No one cares about the two empires.
False.
Neither does everyone care about them.
They're just constraints.
Even a sandbox has a few constraints; the NPC empires are one of them in this sandbox. They're probably going to continue to exist.
Player empires have yet to come.
This is far afield from the basic questions that are getting lost in the personalia:
How can you expect this to be a playable full-loot PvP MMO when legitimate PvP encounters are so heavily punished, that it would almost be better to simply lay down and die and achieve a spiteful "victory" of banning your opponent in town?
How do you stop other players from contesting resources?
- How do you stop other players form outright stealing from your PvE kills?
You have to be free to beat them down if you can, and
vice versa.
- Is everyone supposed to just let it happen until they somehow have territory control with all benches and stable masters which does not even have a definitive release date?
That is how it is set up right now. I would like to see this game work not for Star Vault's sake but for the sake of others, and unfortunately for their sakes it seems impossibly far from working as a full game by the release date that is ~36 days away.
Either Standing needs to be extremely easy to replace or you need to remove Murdercounts from PvP that happens outside of towns.
It's no surprise that half a system isn't working. And it's generous to say 'half'; it might be more like a quarter. I don't think for a minute that SV will go forward with a permanent removal of any & all kinds of flagging, nor get rid of murders as a crime entirely, but if they're going to
a) wipe (some, or all)murder counts and
b( not give out more (in all, or SOME places) until the whole system for dealing with them is in place,
then
c) NOW's the freakin' time.
Without a whole bunch of systems being up to speed, Mortal Online 2 isn't ready to be sold as a "Game, Ready to Play". Nowhere is this more evident than with Reputation.