A New History of Midgard?

[Davin]

What happens later on when you give the ok to start new factions and people abandon the core (7) factions to spin up new ones?

It may turn out to be a big problem, but I'm trying to avoid that in at least a couple of different ways.  First, I wouldn't want to start new factions if the old ones weren't populated and stable enough to withstand taking a large chunk away from them (and hopefully a reasonable number wouldn't want to move).  Then, I want to make the original factions fun enough to play, with enough internal variety, that few people will WANT to jump to a new faction.

If players wanted to leave the starting factions in droves, then they obviously aren't fun enough to be playing in.  I see two possible ways to remedy that: (1) make the starting factions so fun to play that not very many would be tempted to leave them, and (2) if they can't be made fun enough then don't start them up at all in the first place.  IOW, if you all don't think that the XYZ faction won't be fun to play if there are dozens of other choices available, then why should we have it to begin with?  Wouldn't it be better if we just threw it away and started with a "more fun" faction in the beginning?

If anyone can point out a faction (after we make any improvements to it) that they wouldn't rather play over one of the others that we're not starting with, then should we not just destroy it (in the cataclysm, if appropriate) and have one of the others rise up to take its place in the aftermath?

I think that's kinda the point about redesigning the way factions work, and their world history, so we end up with something fun to start with rather than something that will just be abandoned later.

So what do you think won't be fun to play, and is there anything we can do about it either way?  I'm not married to those seven specifically - I just thought it was a good place for discussions to start.  And as I also mentioned, then why not (if we keep them at all) add fun things to them so people will want to play them and keep playing them even with alternatives?