Atkinson still holds office. He was re-elected to the South Australian parliament and will have some say in government policy as a result. He's simply standing down as AG and is now on the backbench, ie, not holding a ministerial post. He's also a powerbroker for one of the factions, which is why he was made AG in the first place and why he held that position for so long.

From what he's said, he'll be retiring at the next election. He said that it would be irresponsible to force a by-election at this time when the Labor party held government by such a slim margin.

Atkinson has been in parliament for over 20 years. It's entirely possible that he simply wants to retire, especially if he was pushed out of the AG position, but cannot because it would hurt the party. Although it is a safe Labor seat and his replacement would win it easily at a by-election.

One very interesting thing though. His promise to remove the censorship of anonymous political comment now cannot be fulfilled because he is no longer AG. I wonder if his successor will honor that promise...

Asheron's Call (Turbine's first MMORPG) was developed in the late 90's and MS was indeed the publisher. However, I truely doubt there are any assets from that game in DDO or LotRO considering the rigidity of the engine. If memory serves Asheron's Call 2 used a completely new engine and it's possible some of that was used in their later games.

Having said that, there are some techniques in AC that seem to have been used in later games. For instance housing in AC could only be decorated by placing items on pre-positioned hooks. Lord of the Rings Online uses the same concept, unfortunately.

Groups of humans have existed in cooperative family/tribal groups for far more of human history (even if you don't take into account pre-history) than humanity has been worshipping at the shrine of individuality. These social groups gave greater weight to the good of the group than they did to the good of the individual (dare I say socialism) simply because it made survival far easier.

So the OP is partly right. Humans did evolve a social structure that worked for a long period of time. It wasn't necessarily the golden age civilisation that he inferred, but it did work and got us to where we are today, and it's where we'll end back up if civilisation ever does collapse completely.