I've been playing on Warlight for about 6 months, and only now am I becoming aware of the fact that there are players who consider collusion to be a legitimate part of the game. I've seen it happen in situations where I considered it to be incidental, and I've seen cases where it was pretty clear that two or more opponents were working together, but it never once occurred to me that they thought they were actually playing the game fairly.

Actually, I wouldn't have a problem with intentional collusion if it were understood by all to be part of the game, but that simply isn't the case and for all the rationalization everyone knows it. Far and away the greatest advantage the colluder has is against others who are not colluding because they don't think it is an appropriate thing to do. That makes it an unfair advantage, even if all players technically have an equal opportunity to engage in that kind of behavior.

braveheart im just curious, what exactly did you think the purpose of the private message function? If it took you 6 months to figure that out you have bigger problems at hand than worrying if everyone is playing the game fair or not......

I don't think the PM feature was even available until fairly recently. It does give a reasonable expectation that the game is going to involve secret negotiations between players. It also gives a more reasonable expectation that games where it is explicitly disabled are not going to be played that way. In my observation, most games have it disabled. Certainly most of the ones I've elected to play.