Not very long ago we were dealing with the 4 hour corruption and the 6 hour purification, on the shards I played, everyone basically gave up the "battle" except for once in a while (imo, roughly on the old timer schedule). The dedicated thieves ran the sigs only when another faction actually took the notion to remove them from the town posts. For the first little while people did try to keep up with the 4/6 timer, we ran ourselves ragged during that time and the most, well stubborn, wore out the other factions until there was little attempt to corrupt.
You all have said it so well, it is a sense of pride and accomplishment to corrupt all 8 sigs by holding them 10 hours especially under siege from all factions. It is also a sense of accomplishment to break a good defense and refresh the sigils. Too short a corruption/purification timer takes this away. Anyone can defend 4 hours, especially late week night and unless there is some really incredible reward for owning each of the towns no one will want to corrupt one sig at a time, one after the other.
And while we are at it... what is your favorite faction location (base, town, etc) to fight? There has been a few times of late that the opposing factions have defended/broke defenses with the objective to force us to defend the sigils in TB base because they like the fights. Even when we don't have a defense up, a lot of times the fighting can be found in Brit and I am curious what you all think. Will everyone fight at these new bases or will they continue to fight in Brit and Yew gate?
I have done a lot of thinking about the potential changes and there are three possibilities for me:
1. This will cause me to leave the game I have loved since November 1999.
2. The fiction will support the changes well, the points, arties, timer issues are so well dealt with that I find value in continuing my dedication to faction play.
3. I so disagree with what is happening, factions are dying and I decide to take the factions back to Brit. Of late I have thought that I will defend brightly colored bag balls in my beloved castle if that is what it takes to keep the fights and pride in factions.