I have lurked and stayed away from all these sort of discussions seeing that I will either add more to the endless arguments or be plainly ignored. But I honestly don't see what all the problem is about, I'm sorry but I really can't see how such a big deal this faction "disaster" is.
I have personally been always in at least one faction, never truly "independent". I have seen/experienced the good that comes with being in a faction and the bad. Though I'm officially only in one faction I play with many other ones and I engage in their problems and politics sometimes, trying to solve them.
When I get "online" to discovery, I play the game, I don't sit around in the forums. I do that -after- playing the game itself for the sole reason to write down events/experiences related to in-game, usually that ends up in a regular message dump post, but every time I'm proceeding to do that, threads such as this appear. This constant battle between "we" and "them", these endless debates and complaining on who is right and who is wrong, it never seizes to stop. I wonder sometimes if these people enjoy this, do they enjoy this drama and this need to blame on somebody for anything? The independents nor the factions are so evil as many seem to portray them being, I play this game alot and I don't see these rulebreakers/annoying people/OORP/spammage of x ship. Granted it can happen that this sort of bad game play occurs but not in the way it's described here or in similar threads, not in this huge scale everyone seem to believe it is. The Game and the people playing it are OK and when I'm finished my gaming for the day I'm OK too. Almost every time.
I don't know about you guys, but I just play the damn game and I'm happy with what it offers. Sure you can get ticked off or annoyed by something but in the end it's all fun. If it isn't then what's the reason we are here?
Now I'm returning to my lurking state once again...