NS Gameplay History - You ask, We answer!

[Kaboomlandia]

Who was the first nation to be founded

The nation of Max Barry?

[The Bruce]

Who was the first nation to be founded

The nation of Max Barry?

I' m pretty certain that the Dilbert inspired beta test nation of Elbonia was the first one created. It was one of the three beta test nations created.

[Jean Pierre Trudeau]

Who was the first nation to be founded

The nation of Max Barry?

Max Barry was never a nation under the control of Max. His main nation has usually been Testlandia.

[The Dark Star Republic]

Who was the first nation to be founded

Maxtopia

[Omigodtheykilledkenny]

• Oldest Screenshot of Nationstates' Forums - Snapshot taken on 12/01/2002. Back when NS was on Jolt!

Those appear to be the pre-Jolt phpBB forums. NS wasn't transferred to Jolt till like late 2003/early 2004.

• Archived Nationstates Forums - an ongoing (?) project to archive the old Jolt Forums that were discontinued in 2009.

There's also the emerian Jolt archives: http://nationstates.emerian.net/jolt/

They're not as easy to read, but contain more stuff.

[Terricon]

What was/were the "Great War(s)" I've heard so much about but have seen nothing of?

And while I'm asking, how is Cybernations related to NS?

[Unibot III]

What was/were the "Great War(s)" I've heard so much about but have seen nothing of?

And while I'm asking, how is Cybernations related to NS?

The Great War was fought between the ADN and NPO - RRA and The Pacific Army was on ADN's side, USSR and TEP was on NPO's side.

[Klaus Devestatorie]

What was/were the "Great War(s)" I've heard so much about but have seen nothing of?

And while I'm asking, how is Cybernations related to NS?

A significant number of NationStates regions and organizations took root in Cybernations- The Pacific is the New Pacific Order over there, and the Alliance Defence Network also survives in the form of the Orange Defence Network (although the ODN would be completely unrecognizable to the original ADN now).

[Ikania]

What was/were the "Great War(s)" I've heard so much about but have seen nothing of?

And while I'm asking, how is Cybernations related to NS?

The Great War was fought between the ADN and NPO - RRA and The Pacific Army was on ADN's side, USSR and TEP was on NPO's side.

How did it go down?

[Imperium Anglorum]

Does anyone know when Europe was founded?

[The Agnostic Collective]

NSDossier goes back to May 28, 2003 but it's likely that it was founded some time before that. I can't find anything before 2006 in Europe's archives on their forum though.

[Imperium Anglorum]

NSDossier goes back to May 28, 2003 but it's likely that it was founded some time before that. I can't find anything before 2006 in Europe's archives on their forum though.

I know we're older than NSDossier due to the Internet Archives (4 May 2003). We have changed forums multiple times in Europe's history, so the current ones do not date back to 2002-03. However it is, due to a dearth of other sources, I've put the question here.

[The Agnostic Collective]

Using the forum link in the snapshot you provided, I delved further back and found this older snapshot. The oldest post is January 26, 2003. However, the version of phpBB (v2.0.3, which was released on October 4, 2002) suggests that Europe was founded in 2002. So, it was most likely founded between November 17, 2002 and January 26, 2003.

[Morndul]

A member of Farkistan, one the oldest (and most prolific) griefer groups is NS. Many of the old anti-griefing rules were established due to their exploits.

While it was a time of great activity in NationStates, because it still had the new car smell, it was sometimes a disheartening time for non-invaders in the NationStates World (between the rise of invaders as a force and the introduction of anti-region destruction griefer rules).

It was only by the introduction of the Anti-Griefing Rules that invading was pulled over to the curb. Those rules put strict limits on the percentage of nations you could punt, as a delegate, and if you violated them and ignored warnings, you could be deleted.

Of course, those early efforts also resulted in the none-too-fondly remembered old invasion rules, which attempted to curb the worst abuses with varying degrees of success given our extremely limited suite of tools at the time.

Well, the only way to reign shorter than 1 update is if the delegate got nuked by the mods- which can and has happened, especially in ye olde dayes of the old invasion rules, where griefing a region was basically an insta-DEAT.

These groups had to contest with the old Griefer Rules that put limits on the destruction of regional communities. They also had to contend with Moderators punishing them for doing very bad things. Having consequences for their actions turned a lot of people off from invading.

