Shinra leaving Curse - dark times ahead for troubled alliance?

Yesterday, at 00:00 eve time, Shinra announced their departure from the Curse Alliance. As Shinra is one of the first members of the Curse Alliance, some say one of the founding members, this comes as quite a surprise.

Chowdown, one of the two Shinra leaders, explained Shinra leaving as follows:

"Although we still have a lot of friends in the CA, and we are very proud of what we achieved as an alliance, our member base was growing tired of facing the unrelenting pressure of our enemies, Stain Empire, XETIC and associated friends. We honestly believed we could carry on fighting for the foreseeable future. However, we developed a lot of respect for our enemies, so we decided to leave the region and allow things to take their natural course.

It was a hard decision, as many of the members of the CA had put in a lot of work in building an awesome infrastructure for. We had made a lot of friends."

Chowdown later confirmed that they had negotiated a peace with the Stain Empire and XETIC forces and had asked them to extend the same courtesy to corporations wanting to leave the Curse Alliance. Stain and XETIC agreed, which ultimately led to this article on the GalNat channels: Pax Stainorum, an offer of peace to the remaining Curse Alliance members.

However, Shinra leaving is not the only problem that the Curse Alliance faces. Three major corporations have left in the past week, Vengeance of the Fallen, long-standing member of the Curse Alliance, Supremacy and RONA-KIA, ex-Phoenix Alliance member.

Political analysts have already drawn parallels between the current situation in Curse and what happened to the Phoenix Alliance. As one might recall, several corporations left the Phoenix Alliance a while ago, resulting in the Alliance’s drastic reduction in power. Although it is too early to tell, a similar thing might happen to Curse, although they still have well over two-thousand members. It will be interesting to see what happens exactly to this contested region of space, although Curse has plenty of dedicated members that are there to stay until the end.

Rumors abound, though, regarding Shinra, and possible other ex-Curse or soon-to-be ex-Curse corporations’, next steps. It has been hinted at in various places that they are considering paying not-so-friendly visits to former acquaintances as well as a persistent rumor that a new alliance might crop up somewhere around the Great Wildlands. An alliance allied to Stain and XETIC in the region could bring some much needed stability, or bring even more chaos to the region.