NS History: You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers!

[Blackbird]

I had never heard that perspective. Griefing used to be fun! Salting the natives, ejecting everyone you could as fast as possible. Good times.

Except that was illegal pre-influence, and got various invaders DEATed and DOSed at the time. Between 2006-9 (when SC Liberations came in) was the best time for invaders to grief regions, as it was legal, and if you could get a password in place on the region, that was game over. Lots of defenders left the game when influence came in, as it was seen as the site endorsing region griefing (which was no longer illegal), and many of them decamped to Cybernations instead.

Indeed. That's when I left for CN.

[Travislavania]

what was the first nation?

[The Church of Satan]

what was the first nation?

Presumably, it was Maxtopia. After all, it was Max Barry's nation, and since this is his site it makes sense that he would have created the first nation.

[Fauxia]

what was the first nation?

Presumably, it was Maxtopia. After all, it was Max Barry's nation, and since this is his site it makes sense that he would have created the first nation.

Are we sure Maxtopia was Max's original nation

It had only a bit more than a billion population when it CTEd in 2013.

Notably, there was a nation called "Max Barry" that CTEd in about February of 2003, but it only had 32 million population, so it probably wasn't Max.

[Luna Amore]

Presumably, it was Maxtopia. After all, it was Max Barry's nation, and since this is his site it makes sense that he would have created the first nation.

Are we sure Maxtopia was Max's original nation

It had only a bit more than a billion population when it CTEd in 2013.

Notably, there was a nation called "Max Barry" that CTEd in about February of 2003, but it only had 32 million population, so it probably wasn't Max.

Well, we know 5 of the first 16 nations at least:

[Tinhampton]

Are we sure Maxtopia was Max's original nation

It had only a bit more than a billion population when it CTEd in 2013.

Notably, there was a nation called "Max Barry" that CTEd in about February of 2003, but it only had 32 million population, so it probably wasn't Max.

Well, we know 5 of the first 16 nations at least:

Were these actual nations that appeared onto the public version of NationStates that released in November 2002, or just Max (and friends') test nations? We know for a fact that Despoto was first registered in December 2004 and South-Southwest in January 2005.

[Luna Amore]

Probably the Beta.

[Lord Dominator]

I'd presume there being more victims than TBH being "co."

Just take the compliment, lol, Flander is calling y'all the largest invader region in the game.

@LD Gest makes decent cash as a lawyer, so he's not hurting for it, and the people he views ruined his game that are still around are primarily TBH.
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@Fauxia TBH has been the largest raiding org for a while now, they've not lived up to the heights of raiding earlier, but there isn't really any other raiding org of note bar Lily.

I more meant that an inactive region recruiting a lot hurts everyone, even if his direction is at TBH.

[Fauxia]

Probably the Beta.

Considering it was version 0.(2.2)

@LD Gest makes decent cash as a lawyer, so he's not hurting for it, and the people he views ruined his game that are still around are primarily TBH.
--
@Fauxia TBH has been the largest raiding org for a while now, they've not lived up to the heights of raiding earlier, but there isn't really any other raiding org of note bar Lily.

I more meant that an inactive region recruiting a lot hurts everyone, even if his direction is at TBH.

Yeah, I thought maybe you might've thought that. It's true to some degree. However, if newbies deliberately choose raider regions, if you got rid of those telegrams, those nations are probably more likely to be going to raider regions than other types of regions, so it does probably hurt TBH more.

[Ghost Land]

Presumably, it was Maxtopia. After all, it was Max Barry's nation, and since this is his site it makes sense that he would have created the first nation.

Are we sure Maxtopia was Max's original nation

It had only a bit more than a billion population when it CTEd in 2013.

Notably, there was a nation called "Max Barry" that CTEd in about February of 2003, but it only had 32 million population, so it probably wasn't Max.

Maxtopia had only about a billion people when it CTE'd in 2013 because it had been inactive most of the time since it was founded, having been revived only twice, both for special events. I'd say the first time around, it was probably dead before the end of 2002. I remember reading somewhere that Max got sick of getting the same low-quality "are you really Max???" telegrams all the time and that's why he let his nation die, though it's rumored he has at least one other secret nation on here.

[Fauxia]

Are we sure Maxtopia was Max's original nation

It had only a bit more than a billion population when it CTEd in 2013.

Notably, there was a nation called "Max Barry" that CTEd in about February of 2003, but it only had 32 million population, so it probably wasn't Max.

Maxtopia had only about a billion people when it CTE'd in 2013 because it had been inactive most of the time since it was founded, having been revived only twice, both for special events. I'd say the first time around, it was probably dead before the end of 2002. I remember reading somewhere that Max got sick of getting the same low-quality "are you really Max???" telegrams all the time and that's why he let his nation die, though it's rumored he has at least one other secret nation on here.

Yeah that’s how the story goes. I believe he has said he plays in secret now.

[Baedan]

Maxtopia had only about a billion people when it CTE'd in 2013 because it had been inactive most of the time since it was founded, having been revived only twice, both for special events. I'd say the first time around, it was probably dead before the end of 2002. I remember reading somewhere that Max got sick of getting the same low-quality "are you really Max???" telegrams all the time and that's why he let his nation die, though it's rumored he has at least one other secret nation on here.