The old "invasion/griefer rules." Where can this list of rules be found today?

[Frisbeeteria]

The old "invasion/griefer rules." Where can this list of rules be found today?

If I remember correctly, that changed around 2005 or 2006. That was two forums ago. Both the original forums and the Jolt forums are defunct, though a few threads from Jolt made it into an archive. I suspect those rules were not amongst the saved. Perhaps some regional forum somewhere has a snapshot.

[Morndul]

The old "invasion/griefer rules." Where can this list of rules be found today?

If I remember correctly, that changed around 2005 or 2006. That was two forums ago. Both the original forums and the Jolt forums are defunct, though a few threads from Jolt made it into an archive. I suspect those rules were not amongst the saved. Perhaps some regional forum somewhere has a snapshot.

I suspected I'd have to get them from a regional forum. Hopefully someone knows where to find them (if they aren't in that archive). Thank you!

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

The new influence rules came about in 2006. April. http://www.nationstates.net/page=influence

There are snippets of the rules on those archived forums. The Moderation sections seems to be blank, but there is a lot of technical, and with digging, you can see some replies to confused invaded regions.

Example:

Ballotonia Thu, 13 Nov 2003 02:24 AMPost: 5505701
Invaders are allowed to tactically eject a small number of natives, but may not bar them from re-entry. So, they must remove them from the banlist immediately and TM any password set to all natives immediately upon setting it.

Also, native delegates may not boot any and all nations either. While they may ban all non-natives (so: any and all invaders), there's an undefined limit to the number of natives they may ban.

Ballotonia

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

There's also a few places you can find staff from pre-influence discussing the old roles on these forums -

like here

Oddly, in the archives, there's a pattern in missing threads - I've browsed a few hundred in the last hours, and every thread I've seen who's title seems 95% likely to detail the invasion rules is entirely blank, even while the threads before and after it are fine. [/conspiracy] Or were they intentionally blanked out when the new rules came into place?

AHA! Found a nice one. http://nationstates.ermarian.net/jolt/1234/301703

[Morndul]

That looks like an impressive find! Thanks for putting in the good work, EWS. I'll give that a better look later when I have more time.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

No problem. Found a blog by some old NS staff, grabbing some quotes from there too-

From soon before Influence was introduced-

26 JANUARY 2006
Invasion Rules Revision
All the mods (and admins o' course) have started work on trying to set up a better way of managing invasions, i.e. making sure that it's the game that stops griefing and not us. So expect to see some big changes on the invading/defending/watching-the-battle-at-your borders-with-a-big-box-of-popcorn front in the future, and a totally radical new way of playing the game through such 'wars'. There'll be some substantial changes to regional management too, which should be interesting.

Nothing's been decided yet, so don't think there's been any rule changes. You can still get deleted for kicking out everyone in the region (if you're a delegate), so mind you keep on the right side of things. So far we have come up with a number of intriguing, and, haha, secret ideas which I may expand on later if we decide to go with them. I'll tell you more when I can!
POSTED BY KING SIROC AT 9:23 P.M.

-Sirocco's Blog.

There are a few allusions to similar things on other old moderator blogs, but nothing even this clear.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

See also some old wiki links-

http://archive.nswiki.org/index.php?title=Griefing
http://archive.nswiki.org/index.php?tit ... ontroversy
http://archive.nswiki.org/index.php?tit ... n_crashing
http://thesouthpacific.wikia.com/wiki/Invader
some context- http://s3.zetaboards.com/nationstates/topic/223117/1/


An old FAQ quote that was copied into the ancient depts of TNP's forums, circa 2005

Can I invade other people's regions?
Yes. The practice of "region crashing," where a group of nations all move to a region with the aim of seizing the UN Delegate position, is part of the game. Certain groups within NationStates are particularly adroit at this, and can attack very quickly.

Once I've taken over a region, can I eject everyone else?
No. Region crashing by itself is a legitimate tactic to seize power, but ejecting large numbers of nations is griefing. It can be a fine line between region crashing and griefing. Players who enjoy launching invasions should take care to stay on the right side

How about post number 62 of TSP's forums?
http://s2.zetaboards.com/theSPacific/si ... 2&t=945650

A similar FAQ copy, from the forums for "The Exodus."

Can I invade other people's regions?

