History of NationStates

[frattastan]

History of NationStates Written by The Bruce; Formatted by Unibot

Original source: http://10000islands.proboards.com/index ... read=10428
As posted in the Naivetry Reference Library.

2002 - The Beginning

In this early time of Nation States, the only feeder region was the Pacific. There was no Lazarus, no Rejected Realms, no Regional Controls, no Founders, and only a handful of different daily issues to amuse us with. You didn’t even have the option of colour for your World Factbook Entry for your region. The Nation States Forum was slow and clunky. It took forever to load anything and much patience to use. The UN was unmanageable at best, with too high a percentage of UN delegates needed to approve a Proposal into Resolution form. That and any UN member could submit as many Proposals as they wanted to. There were usually 120 pages of Proposals at any given time for a Delegate to look through and most didn’t.

2003 - Year of the Invader

This was probably one of the most exciting years to be in Nation States. It was when Invaders like the Farkers and the Driftwood Clan began sacking region after region, as well as other smaller groups of less noteworthy Invaders that lacked the organizational skills or the staying power to be much of a threat. Regions like the United States, Heaven, and America were among the most victimized, to the point where the Invaders became thought of as the natives of those regions, and Invaders somehow conned the Mods into installing them as the Founders, something they did in a number of other regions. Invaders relied on massed UN member states to take over the Delegacy of regions, but employed non-UN states for a variety of reasons. Some were used just for harassment and spamming. Others traveled from region to region (likely on a script) to check for potential targets that weren’t password protected, once regional powers were introduced. Some of the Invaders were nationalistic, as in case of the Irish regions fighting long protracted battles with the British regions. Not surprisingly the Nazi invaders often got into fights with the Soviet invaders.

Many of the older and craftier invaders are still around in the Nation States World. Many are fixated on the politics of the Pacific regions and some remain active Invaders, but many have left that behind them to be members of the same regions they once threatened. Despite the voracity of their battle with the Heartlands, some notable Farkers ended up settling there. Some Farkers even settled in Texas and Wysteria. Others continue to torment the natives of the region, America. Nations associated with the Driftwood Clan settled into regions like British North America, Royal Alliance, and Canada, although they have always maintained a claim on the United States.

A number of smaller regions (Lazy College Students, the Axis Region, and Poland) fell to the Farkers before they set their sights on the Heartland. Wysteria, along with Texas and other regions, provided valuable intelligence reports and defenders to retake the Heartlands. The spamming and griefing by Invaders was at times completely out of control and there was no Moderation control on obscene behavior. Without Regional Controls the battle for the Delegacy was a nightly occurrence. The defence of the Heartland brought about increased communications between Texas and Wysteria, and laid the foundation for the Triumvirate. The Farkers were troublesome and annoying, but at least they were far more entertaining and clever than what passes for Invaders these days. The Farkers did their best to hide their identity, by distancing themselves from their home region. A not very competent group of Invaders based in the 100 Nations of Conquest took credit for their attacks, resulting in a huge backlash against that region while the Farkers happily went about their business elsewhere. When the East Pacific was originally created, the last of the Pacific regions to be made, the Farkers got wind of it and camped in the newly created region, ejecting any UN nation that didn’t endorse their guy. In a way, the East Pacific defeated the Farkers, because they were limited in their Invader activity by the amount of effort necessary to hold onto the feeder region that they had seized. That or the nomadic Farkers got caught up in the endless schism over who their true home region was: Farkistan, Farktopia, or even Fark.

Early Defenders were just groups of interested players and regions banding together to protect regions they knew to be in trouble, as was the case in the defence of the Heartland. Later came the organized groups of Defenders like TITO and the ADN. TITO itself was the reaction to a failed invasion of the 10000 Islands by raiders from the Empires of Power. After barely surviving invasion itself, with the help of other regions, the 10000 Islands in turn created TITO to protect other regions in the Nation States World against the threat of invaders. Battles between Defenders and Invaders became very vicious and nasty at times, although in some cases the banter between them in contested regions was more a case of friendly familiarity.

