Is Nationstates Dying?

[Bears Armed]

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

It would also drive away a number of the the players who are involved in regional communities but aren't interested in R&D, who wouldn't like the fact that if their Founder CTEs -- which is something over which most of them have no control -- they would have to choose between vulnerability to raiding, locking-down with their regions with passwords (and thus potentially dooming them to death by slow attrition) or simply leaving those communities -- in which they might have a lot of time & effort invested -- for more secure ones.
Raiders in the past have tended to answer the aggrieved question "Why can't you just fight each other, and leave the rest of us alone" with ""that wouldn't be any fun"... so, if that's really how you lot think, if you chase too many of the non-R&D players out of NS you doom not just their parts of the game but your own parts as well.

[Lord Dominator]

OP's has an unlabeled y-axis and is thus useless.

To answer the question, no, though Gameplay (as in this forum) may be.

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

It would also drive away a number of the the players who are involved in regional communities but aren't interested in R&D, who wouldn't like the fact that if their Founder CTEs -- which is something over which most of them have no control -- they would have to choose between vulnerability to raiding, locking-down with their regions with passwords (and thus potentially dooming them to death by slow attrition) or simply leaving those communities -- in which they might have a lot of time & effort invested -- for more secure ones.
Raiders in the past have tended to answer the aggrieved question "Why can't you just fight each other, and leave the rest of us alone" with ""that wouldn't be any fun"... so, if that's really how you lot think, if you chase too many of the non-R&D players out of NS you doom not just their parts of the game but your own parts as well.

That's the bullshit answer, the actual reason we don't is that there aren't usually founderless defender regions to raid, much less major defender orgs.

[Unibot III]

I think you would have to have a comprehensive set of metrics to evaluate and conclude whether NationStates as a game is substantively less active than it was, say, five years ago, or whatever our baseline is here (IE: what we're considering to be a healthy standard for activity and participation.)

As for NationStates Gameplay - a political sphere that operates at an interregional scale with lots of intrigue and personal investment - I've proposed for a long time (since at least 2015) that NationStates Gameplay is undergoing a steady process of, for lack of a better word, de-ideationalization. This is to say that the political dialectic is breaking down and losing momentum, as the game's consciousness has lost a connection with philosophy, values, and identity. Instead of power struggles reflecting a conflict of ideas and one's conception of the public good, today's power struggles are often strictly personal and social in nature - the management of people, popularity, access to communication, and status. The old geopolitics of ADN vs. NPO, UDL vs. UIAF etc. has devolved into an elaborate alternative to Facebook.

Historical flashpoints like the rise of the New Pacific Order and the Devontians Occupation generated and revived old discussions over popular sovereignty, the responsibility to protect, and the divided loyalties of humanitarianism in the regional state that fueled the geopolitical back-and-forth between francoists and defenders or defenders, imperialists, and independents.

Why has de-ideationalization occured? I think it was Klaus who proposed a "Immortal" theory - where no one dies, so old personal grievances come to define the game's dynamics. I'm not sure I buy that theory because so many of my old friends, colleagues, and adversaries are no longer among us. Personally, I think the intial source of de-ideationalization is a combination of cultural fatigue, political strategy, and the technological advancement of offsite communication. People were getting tired of partisan debates, it was becoming more politically advantageous to build a personal brand around cats, hedgehogs, and pink yogurt etc. than associate yourself with an alignment, and Discord is a more fluid, personalized version of IRC.

[Nakena]

People were getting tired of partisan debates, it was becoming more politically advantageous to build a personal brand around cats, hedgehogs, and pink yogurt etc. than associate yourself with an alignment, and Discord is a more fluid, personalized version of IRC.

If you dont mind that I pick this one point out of your analysis;

How much you'd say Discord has impacted the NS community (or GP for that matter) at large? Has it, in your opinion, drawn away activity from the various NS Forums and the RMBs?

[Unibot III]

People were getting tired of partisan debates, it was becoming more politically advantageous to build a personal brand around cats, hedgehogs, and pink yogurt etc. than associate yourself with an alignment, and Discord is a more fluid, personalized version of IRC.