Yes. The practice of "region crashing," where a group of nations all move to a region with the aim of seizing the WA Delegate position, is part of the game. Certain groups within NationStates are particularly adroit at this, and can attack very quickly.

Once I've taken over a region, can I eject everyone else?

You can try. Invader Delegates tend to have very little Regional Influence, which makes ejecting long-time residents difficult. But Delegates can be as kind, generous, evil, or despotic as they wish. It's up to regional residents to elect good Delegates.

If anyone has a login to these old DEN forums,created pre-influence, I would bet they have a guide on how not to be deleted while raiding http://s10.zetaboards.com/DEN/index/

aaaaand to finish it off, a news post from three years before influence, promising a fix to the griefing problem soon

http://www.nationstates.net/page=news/2 ... index.html

Now, I remembered I had a few dozen pages to annotate by six, and it's already one am, so I'm out

[Crazy girl]

Old griefing rules.....

Let me see if I remember them.

As an invader delegate (and yes, as a defender delegate you'd be considered an invader delegate by the rules as well) was never allowed to ban a native. Other invaders/defenders were fair game.
You could only eject a certain percentage as delegate, this percentage was bigger for native delegates than for invader delegates, but the only ones allowed to empty out a region were founders.
As an invader delegate, if you passworded the region, you had to make sure you telegrammed all the natives the password immediately.

I think that was it.....

[Reploid Productions]

Old griefing rules.....

Let me see if I remember them.

As an invader delegate (and yes, as a defender delegate you'd be considered an invader delegate by the rules as well) was never allowed to ban a native. Other invaders/defenders were fair game.
You could only eject a certain percentage as delegate, this percentage was bigger for native delegates than for invader delegates, but the only ones allowed to empty out a region were founders.
As an invader delegate, if you passworded the region, you had to make sure you telegrammed all the natives the password immediately.

I think that was it.....

Pretty much.
-No interfering with the ability of the natives to enter/exit the region. (No banning natives, had to TG the password to the natives.)
-No ejecting more than 10% of the native population.
-No spamming the RMB/regional happenings
-Using multies was right out.

With the punishment being deletion of the offending nation(s). Given the tools at the time and the obvious difficulty determining who was actually a "native" (very loosely defined as "anyone in the region before you got there,) you can imagine the nightmares caused trying to enforce it. It was largely a hacked-together attempt at an initial solution to the at-the-time massive problem shortly after regional controls were introduced of regions being invaded, emptied, and destroyed; and it was being thrown together by an also at-the-time vastly less experienced mod team with very little precedent to go from.

It was wildly unpopular with the players, fostered a metric buttload of animosity between the mods and the players (especially the R/D crowd, but not just them,) and turned plenty of invasions into enormous clusterfucks requiring hours of mod time to try and untangle. (Just ask Hack about, oh, Italia sometime. That was one of the worst.) It wasn't very popular with the mods either due to the huge timesink and massive headache, but it was the best we had pending a technical solution, which was eventually delivered via the introduction of Influence.

[Morndul]

[snip]

Honestly, this makes wonder why R/D was even considered worth preserving at the time. Obviously banning it would've come with it's own set of enforcement issues. If raiding were banned, you'd have to determine what counted as a "raid." The issue of defining "native" would be just as pertinent as in the old rules. Every time someone's delegacy was contested and someone brought it to the mods' attention, the mods would have had to determine if it was a native delegate or a raider delegate. How often would this have been a real issue? I guess we can only speculate. I guess Mr. Barry must have really valued the metagame some players had created.

Of course, the issue was eventually resolved in other ways.

[Reploid Productions]

[snip]

Honestly, this makes wonder why R/D was even considered worth preserving at the time. Obviously banning it would've come with it's own set of enforcement issues. If raiding were banned, you'd have to determine what counted as a "raid." The issue of defining "native" would be just as pertinent as in the old rules. Every time someone's delegacy was contested and someone brought it to the mods' attention, the mods would have had to determine if it was a native delegate or a raider delegate. How often would this have been a real issue? I guess we can only speculate. I guess Mr. Barry must have really valued the metagame some players had created.

That's exactly why we never even attempted to ban raiding. How do you tell a raid from an internal coup? How do you tell a raid from an exile regional government returning to coup the place? Or an internal coup with external support? Or an inter-regional spat? The only way to ban raiding would also end up banning regional politics entirely, which kinda runs counter to the "political simulator" thing.