Yeah that’s how the story goes. I believe he has said he plays in secret now.

He could be any one of us...

[The Moonstar]

I had never heard that perspective. Griefing used to be fun! Salting the natives, ejecting everyone you could as fast as possible. Good times.

Except that was illegal pre-influence, and got various invaders DEATed and DOSed at the time. Between 2006-9 (when SC Liberations came in) was the best time for invaders to grief regions, as it was legal, and if you could get a password in place on the region, that was game over. Lots of defenders left the game when influence came in, as it was seen as the site endorsing region griefing (which was no longer illegal), and many of them decamped to Cybernations instead.

Which was my time coming into defending. A time, I wish the R/D game would harken back to. Around the time you came on too isn't it?

[Numero Capitan]

Yeah that’s how the story goes. I believe he has said he plays in secret now.

He could be any one of us...

Nearly any one of us

We know its not Spartz because he got puppetswept for creating Max themed puppets and telling people he was Max

[Reploid Productions]

Except that was illegal pre-influence, and got various invaders DEATed and DOSed at the time. Between 2006-9 (when SC Liberations came in) was the best time for invaders to grief regions, as it was legal, and if you could get a password in place on the region, that was game over. Lots of defenders left the game when influence came in, as it was seen as the site endorsing region griefing (which was no longer illegal), and many of them decamped to Cybernations instead.

Which was my time coming into defending. A time, I wish the R/D game would harken back to. Around the time you came on too isn't it?

Sedge neglects to mention that plenty of defenders got mistakenly nuked as raiders back then, too. Because our operating criteria for "native" at the time was "people already in the region when you got there". So defenders trying to kick out raiders would often run afoul of that "no ejecting more than 10% of the natives" thing too. Raiders were not exclusively the only ones getting screwed by the pre-Influence rules.

[Baedan]

He could be any one of us...

Nearly any one of us

We know its not Spartz because he got puppetswept for creating Max themed puppets and telling people he was Max

Exactly the sort of thing Max Barry would do to throw us off the scent.

[Kanaia]

Max is every nation except you. The game is literally you, and 230K Max sockpuppets.

[Sail Nation]

Max is every nation except you. The game is literally you, and 230K Max sockpuppets.

That's a nice but kind of creepy idea.

But is this the exact thing that Max would say? Is this just one of Max's puppets? Or are you one of Max's puppets?

On this topic, I also think that [violet] has a secret nation somewhere, and I like the feeling that there is a 1% chance of [violet] or Max being in one of the regions I'm in.

[The Moonstar]

Which was my time coming into defending. A time, I wish the R/D game would harken back to. Around the time you came on too isn't it?

Sedge neglects to mention that plenty of defenders got mistakenly nuked as raiders back then, too. Because our operating criteria for "native" at the time was "people already in the region when you got there". So defenders trying to kick out raiders would often run afoul of that "no ejecting more than 10% of the natives" thing too. Raiders were not exclusively the only ones getting screwed by the pre-Influence rules.

I meant the post influence time period. Where Sedge mentions would be the best time for raider griefing. I never really approved of going that far, but I do approve of the dynamics then.

[The Church of Satan]

Max is every nation except you. The game is literally you, and 230K Max sockpuppets.

That's a nice but kind of creepy idea.

But is this the exact thing that Max would say? Is this just one of Max's puppets? Or are you one of Max's puppets?

On this topic, I also think that [violet] has a secret nation somewhere, and I like the feeling that there is a 1% chance of [violet] or Max being in one of the regions I'm in.

1% is an understatement. There's a couple hundred thousand nations, which means there's what, a one in 230,000 chance? That's gotta be at least a 0.001% chance.

[Sail Nation]

That's a nice but kind of creepy idea.

But is this the exact thing that Max would say? Is this just one of Max's puppets? Or are you one of Max's puppets?

On this topic, I also think that [violet] has a secret nation somewhere, and I like the feeling that there is a 1% chance of [violet] or Max being in one of the regions I'm in.

1% is an understatement. There's a couple hundred thousand nations, which means there's what, a one in 230,000 chance? That's gotta be at least a 0.001% chance.

Slightly wrong calculation.

I was thinking of the chance of them being in a particular region, rather than them being a particular nation. If we did it ignoring nation count for each region, there's a 1 in 20,000 chance that Max is in a particular region, and as I have puppets in other regions, this can be narrowed down to about 1 in 5000 chance (if we only count the regions in which I have an active nation, rather than ones that I occasionally log in to). But what makes the calculation very difficult is the size of each region. The three active regions I'm in are Lorania (about 70 nations), Thaecia (about 350 nations) and Celtia (about 10 nations). These regions have very different sizes, and this can easily get more difficult when we take into account that there are most regions have less than 5 nations, and there are about 20 regions with more than 1,000 nations.

Also we have gone wildly off topic here. I thought we were supposed to be discussing NS History.

[The Church of Satan]

Max Barry is NS history.

[The Blaatschapen]

Max Barry is NS history.

He's also NS present.

And NS future.

[Comfed]

What was Taijitu?

How was the government of Gatesville organized?

[Forlania]

What's the oldest nation that is still around?