If you dont mind that I pick this one point out of your analysis;

How much you'd say Discord has impacted the NS community (or GP for that matter) at large? Has it, in your opinion, drawn away activity from the various NS Forums and the RMBs?

The use of Discord has most certainly outpaced (and displaced) the use of forum communication in a way that IRC and Skype didn't - in part because Discord is most mobile-friendly and we're all using mobile devices far more than before. I think Discord (and Skype before it) has also definitely worked towards personalizing NationStates because of the use of voice chats, for instance.

I think that trend is a shame because forums are an excellent way to formulate more complex political communication and when cultural activity is conducted over Discord rather than onsite, you're not engaging most of the region. Beyond mobile use, I think there's a strong generational factor at play too. The sixteen year olds of 2003 are now thirty-two year olds with a mortgage and kids; I joined the game with acne, I'm getting married next year. We've gone from Generation X to Generation Z in 17 years. To a new generation of users, I think forums probably seem far too static than a fast and direct mode of communication - forums (like blogs) are a testament of their age. The consequence however in this change is that the concept of a region and a community has been deeply socialized and the political dimension of the game's dynamics has taken a backseat to social interaction.

[Aynia Moreaux]

Tbh as a UCR founder it feels like we're in a bit of a lean time at the moment, and not even necessarily for nation count, but just for getting people to actually do things in the game. Getting positions filled and people actually active on the NS side of the game rather than just hermiting out in the discord is a real challenge. It's a little bit non correlative with the number of players versus activity, we can have a butt ton of people but if nobody actually plays, we might as well not have as many.

All in all though, I don't feel like it's been dying too much, just a bit leaner on people willing to put in the activity lately. I've been around about 5 years now and it doesn't feel too much different now than when I started.

[The Blaatschapen]

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

That would make R/D more fun, but at the expense of all regional communities. Those regional communities together are still bigger than R/D.

[New Rogernomics]

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

That would make R/D more fun, but at the expense of all regional communities. Those regional communities together are still bigger than R/D.

After talking with a few people, the problem seems more that the stamps and allowing scripts model isn't working as people thought it would.

The reason why this is the case is that stamps and scripts make it far too easy to build a region, with no great effort in comparison to manual recruitment. So you end up with a lot of regions that built by up chance and the shear amount of telegrams, that are generally quite generic and boring.

Normally how it works in most Multiplayer games is that scripts are frowned upon and banned outright, and the game has an index of groups to join, with a Multiplayer chat element. The emphasis is on sending personal messages rather than generic ones that the game would often flag as spam.

So the game unfortunately is built not to favor unique regions that actually add flavor and value to the game, as they will always be swamped out by generic region concepts that spend vast amounts of money on stamps and have multiple computers sending thousands of telegrams each day.

I know that stamps might also be pushed as a means to maintain the game. Though there are actual cosmetic things the game could charge for that don't alter any game mechanics, such as bigger upload limits on flags, banners on regions, and enhanced message options on this forum and the RMB/WFE.

Note: Sorry in advance if this overlaps with technical sort of things.

[Americastrailia]

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

It would also drive away a number of the the players who are involved in regional communities but aren't interested in R&D, who wouldn't like the fact that if their Founder CTEs -- which is something over which most of them have no control -- they would have to choose between vulnerability to raiding, locking-down with their regions with passwords (and thus potentially dooming them to death by slow attrition) or simply leaving those communities -- in which they might have a lot of time & effort invested -- for more secure ones.
Raiders in the past have tended to answer the aggrieved question "Why can't you just fight each other, and leave the rest of us alone" with ""that wouldn't be any fun"... so, if that's really how you lot think, if you chase too many of the non-R&D players out of NS you doom not just their parts of the game but your own parts as well.

I don't think so. There are plenty of founderless regions with good communities, and even passworded regions that manage to stay alive with a good community (like Hell). In the short term, you are right that a few people will leave, but everyone else will simply move to a more secure region where they don't have to deal with external threats as much. And I don't see that as a bad thing. Currently we have a ton of players spread thin throughout a ton of regions, and that leads to artificial inactivity. Fewer regions means everyone has to cram together, resulting in more vibrant, cultured communities. That should do a better job enticing new players to stick around and get attached to the game.