Another large and well organized group was called the Atlantic (ACC). They were aiming for domination of the entire Nation States World. They threatened regions to join them or face invasion. They threatened Wysteria, but by then we were strong enough to tell them where to go. They were the bullies of Nation States Alliances, forcing those who submitted to membership to avoid invasion and to post about it in their World Factbook Entry.

Regions weren’t the only things being fought over. Early on, the Meritocracy attempted to take over the United Nations and force upon it their right wing conservative agenda. Failing to do that they withdrew on masse from the UN, before being caught up in their own schisms of various Meritocracy regions. Because of their withdrawal, the left wing was left as a dominant force in deciding UN resolutions and many corporate police states left in disgust that their pro-slavery and torture stance was being ignored.

The Nation States system faced a huge overhaul in 2003. In April, the United Nations started to become a more manageable beast, after the Nation States Administration began weeding the Proposal listings for stupidity and making it so you had to have two endorsements to submit a Proposal. There was still a ways to go on lowering the requirements for Delegate backing to make a Proposal into a Resolution, but things were at least starting to turn around. It was suddenly a lot easier to be a Nation States Delegate.

April was also the beginnings of Regional Controls for Delegates and the creation of the Rejected Realms. Founders were introduced and we no longer had to put up with spammers and griefers camping out until they got tired of being annoying. There was the problem of regions created before Founders were introduced, because they didn’t have Founders. Some of the older regions, including Wysteria, petitioned to get this resolved and by May, the Bruce was given the status of Founder. There was a cut-off of July for older regions to apply for Founder status and some regions never quite got it together or could agree on the subject. There were also some irregularities, where Invaders got to be Founders in regions that the Natives had put a lot of work into, allowing the Invaders permanent authority to torment their victims.

By May, there were hard and fast rules regarding the etiquette of Invaders and Defenders, resulting in some complaints by Invaders about the system taking away their fun. By June, the need for refereeing the various troublemakers and spats between players overwhelmed the Admins so much they brought in Moderators. In July, players were able to submit their own Daily Issues. By September, Nation States increased the size of the telegram boxes from 10 to 15. In November, players with Nations States with populations in excess of 500 million were able to create custom titles, like the Green and Pleasant Dominion. With December came ignore options for telegrams, in the effort of cutting down on spam and griefing.

2003 was when Francos Spain began to make his mark on the Nation States World, becoming the Delegate of the Pacific and ejecting huge numbers of nations. They became the talk of the Nation States World as the biggest Dictator Delegate of them all, preying on a helpless feeder region. Other Pacific regions were also ejecting huge amounts of nations, but because his opponents were making the most noise everyone had eyes only for Francos Spain, resulting in much of the Nation States World becoming polarized.

Organized groups of spammers, like those from the Pudding Regions, drove some regions insane to the point where a lot of players quit the game or sealed themselves off from the outside world forever. Even regional controls were not enough to stop these annoyances, because these gnats usually never stayed in the regions they victimized long enough to get kicked out. Once the Moderators started taking a heavy hand with regards to spam, things sometimes settled down a bit, although players who exist in the game only to harass others seems to be a constant in the online community.

2004 - Year of Defender Invader Wars

By 2004 the Defenders were every bit as organized as the Invaders in the Nation States World. The Rejected Realms, long a con-college for bad behavior, had been taken over by the ADN, with Kandarin as their Delegate. Grub came on the scene, founded the 10000 Islands region and TITO, who would become a premier Defender organization in the Nation States World. DEN, a large, new Invader group, emerged to regularly contest helpless regions with these organized Defender groups. The bitter contest between DEN and TITO finally reached the tipping point. After reporting spam and griefing attacks on the 10000 Islands by Invaders, DEN framed Grub and got him deleted. Pressure by supporters of Grub got the Mods to take another look at the situation, leading to Grub being restored and several DEN players facing the music. When the founder of the DEN region was deleted by the Mods, TITO actually invaded the invader's region, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Aside from the ongoing Invader-Defender wars, it was also the year that the World lost some of its most well known nations.

