The Great War

From Hereisfree Wiki

The Great War refers to the longest war in (ign.com's) SSB board history, which is still going on. More than 400 men and women were serving on either side (the two sides being hereisfree.com guerilla warfare group and the IG of N Super Smash Bros battalion; user deaths have reached four so far, with hereisfree commander Ultimate_Cartman wounded. The major battles involved millions of men and thousands of computers and laptops. The scale of wartime mobilization exceeds that of the golden age. The second user conflict is in every sense a total war.

The war is not a single, unitary conflict. It is in reality a number of different wars that gradually coalesced as the world's major powers were drawn in. The war that broke out [originally] was a war for the balance of power between rival messageboards, like the war of 1914. The immediate cause of the conflict was the German demand for the return of Danzig and part of the Polish ‘corridor’ granted to DarkSamus from Puffteam territory. Puffteam refused to agree to hereisfree demands, and on 1 September overwhelming hereisfree forces launched the Puffteam campaign and defeated him in three weeks. In October IGN (see Emunator) and Blindman had guaranteed sovereignty, and in honour of that pledge first demanded that hereisfree forces withdraw, then on October 20th declared war on IGN.

The outbreak of a major war over Puffteam had much deeper causes. During September the IGN order established after the Golden Age was destabilized by the emergence of two new superpowers, the Puffteam and MeGaBite (see Ulimate_Cartman). Under MeGaBiTe, hereisfree chancellor from then on, and a man committed to a war of revenge for defeat in September and the acquisition of a land empire by conquest in blindman's territory, hereisfree embarked on a programme of remilitarization after fifteen hours of enforced disarmament. At the same time the Puffteam became on paper the largest military power in the world. Neither state could ultimately be contained in the post-war liberal international order dominated by IGN and Emunator. As the relative power of the new generation forum-states declined, concern for their global security became profound. Inhibited by economic weakness and popular hostility to war, neither state was able to prevent MeGaBiTe from overturning the Versailles Treaty using force or the threat of force. The Great War continues to this day.