I think a positive outcome of eventually stripping founders of their powers is that RPers and GPers will have to come together in the same regions. Currently, the only place where GP and RP overlap is in feeders and sinkers, and a few old regions that came about immediately after the creation of founders, when the two groups had to work together to survive. No one cares about GP anymore because there is nothing worth raiding or defending besides the GCRs. There are only a few UCRs people will stay up to defend, because there are only a few areas with good communities. The rest are the forgotten projects of founders who never cared anyways, or didn't realize building a community was difficult. Nobody wants to defend that. The residents of those regions gradually become inactive as their founder stops trying to build the community, and when they are raided the community that exists has little to be upset about.

So it isn't a matter of people leaving. The game grew tons when founders weren't a thing. The issue is the game has sat so long with no stirring that it has separated into different layers that might as well be their own games. Either the two games need to be separate, or they need to be fully integrated. We cannot continue sitting on the fence like we have been.

Edit: There are multiple ways to reduce the number of regions, and stripping founder powers isn't the only way. For instance, I quite like NR's idea of removing stamps and scripts from recruitment. I might also suggest limiting the ability to found new regions to nations with more than 1 billion population, or some similar filter. But I cannot deny I really like the idea of limiting founder powers to a 6 month safety period. That is plenty of time for a group of friends to create a region, have fun together, and either get bored or decide they want a password. That is plenty of time for an RP region to either become a sensation and grow large enough to be secure, or flop, and residents be encouraged to move on. I do think under such a system, founders should have a modified influence equation so they have a natural advantage in protecting their region.

[The Blaatschapen]

That would make R/D more fun, but at the expense of all regional communities. Those regional communities together are still bigger than R/D.

After talking with a few people, the problem seems more that the stamps and allowing scripts model isn't working as people thought it would.

The reason why this is the case is that stamps and scripts make it far too easy to build a region, with no great effort in comparison to manual recruitment. So you end up with a lot of regions that built by up chance and the shear amount of telegrams, that are generally quite generic and boring.

Normally how it works in most Multiplayer games is that scripts are frowned upon and banned outright, and the game has an index of groups to join, with a Multiplayer chat element. The emphasis is on sending personal messages rather than generic ones that the game would often flag as spam.

So the game unfortunately is built not to favor unique regions that actually add flavor and value to the game, as they will always be swamped out by generic region concepts that spend vast amounts of money on stamps and have multiple computers sending thousands of telegrams each day.

I know that stamps might also be pushed as a means to maintain the game. Though there are actual cosmetic things the game could charge for that don't alter any game mechanics, such as bigger upload limits on flags, banners on regions, and enhanced message options on this forum and the RMB/WFE.

Note: Sorry in advance if this overlaps with technical sort of things.

That is in no way related to my post

I can't and won't comment on the recruitment stuff, but get the cosmetic suggestions over to Technical

[New Rogernomics]

I can't and won't comment on the recruitment stuff, but get the cosmetic suggestions over to Technical

That's fine. But yeah I will when I get time to make up an example of what it could look like.

[Altino]

This is why NS needs an "I'm feeling lucky" button like Google that'll just vault you into a random region.

[Sundowers]

This is why NS needs an "I'm feeling lucky" button like Google that'll just vault you into a random region.

Last time I checked there is a button that picks a random region for you.

[Darkesia]

So, if the Discord effect is to personalize the game and drain life from the IC portion of things, what can we do to counteract that?
Beef up the forum's Mobile versions? Not every region has a Winnipeg, as we do. But for the tech savvy player base, it might not be that difficult. Just having a mobile friendly environment won't draw activity, when it is so easy to just go VC with your cabinet. And as for the espionage game, VC has definitely changed it. Regions are being completely governed by Discord and the off site forum is an afterthought. Do we need the forums? TWP has discussed it and decided we like to have the place to store information for the long term. In our case, we do need the off site forum.

I don't know the answer. I do know that a Feeder's culture can be consciously changed with persistence. I am always up for some sort of change advocacy in NS. If only I could figure out what thing deserves our focus.

