world - where we change stuff in the game and Frontier ignores it.
Ever seen a Community Manager that plays enough to be a decent combat pilot?
Or understand and use the BGS?
Or understand how the interelationships between player groups happen and evolve?
The Alliance has grown from 250 systems in 3301 to nearly a Thousand today. The Imperials and the Feds have shrunk and the Independents have exploded and are everywhere.
Do Frontier try to engage with those FACTS in any way at all?
Any statements from Federation figureheads?
Did the Imperials notice?
Here's an example:
ZYADYA is a formal treaty between the organisations that run Grom and the Imperial PowerPlay groups.
Heck here's a SagI article featuring ZYADYA:
https://www.sagittarius-eye.com/victories-and-controversy-for-operation-valentine/
Is it okay that Frontier ignore this?
Players can't ignore it.
It is a fact of life for anyone engaged with PowerPlay.
Whether you are for or against the Empire, you need to understand that Grom is with them and they are with Grom.
So who is the Alliance?
Is it Edmund Mahon? Is it Mic Turner, Meredith Argent and Jo Merion?
Is it the CMDRs of the Alliance Office of Statistics? Month after month they keep Mahon at the top of the PowerPlay ladder.
Is it the GalNet authour? Who can set a story in Lave involving an Alliance Admiral (Riri McAllister) right when Lave is in utter turmoil, and not mention that war.
Is it AID and AEDC and TCF and SCL and FGS and all the Alliance Organisations?
I say it is the CMDRs who make the Alliance what it is.
The Imperials and the Feds had their empires handed to them on a plate.
The Alliance has struggled for every system.
Sometimes against massive organised opposition.
Sometimes against inhuman opposition.
You are "Genuinely Surprised" because you are NOT Alliance.
We identify as Alliance because we ARE.
We model our organisation structures on how we perceive the Alliance to be.
Divided, multiplicitous, fractious, and factional! Full of debate and passion; knowledge and capability.
And we are frequently in opposition to Frontier.
How do you think it feels when we discover an Alliance symbol on the floor hatch in the Krait?
More Alliance content retconned out?
In the words of Allen Stroud: "We decided not to make it Alliance because we thought that would alienate people."
Yeah I guess there's not even one percent who identify as Alliance, but we defy those who write garbage about us.
