The Sapientia wrote:So the Farkers are deemed the fathers of raiding and such, but what made them so prominent? Why are they so fantastically special?
The Farkers weren’t so much the fathers of raiding as the stepfathers of invading that made you feel a need to lock your bedroom door at night.
Imperialism and the extension of real-world conflicts were the first type of raiding to occur (Irish vs British, Soviet vs America, Nazis vs everyone).
The first real invader region was EVIL (no relation to any later or current incarnations of that region name). They existed only as invaders, invaded four regions, very few people noticed, and they became inactive.
Afterwards, there was a group I referred to as the Driftwood Gang. The nucleus of the group was made up of a bunch of people who worked together, their friends, and family (mostly Canadian, but with at least one prominent American in the group). This gave them a lot of cohesion and made them harder to infiltrate than later invader groups. As they chiefly targeted region names based on North America (United States chief among their long term holdings) they bridged the gap between the extension of real-world conflicts and invader groups. There are prominent members of the Driftwood Gang still active in NationStates, but most have settled into the regions that they long conquered or remain in holding regions. I can't say for certain without reading through a lot of records, but I seem to recall a certain frequent couper of regions in recent years might have been one of them.
The Farkers came along shortly afterwards, their nucleus from offsite Fark.com. They organized themselves in an e-group (Farktopia and others) and emails. As most people were completely unaware that invaders even existed in early 2003, they were able to take a number of regions before getting noticed. They were also in a time when it was harder to catch UN multying, with some severe cheating by some of their members (up to 60 UN nations by one player), but this was not condoned by the group. They had a loose hierarchy and didn’t make a big deal about who the next invader lead would be. They didn’t spend a lot of time crowing on the forums about their victories and hid their identity of their home region (Farkistan and later Fark themed regions), to protect them from reprisals. When someone from 100 Nations of Conquests took credit for one of their early invasions, it painted a bull’s-eye on that region. Being referred to as the 100 NoC confused the Farkers for quite some time, before they read some of my posts on the subject (I had multiple sources state they were certain it was the 100 Nations of Conquest behind it all).
They were pretty much the reason moderators were created, as they were very much 4chan over the top in griefing other players and regions. Their everyday behavior back then was DOS behavior today. They used non-UN nation puppets to grief regions they weren’t invading, destroying numerous communities without even invading them. When founders and passwords were introduced, they used scripts to have non-UN nations region jump to determine which regions didn’t have passwords (originally these were geese themed nations). They also petitioned for and received founder status from the moderators for a number of regions they conquered (most players in conquered regions were unaware this was going on). They were extremely active on the NS Forums, acting as a pack to grief and bait anyone they could to get them modbombed.
After they seized the East Pacific, their invader delegate there proceeded to punt any UN nation not endorsing them. They ejected more nations from the East Pacific than Francos Spain did in the Pacific (where the displaced regime was sending a flood of puppets for banjection). The East Pacific effectively ended the Farkers rampage, as holding and managing the feeder took all of their energy. A number of them also continued to enjoy tormenting some of the prize regions they were made founders of (like America) or in old battlefield haunts like the Heartland (where they later became the most active members of the regional community). That and they were put off by an increase in anti-griefing rules.
Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 7:45 pm