Let's make NS politics great again! *starts mysteriously turning orange*

[The Church of Satan]

I don't think so. There are plenty of founderless regions with good communities, and even passworded regions that manage to stay alive with a good community (like Hell). In the short term, you are right that a few people will leave, but everyone else will simply move to a more secure region where they don't have to deal with external threats as much. And I don't see that as a bad thing. Currently we have a ton of players spread thin throughout a ton of regions, and that leads to artificial inactivity. Fewer regions means everyone has to cram together, resulting in more vibrant, cultured communities. That should do a better job enticing new players to stick around and get attached to the game.

I think a positive outcome of eventually stripping founders of their powers is that RPers and GPers will have to come together in the same regions. Currently, the only place where GP and RP overlap is in feeders and sinkers, and a few old regions that came about immediately after the creation of founders, when the two groups had to work together to survive. No one cares about GP anymore because there is nothing worth raiding or defending besides the GCRs. There are only a few UCRs people will stay up to defend, because there are only a few areas with good communities. The rest are the forgotten projects of founders who never cared anyways, or didn't realize building a community was difficult. Nobody wants to defend that. The residents of those regions gradually become inactive as their founder stops trying to build the community, and when they are raided the community that exists has little to be upset about.

So it isn't a matter of people leaving. The game grew tons when founders weren't a thing. The issue is the game has sat so long with no stirring that it has separated into different layers that might as well be their own games. Either the two games need to be separate, or they need to be fully integrated. We cannot continue sitting on the fence like we have been.

Edit: There are multiple ways to reduce the number of regions, and stripping founder powers isn't the only way. For instance, I quite like NR's idea of removing stamps and scripts from recruitment. I might also suggest limiting the ability to found new regions to nations with more than 1 billion population, or some similar filter. But I cannot deny I really like the idea of limiting founder powers to a 6 month safety period. That is plenty of time for a group of friends to create a region, have fun together, and either get bored or decide they want a password. That is plenty of time for an RP region to either become a sensation and grow large enough to be secure, or flop, and residents be encouraged to move on. I do think under such a system, founders should have a modified influence equation so they have a natural advantage in protecting their region.

A positive outcome? It is a rare, possible and non-feasible outcome. Would it drive players together? More like raiders would be forcing players together and the most likely outcome would be chaos. Instead of working together and flourishing like some harmonious, well-oiled machine regions would mostly tear themselves apart because differences in belief and unwillingness to change are more prevalent than flexibility in that regard. Very few regions if any would benefit.

Making the regional founder's powers expire after 6 months would make the game a lot more fun in terms of R/D. All current established UCRs would be up for grabs essentially in terms of power. Regional influence would need to be amended as well. Making regions something people have to actually protect would make R/D a lot more fun and would also make the WA (and the fact players can only have one WA) actually consequential.

I have to agree with Blaat on this. Why should the rest of NS be forced to accommodate R/D, a very small fraction of NS at the expense of their own fun? NS would definitely lose a lot of players due to that.

[Americastrailia]

A positive outcome? It is a rare, possible and non-feasible outcome. Would it drive players together? More like raiders would be forcing players together and the most likely outcome would be chaos. Instead of working together and flourishing like some harmonious, well-oiled machine regions would mostly tear themselves apart because differences in belief and unwillingness to change are more prevalent than flexibility in that regard. Very few regions if any would benefit.

I think you overestimate the power raiders have. There are lots of founderless regions out there which have great communities and have survived many many years despite technically being viable raiding targets. This is because players want to keep them around, and have worked hard to keep them alive and well. It used to be that founders didn't have any power at all, and so everyone in NS had to live with the possibilities of gameplay. This created strong, vibrant regions, full of culture, power, and passion. Community was a necessity, not an afterthought, and the game was better for it.

Supposing we introduced limits on founders, I don't doubt players would leave. But you must acknowledge that having better regions means more players would stay. And the regions would be better, because they would have to be. Feeders and sinkers work the way they do because if they as a region mess up and become irrelevant, someone else is willing and usually able to displace the government with their own. The reason defenders used to be able to pull huge numbers of people was because the regions they were defending had value to them. Now defenders are going the way of the dodo because raiders no longer have regions of value to pursue. No one has a reason to join defenders. This in turn means raiding is becoming less fun, and so raiders are also dying off.