Stephistan left Nation States. She was the Moderator who did a lot to clean up the NS General Forum and was one of the better writers there. Her region, Role Play University was a fixture in the Nation States World.

Mikes Hope, the creator of the region, NationStates, was deleted for spamming. He built up his region to a very large size, very quickly, and was suspected of using a script for attempting to recruit every new nation created or nation becoming a UN member. He had enemies (who doesn't) and when he went after them with his puppets he got into trouble. He soon returned as Mikeswill and was again the Delegate of his region, as he is today.

Francos Spain, the controversial Delegate of the Pacific, retired. It sent shock waves around the Nation States World, but mostly among those involved in the politics in the Pacifics. He was replaced, as the Delegate of the Pacific and head of the NPO, by Unlimited. Nothing changes and the battle against the NPO rule of the Pacific continues to this day in some corners of the world.

The Land of the Lions, once boasting over 250 nations, from whence came a number of refugees to Wysteria, is down to its last 3 nations. It’s a sad end to a great region, whose downfall began when the Delegate left the game without a clear successor to the region. Password protection, in place for most of the yearlong election brings the region of the Land of the Lions to complete ruin.

While the Nation States System didn’t have the dramatic face lift of 2003, some very important changes were made. The first significant change was in May, when the Nation States for Educators program was set up, allowing classrooms to have their own regions. It was definitely a classy move by the system administrators. Delegates began being tracked for time in their position, with the number of days on duty now being displayed. Delegates who held the position prior to this upgrade, do not have this feature. Later in September this becomes an annoyance for some, when a bug plays havoc with endorsements and many rightful Delegates are displaced, targeting the larger regions of the World. In Wysteria, the Bruce continued as the Delegate, but lost most of his endorsements. Those regaining their Delegacies suddenly appear as if they only started out as Delegates that day, like NewTexas in Texas, when a long run as Delegate is interrupted by a system error.

Also in May, Jolt took over hosting the clunky Nation States Forums, making it much easier to use. However, under the stress of overuse, the new system crashed a lot before things settled down.Unfortunately, a number of threads and valuable system tools, like the one allowing you to view the oldest and youngest nations by creation date, were lost in the transition. Still, having the Nation States Forum go from being a frustrating, unreliable monster to a much more functional forum was a welcome change for many players.

In September, the UN gets a much requested upgrade, allowing for the Repealing of Resolutions in a similar manner to creating Resolutions. This becomes a tool for change in the UN, allowing its members to correct the mistakes it made in the past, often before most of the current members existed. It also results in new expression of the ideological tug of wars over Resolutions, between capitalists and socialists. In October, Nation States Wikipedia becomes all the rage in the World, with many players taking advantage of the offsite service to post entries about their nations, organizations, and regions.

2005 - Year of Spam

Spam is the one constant in the Internet community and by those with nothing more to add to that community than their spam. The Nation States World got a big hit at the beginning of the year with a spammer making use of over 200 nations and a script to mass market for their unimpressive Internet site. Nations spammed people’s telegram boxes and region boards.

The constant tug of war between Invaders and Defenders and resulting increasing unpleasantness between participants of either side took a new turn at the end of 2005. Two members of the Red Liberty Alliance, a Defender group based out of the Proletariat Coalition region, hacked into the DEN forum and completely destroyed it. There was a general outrage across the Nation States community that someone would go that far in their hatred of the other side. Those associated with the Defenders from Red Liberty Alliance, and by association the ADN, got a black eye from the incident, to a large degree because so many of them endorsed the hacking of an Invader forum, including Dobbyniania, then Delegate of the Proletariat Coalition!

