Let me see if I can explain everyone's point of view. I'm aiming to understand where everyone is coming from. To show how we got in this mess. I'm trying to not assign blame, but encourage understanding. There are always two sides to any story, and most often neither side is blameless. Let me see if I got the story straight...
The thread goes up. We see a two sided war. People go "Ooh, this looks like fun" and sign up. At that moment, we don't know much of anything about the event. More importantly, because they don't know anything, they draw their own conclusions. This is important, as it's not until much later that intentions become known and misconceptions have to be corrected.
The competitive people see this as a contest. That's the way they are. Competitive people want to win. And indeed, when the words "war" and "versus" are thrown around, there's a lot to encourage this point of view and little to say otherwise. Especially with no other 'just for fun' events around. It doesn't matter that there's no prize involved, or no rules as of yet, they're in it to win it! But then they see that the sides are uneven. The preconception of "this is a contest to win" (later revealed to be faulty) leads them to "This contest is badly designed". This is exacerbated with the competitive people who chose the weaker side do to thematic or elemental preferences (i.e. "I want to be the good guys!" or "I want to be on the Gravity team!").
Meanwhile the people in it "just for fun" are wondering what the big deal is. They are more concerned about the story rather than the outcome. Their preconception of "This is an event for novelty" is later confirmed with SG "Who cares about balance? I just wanted to Good vs. Evil." clarification of the purpose of this event.
Once the original intent of "This is a fun event, not a finely tuned competition" was shown, some had trouble changing their "In it to win it (and fairly!)" mindset. A compromise is attempted where suggestions are made to try to modify the teams to be fair while still keeping (roughly) to the themes. However, "Balances is more important" clashes with "Theme is more important" and the sparks fly once again. And the people who have different opinions on the existence of imbalance in the first place get mixed in too, starting fires. These flames set off the content bystanders who cry "Quit messing with it and let's get started!"
And then the whole place explodes. The people who assumed (and demanded) "competition!" keep clashing with those who wanted "fun event!", the designer among them. And the word of the event's designer is final, and did not appear (key word: appear) to want to change the core concept or dilute the theme. And then the whole thing snowballs.
...which is how we got to where we are now. Is this more or less correct? Or am I out in left field?