[The Church of Satan]

I think you overestimate the power raiders have. There are lots of founderless regions out there which have great communities and have survived many many years despite technically being viable raiding targets. This is because players want to keep them around, and have worked hard to keep them alive and well. It used to be that founders didn't have any power at all, and so everyone in NS had to live with the possibilities of gameplay. This created strong, vibrant regions, full of culture, power, and passion. Community was a necessity, not an afterthought, and the game was better for it.

Supposing we introduced limits on founders, I don't doubt players would leave. But you must acknowledge that having better regions means more players would stay. And the regions would be better, because they would have to be. Feeders and sinkers work the way they do because if they as a region mess up and become irrelevant, someone else is willing and usually able to displace the government with their own. The reason defenders used to be able to pull huge numbers of people was because the regions they were defending had value to them. Now defenders are going the way of the dodo because raiders no longer have regions of value to pursue. No one has a reason to join defenders. This in turn means raiding is becoming less fun, and so raiders are also dying off.

I think you're underestimating the damage the transition from founders as they operate today to the limited, ultimately futile husk the suggested change would do to NationStates. This change to the position of founder would essentially make every region a warzone and we all know how those turned out. The warzones became a place all but forgotten to NationStates and communities there hardly last, with all but two exceptions that did indeed fizzle out after repeated targeting by raiders. The fragility of a region with no guarantee of security of any kind is generally a devastating factor.

[Aglrinia]

If you dont mind that I pick this one point out of your analysis;

How much you'd say Discord has impacted the NS community (or GP for that matter) at large? Has it, in your opinion, drawn away activity from the various NS Forums and the RMBs?

The use of Discord has most certainly outpaced (and displaced) the use of forum communication in a way that IRC and Skype didn't - in part because Discord is most mobile-friendly and we're all using mobile devices far more than before. I think Discord (and Skype before it) has also definitely worked towards personalizing NationStates because of the use of voice chats, for instance.

I think that trend is a shame because forums are an excellent way to formulate more complex political communication and when cultural activity is conducted over Discord rather than onsite, you're not engaging most of the region. Beyond mobile use, I think there's a strong generational factor at play too. The sixteen year olds of 2003 are now thirty-two year olds with a mortgage and kids; I joined the game with acne, I'm getting married next year. We've gone from Generation X to Generation Z in 17 years. To a new generation of users, I think forums probably seem far too static than a fast and direct mode of communication - forums (like blogs) are a testament of their age. The consequence however in this change is that the concept of a region and a community has been deeply socialized and the political dimension of the game's dynamics has taken a backseat to social interaction.

I do believe that the use of discord has caused a rather detrimental impact on nationstates. One that will arguably only get worse. With discord the users can have a very cosmopolitanism like experience on nationstates immersing themselves in numerous regions become citizens in god knows how many regions. It has made it quite easy to get lost in the thick of it all. But, people fail to realize when you are trying to do everything at once and stretch yourself so thin it reaches a point where you might as well not be in any region at all. It doesn't help that numerous people will complain about nothing happening with a region, yet be unwilling to do anything to jumpstart activity within it. On top of all that, Discord becoming a gaming platform and integration it has with steam does not help, because if you are unable to maintain the attention spans of certain people they'll venture off into a game never to be seen again.

[Americastrailia]

I think a part of the problem is the infinitely expandable real-estate of the game. Right now there is one region to every seven nations, and one for every WA member. The median region has one nation, and only roughly one in sixteen regions have 10 or more nations. But that's just the obvious symptom of the problem.

There are so many regions out there with the same exact theme and one or two active players each. Why? Because it is so insanely hard for someone to find the exact region they want when they go looking. It is utterly impossible. So people go out and found their own new region expecting people to show up because they're new and unique, and never realize they are one of 50 regions with virtually the same idea. Now you have 50 players with the same idea all sitting in a lonely region wondering why no one seems interested in their region, instead of one region with 50 active players. And five of them are buying stamps to try and grow their region. The horrible irony is when these players do communicate, they communicate as founders of distinct regions, and neither one wants to leave their region for the other one. Thus all 50 players, through no fault of their own, gradually get bored of NS and stop logging on. I am convinced NS loses half of its potentially active new players to this cycle of tedium.

