Why can’t you change the name of your country

[Engales and Southern Ireland]

Why are you only allowed to change the capitalization of your nation. And not completely change it. Wasn’t think about doing it because my nation name is unique but why?

[The Candy Of Bottles]

Long story short, the game is coded in such a way that letting people do that would cause all kinds of things to break. Notice the URL for your nation page for example.

[Aikoland]

Long story short, the game is coded in such a way that letting people do that would cause all kinds of things to break. Notice the URL for your nation page for example.

Yeah and if you need a more detailed reason as to why you can't:
The game uses your nation name as its identifier, changing your name would result in the admins having to and change literally every link to your nation (at least gameside) to your new username and, well, imagine the amount of time that'd take even for a mildly active user. Admins would have to go and fix all the RMB quotes to point to the new account, mentions in RMBs, edit WFE entries, hell maybe even factbooks too.

It would all be just too much work and everyone hates 2002 Max Barry for not giving accounts a separate identifier like an internal ID number or something to use but then again he also thought the game would only last a few months, so I mean, can't blame him for not planning this far ahead.

[Minoa]

There is an ID number system that is in use for some features like telegrams and trading cards, but I imagine that quite a lot of features still use the nation name as the identifier.

I imagine that it will take a lot of work to completely transition to using ID numbers only.

[Frisbeeteria]

There is an ID number system

The ID numbers are part of the database, which was added a decade into the game. The main nation information is in a series of flat files, which in 2002 seemed appropriate for a novel-promoting game that would probably die off in 3 weeks. In retrospect, Max and company should have started with a database ... but they didn't, and we're still paying the price.

I imagine that it will take a lot of work to completely transition to using ID numbers only.

A complete rebuild of the entire game. So yes, a lot of work.

[Aclion]

There are companies like curse that could handle that, you could call it Nationstates 2.

[Frisbeeteria]

There are companies like curse that could handle that, you could call it Nationstates 2.

Been there, done that. [*shudder*] Won't happen again, believe me.

[La Xinga]

Wait, if you go to an active nation in the boneyard, don't they have an ID?

[Merni]

Wait, if you go to an active nation in the boneyard, don't they have an ID?

Yep. But see three posts above yours for the reason why the ID is not used for most things:

There is an ID number system

The ID numbers are part of the database, which was added a decade into the game. The main nation information is in a series of flat files, which in 2002 seemed appropriate for a novel-promoting game that would probably die off in 3 weeks. In retrospect, Max and company should have started with a database ... but they didn't, and we're still paying the price.

I imagine that it will take a lot of work to completely transition to using ID numbers only.

A complete rebuild of the entire game. So yes, a lot of work.

[Servilis]

To put it simply, Nations are barcoded in a way that although possible to have them change names, would also require a load of overhauling for them to change names.