The Nation States World lost some prominent nations and older regions in 2005, like Great Chookishness in the region, Joyerquan, one of the classy old timers of the game. The Mountain, which was in its early days a region similar to Wysteria, completely crumbled. After Labrador died off, Area 51 was no more as a region. The Land of the Lions, from which came a number of Wysterian immigrants, once 250 nations, now housed only two inactive nations. Alliance of Democratic Nations, from where a number of nations came to Wysteria to seek refuge from a Delegate using the regional controls on the natives, never recovered after being liberated and died out. Both the Atlantic Islands and their long term Delegate, SNES Nostalgia, were lost to inactivity. The once vibrant region of North Alerica was no more and from its ashes Alerica was founded and it too is only barely hanging onto life. The National Hockey League and their founder, the Imperial Senators, were both gone. Wysteria’s very own Oilersburg attempted to refound the region, but the long NHL Lockout in real life, made it nearly impossible to reestablish a hockey themed region and it too failed. Sci Fi themed regions died in droves or became shells of their former self in 2005, too fragmented in their themes to hold the imaginations of Sci Fi fans. This wasn’t helped by the inactivity of players in those regions or Invaders that were specifically targeting Sci Fi regions. It was sad to see the region, B5Tech, finally go under. Vorlon was one of the few Sci Fi regions that showed much sign of activity. Despite so many older regions dying, new ones stepped into the vacuum and a few older ones were rejuvenated, if only for a little while.

ACCEL is founded as an ultra-conservative organization in mid-2005, in an attempt to take control of the United Nations, by creating a voting block of regions to sway Resolutions and Repeals. It is the successor to the Meritocracy, who turned their back on the UN, when they failed to control it, with many members of both organizations.

One of the more exciting things to come along in 2005 was the Treasure Hunts that were run by the Hunt Master. A number of regions hosted the events, taking hunter nations through a veritable maze of regions and clues to find the prize region. The starting region would have a clue that led to the next region, where another clue would lead to the next region and so on. Some of the earlier Hunts involved participants rampaging through active regions and there were some regions annoyed about their lawns being torn up. Wysteria played host to Global Treasure Hunt 6, with a Myth and Fantasy themed Hunt. A series of clues were placed in a number of regions that were specially created for the event, and providing a team of Hunt monitors to help out the Hunt Master. Equus, Burst Balloons, and Melcelene came up the clues, and the Bruce acted as one of the monitors for the actual hunt. Sadly, the Nation States administrators had to put a stop to the Treasure Hunts, because the Hunt Master gave out actual prizes of small value, which was in violation of how the Nation States System was allowed to operate. The Treasure Hunt is no more, but if you’re looking around the Nation States World and wondering where a nation like Hunter A Bettik got their name, it’s a legacy nation from the Treasure Hunts of 2005.

Another thing to become big were the economic calculators that were created offsite, based on the Nation States source code. The Sunsetrpg calculator was the early success, until the 3rdGeek economic calculator came into popular use. But the 3rdGeek site’s inability to show regions or nations in region that have more than 300 nations in them becomes an obstacle for larger regions like Wysteria. Later, the NSTracker site came along, unhampered by the region size restriction, and the both the pie chart and ability to compare different nations on the same page result in its popularity as an economic calculator.

In January, after it was announced that over one million nations had been created by the system, there was a lot of excitement over the system administrators tackling one of the more pressing issues of the system, recycling used names. With an estimated 850 000 names belonging to dead nations and no longer available for use, it can be a bit frustrating for players to come up with names for new nations. Some early work was done on this project; guidelines set up for the availability of names; and some early attempts were made to recycle old nation names. Unfortunately, the system didn’t like the changes and after some crashy system moments the project was shelved indefinitely.

February saw more improvements in the nuts and bolts of the Nation States system. HTML colour coding for region World Factbook Entries became all the rage and the Getting Help page now allowed for people raising concerns to take region snapshots to show evidence of misdeeds. On April 1st, the Department of Homeworld Security warning suitably traumatized players, appearing on their screens when they logged onto Nation States.

2006 - Year of Deaths and Empires

2006 was the first year where the Nation States World on the whole saw a considerable drop in numbers of the nations that inhabit it. Certainly, the usual Nation States news updates on the site really tailed off this year, from the usual updates we were used to seeing over the years.