The point is, players should not generally be going out and founding new regions, but look for existing ones to join. And existing regions need to go find their clones and merge with them. Activity breeds activity, and that is what keeps the game alive. Spreading it out and segmenting it just kills it, and that is why we are where we are now.

[Superbunny]

Yes. I do believe that NationStates, as a community, probably isn't as massive as it used to be. I literally only learned of the game because of a friend at school who told me of its existence.

One of the problems, I think, is that as soon as you join, assuming you haven't read the FAQ or How To Play section, you immediately suffer from the problem that all MMOs seem to have, that is, getting flooded with prompts and alerts you don't know the meaning of. While this is done in a much better way than other MMOs, it can still feel overwhelming to get hit with 5000 Telegrams from large Regions that say that they don't want to waste your time, but give you a giant essay about the history and why it's so great, and there are tons of other Telegrams that are identical, and these new players might not know how to disable recruitment Telegrams. It can overwhelm some players and quickly cause them to leave, IMO.

[Benjamin Mark]

I was 15 years old when I joined this game. I was far more active, and really got into it. I'm now 22 (going to be 23 in July) and while I still find this game to be enjoyable, I reminiscince about how active I was. College has really made me more focused on that, and that alone. People grow and move on. I still like to help people not just in NS, but in my real life. It's just my nature, and I probably won't leave NS anytime soon. Also, I had family and NS issues intervene from then and now and that changed my perspective and now I spend a lot of my time outside. If I go on NS, I'll answer my issues, then leave.

[Wabbitslayah]

I was 15 years old when I joined this game. I was far more active, and really got into it. I'm now 22 (going to be 23 in July) and while I still find this game to be enjoyable, I reminiscince about how active I was. College has really made me more focused on that, and that alone. People grow and move on. I still like to help people not just in NS, but in my real life. It's just my nature, and I probably won't leave NS anytime soon. Also, I had family and NS issues intervene from then and now and that changed my perspective and now I spend a lot of my time outside. If I go on NS, I'll answer my issues, then leave.

In my experience, outside the unfortunate few like me, those who join NS in HS significantly slow down activity or worse later when going to college and university. Also, those that instead join when they already are in University tend to stick around that whole time but after they start to slow down. Wonder if any other decade+ has noticed this?

[Aclion]

I was 15 years old when I joined this game. I was far more active, and really got into it. I'm now 22 (going to be 23 in July) and while I still find this game to be enjoyable, I reminiscince about how active I was. College has really made me more focused on that, and that alone. People grow and move on. I still like to help people not just in NS, but in my real life. It's just my nature, and I probably won't leave NS anytime soon. Also, I had family and NS issues intervene from then and now and that changed my perspective and now I spend a lot of my time outside. If I go on NS, I'll answer my issues, then leave.

In my experience, outside the unfortunate few like me, those who join NS in HS significantly slow down activity or worse later when going to college and university. Also, those that instead join when they already are in University tend to stick around that whole time but after they start to slow down. Wonder if any other decade+ has noticed this?

There's a general trend in hobbies that people disappear when they're in their 20's 30's as life get in the way, then come back when they get older and have the time and money to spend on it. Nationstates doesn't have a monetary cost but still, time is tight.

[Escade]

"Insert quote from Darwin here re: adaptation..." OR



There are a lot of people upset because NationStates Gameplay has been changing a lot. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Some people miss the old GP forum and its constant political squabbling and find the dust bunnies that dominate it now to be deleterious to enjoyment of the game. IC\OOC divide and other consistent issues remain part of the GP debates as well as other issues like trying to keep people safe while administrating things on-site, on forums, and the Wild West that is Discord.

I imagine that its changing and adapting, if it dies it's not the worst thing either but most likely it's going through a sea change. Everyone and everything dies eventually. Might as well enjoy the ephemeral moments you have while you have them.

[Borovan entered the region as he]

It has recently come to me recently after a region change, that both regions were greater in the past than they are now (by greater I mean bigger populous)

After a Google Trends search, which is an online website that determines popularity of a website since it’s release, and discovered this chart: https://imgur.com/a/IG7pxyU

Which leaves the question: Is Nationstates Dying?

Charts flawed it's implicating that NS reached its peak around 2006