In the beginning of 2006, a lot of attention in the NS World was still focused on the destruction of the DEN forum in late 2005, by members of the Red Liberty Alliance defender group. Amidst the outrage against hackers, trying to justify destroying the Invader forum, the Meritocracy brought forward a convention signed by several regions. To retain credibility, Defenders found themselves in the position of having to distance themselves from those responsible for the hacking or being ostracized for supporting it.

In ACCEL, there was a lot of controversy when the NPO (New Pacific Order) invaded fellow ACCEL member Supreme Union, because they posted a recruiting message on the feeder region board that violated the Pacific region’s self imposed 15 line limit. Despite Supreme Union being a member of ACCEL, no one lifted a finger to help them or to oppose the action by the NPO. The Pacific invaders forced an apology from the natives of Supreme Union before withdrawing.

In January, the Delegate of the West Pacific, Eli, dissolved their democratic structure and ejected many of its older power brokers. Many condemned this action, including Canada, who broke off ties with the West Pacific. Equilism criticized this drastic action in ACCEL, resulting in harsh criticism of Equilism by leading members of the organization, especially those from the Meritocracy and the West Pacific. It was this treatment of Equilism that formed the basis of Wysteria refusal to join ACCEL when we were invited to do so late in the year.

In October, Equilism went through its own upheavals. Westwind took control of the region and ejected several prominent nations, comprising its regional government. One of them, Neo-Conservatism, created a schism by founding a region called the Commonwealth of Equalism. Neo-Conservatism gathers to him as many natives from Equilism as he can and forms a vocal protest region against the current regime in Equilism. Westwind contends that the dissolving of the regional government was necessary to save Equilism from decline. While Equilism natives debate what has happened, a number of interlopers try to muck things up, including of course Ellander. Most of these foreign agitators are from the West Pacific, settling grudges against Equilism. Meanwhile, talks between the two factions of Equilism were ongoing at the end of the year, with the region finally coming back together in 2007.

The NS system saw a big change in how things were done in 2006, particularly to do with the nightly battles between Invaders and Defenders becoming a bit of a time suck for Moderators. The introduction of Regional Influence allowed the Mods to introduce regulated rules for doing bad things to each other’s nations with regional powers. By doing so they were able to take a step back from moderating each and every invasion, except for the griefing and spamming that often goes hand in hand with such bitterly contested struggles. For the predatory Invaders it marked a return to the Wild West days of Nation States, but for many of the small, victim regions caught in their cross hairs, it often meant an end to their playing days in Nation States altogether. Especially, when invaders now had the ability to eject anyone they wanted, within the bounds of their regional power, and destroy a region completely.

2007 - The Even Smaller World

It’s a smaller world after all. Numbers in NationStates continue to drop, while the populations continue to get bigger and bigger. The melting numbers spells the death of many smaller regions, while some of the oldest regions watch with concern about the future of the game. The death of so many founders, results in a feeding frenzy among the invaders, taking advantage of the new regional powers rules, which creates a new unhappy time for the founderless regions of the world. With many active regions being victimized, more players leave the game and the trend towards a smaller NS World is helped along. There are renewed efforts by defenders to protect regions under threat, but many of the once active defender regions have since gone silent. Even in the enormous feeder regions, there is the feeling that the golden days of NationStates have passed them by.

On the invader front, the Rejected Realms suffered one of the biggest attacks they’ve ever had in a very long time. Taijitu ejects everyone endorsing their delegate into the Rejected Realms, with the support of DEN, to take the region, resulting in a backlash back in Taijitu, since many of those sent weren’t willing invaders. The NS World rallies to the cause of Kandarin, including Wysteria, with overwhelming numbers. Before the next update, seeing that they will lose, the invaders withdraw, claiming it was just a prank, despite all the earlier crowing about their great victory. Later, Emperor Matthius, with ties to several invader groups, emerges as the Delegate of the North Pacific. It’s a bitterly contested delegacy that brings out many of the regular players in feeder region politics. Soon after being crowned Delegate and locked in a power struggle with the region’s forum based government, Emperor Matthius launches a similar ejection invasion of the Rejected Realms. He is also only successful for one night, with his support melting even faster than that of the Taijitu invasion. A number of defender nations that were supporting the invader, as the Delegate the North Pacific, end up with egg on their face, when they find themselves slaved as invaders. Overnight, Emperor Matthius loses control of both system created regions that he was briefly in control of.

The invaders do score a big victory against one of their enemies, seizing the San Francisco Bay Area, with a huge force of allied raiders. While a large number of nations are deleted for UN multying, the invaders very quickly manage to backfill those losses with fresh UN members, making some wonder where all these new nations came from. The SFBA is the military region of San Francisco. They claim to be defenders, but in 2007 the SFBA began raiding against certain right wing regions and regions allied with them, claiming that they are a source of invaders. This policy brings them into conflict with other defender groups they had once been allied with, resulting them being on the opposite sides of the fence in some of the nightly invader-defender battles. Their recent invader policy does little to garner the sympathy necessary to liberate SFBA from the horde of allied invaders that take it over.

Greater Antarctica is finally crushed, after surviving a long series of invasions. This time DEN finally has their way with the region and spends months there, slowly squeezing the life out of the place or the place spends months slowly squeezing the life out of the invaders. It’s difficult to tell. Industrial London, the leader of Greater Antarctica, has a lot to do with the final destruction of the region, due to their extremely lax security policies, practically encouraging invasions to keep people interested in the otherwise quiet region. Because of this most defender organizations finally write the place off as a waste of their time and allowed the invaders to destroy the region.

PVP Nation fell apart at the seams in 2007, without a founder and no longer vigilantly protected by their Delegate, they were easy prey for invaders. It was refounded as Forumopolis. Worse, they lose two of the most recognizable faces in the region. First, they lost Christmas and later they faced a crisis in October, when Hatred packs it in, tired of the unending stream of spam telegrams. Suffraly, another world leader in the UN Reports, also died off. In Wysteria, it’s the year we lose Treznor, one of our own UN Report monsters and long time residents of the region. For many Wysterians, the year also marks the temporary demise of the NS Tracker, economic calculator site, that dies early in the year and returns late. Players are forced to resort to other economic calculators, which are either even more buggy or don’t work for regions with more than 301 nations in them.

During September-October, there is a schism in 10000 Islands, with several prominent nations forming a protest region, the Republic of the Islands. It’s very different from the way the schism of Equilism occurred in the previous year. This time it’s much more quietly done, on a smaller scale, and results in not much more than severed ties and ejections, with the prospects for reunification very unlikely. By the end of the year, the protest region is reduced to a single inactive nation.

The Nationstates World Assembly is founded by Arov, as another attempt to rally regional representatives across the NS World together in a single forum. The Assembly brings together many already active regions and interregional organizations, many of them from opposing ends of the political spectrum, even if one side is a bit over represented. ACCEL, the Meritocracy, the West Pacific, Lazarus, and the Global Right Alliance constitute one end of the spectrum, while the World Left Alliance the other. There are invader groups and regions (Illumanati and Babileah), and defender groups and regions (COFR and Lichentia) present, but the biggest problem with the NS World Assembly is the various agendas of those involved, pulling in all directions with their own distinct concept of what the assembly should be. Wysteria is there, thanks to an invitation by Cecrow, who themselves is represented at the Assembly by the Knights of Zion, speaking on behalf of Feudal Japan. The Bruce, representing Wysteria, was quick to point out that they weren’t interested in creating any kind of world government, or anything interfering with our region’s sovereignty, and wanted the assembly to be more of a free exchange of diplomacy and ideas. After a few months, the Nationstates World Assembly lapses into inactivity. While the project fails to get very far off the ground, similar to the Founder's region back in 2004, the Nationstates World Assembly does provide others with the hope that another inter-regional attempt at diplomacy isn't that far off.

Originally written by The Bruce, from Wysteria.