Like Soldiers Believe They're in Control of the War

Part Three of Three.

My flag proposal for Theta Battalion, January 2007

I could have published this final part of my series looking back at the history of CyberNations at any time, however last Sunday was the sixth anniversary of the end of the Third Great War. Two months after the conclusion of GWIII I ceased being a student spending time playing a game rather than studying and exited a sixth month stint of unemployment. After that I never really knew what was going on in the Cyberverse or Digiterra or whatever you want to call it. Unable to stay up into the night when the largely American dominated game was most active I consequently fell out of the loop on events and the reason for the latest war. Last year, after I became the oldest and longest continuous member of the NPO, a fellow member working on the CNwiki entry asked me why, given my in-game age, I didn't have all the ribbons for all the wars the alliance had fought in. This is why, and a lot of time unless I'm attacked I don't really know there's a war on. Undoubtedly one of the reasons the age of players is so young is because such massively multiplayer online games require a lot of free time to invest. Until I read about the war that ended last month I'll remain completely oblivious as to the reasons my warchest was depleted by €100 million. Lately given the move toward squad based combat, the demands for greater activity, and adherence to alliance-wide development plans I've felt far more estranged from the game. Last week I thought about quitting - something I've never even considered in seven long years. Even what I think of as recent CN history is a distant collective memory now. Let's recall it...

When the Third Great War ended, The Initiative had arguably won the game. The signatories of the World Unity Treaty became the resolute hegemon. In the earliest days GATO (or originally CATO) had been unrivalled simply due to the lack of strong competing alliances. The period before the First Great War had seen the NPO exercise considerable force in a time of great plurality of powers with fluid relations, while the period after was a largely static cold war. Up and coming powers in this age would simply have been beaten down before being able to challenge The Initiative for hegemony. The only way it would be toppled was through ironic disunity, and hints of division had already appeared when the Veridian Entente exited GWIII a few days prior to its conclusion and also exited WUT. Fellow green alliance CIS followed VE's departure and in the next month it was clear that it was no amicable split. GOONS cited the establishment of the Obsidian Entente on the black sphere as a threat to their own dominance on black. This could hardly have been talked down by the NPO as it was a long standing fact of the game that the red sphere was the exclusive domain of the NPO. On the other hand it could be seen as rank hypocrisy as the NPO had faced international condemnation a year prior when setting up the New Polar Order on the blue sphere to explicitly rival the defeated NAAC. The difference was VE couldn't project the kind of power the NPO had back then and wished to avoid a confrontation with former partners. Nonetheless, outstanding grievances over VE led to the Green Civil War. Then Nordreich, perennially struggling with racist infiltration, also departed.

By early June, less than two months from The Initiative's victory, serious cracks were appearing and the fracturing began gathering pace. In joining such a power bloc the NPO had gained great power toward exercising its own agenda at the cost of having to reign in its partners' agendas. The itchy trigger finger of the Federation of Armed Nations fired several shots at Nordreich. It turned out they were an NPO protectorate and demonstrated disregard toward informing one's allies of one's intentions. The crack became the Grand Canyon when FAN announced (along with ex-Aegis GOLD) that all nations on the yellow team would henceforth be protected from attack. As nations developed one of the cheapest ways of gaining technology was through attacking unaligned players and capturing tech - perhaps the greatest financial incentive for going to war. \m/, also in The Initiative, objected as they permitted tech raiding and consequently issued their own proclamation protecting all white team nations from attack. The situation escalated in mid-June when GOONS targeted an enemy residing on yellow and FAN fought back. The World Unity Treaty was now flying out of the window with Clause II (the establishment of unity) being publicly disregarded. Mannerheim's cigar had pissed the NPO off and favour fell on GOONS for the time being. FAN was expelled on the 18th and immediately led into the FAN-WUT War.

FAN-WUT war ribbon

The war against FAN was of great distress to me. Now employed and away from a computer for several hours a day I was wide open to attack. My concern was reasonable as FAN were well known for waging war and the substantial losses I incurred from two weeks of being nuked were the worst I would suffer for nearly two years. The Initiative was now clearly fracturing over internal power struggles - both FAN and GOONS were ascending to the coveted top alliance strength ranking, which for much of the 18 months the game had been running was occupied by the NPO. The general behaviour of said gun nuts on the yellow team had provided all the excuses necessary to kick them far down the rankings and off the sanctioned alliance list. Unlike LUE and the other alliances that packed their bags and disbanded in the face of defeat after the Great Wars, FAN had expected the day the United Nations came for their guns and built up massive warchests that would allow them to survive three months of onslaught. Attention would be diverted elsewhere, however, when the Grand Canyon became a rip in the space-time continuum as the unbreakable bond of unity between Pacifica and Polaris was cleaved in the most public manner. Not only was it a division between the two, it was also a division from within each. For a few hours I changed my alliance affiliation when it looked like the crisis would lead to civil war.

Admin in CN forum thread discussing the Moldavi Rebellion, August 2007

The position of Emperor of the Order was contested between the reigning TrotskysRevenge and the Emperor Emeritus Ivan Moldavi who had led the Order in the first nine months of its existence on CyberNations. For over a year Pacifica and Polaris had been considered a single entity but as the dispute died down the factions settled - those supporting TrotskysRevenge moved to the NPO and Moldavi supporters switched to the NpO. Like the division of Germany or Vietnam or Yemen or Korea they could firmly be considered separate entities from now on. The Grand Global Alliance and the NpO became the fifth and sixth members to remove their signatures to the World Unity Treaty. Elsewhere the less-serious of The Initiative's members had been engaging in disruptive behaviour on the CN forums of the kind that LUE had once been berated for. The difference was we were now allied to these types. Concurrently, the inability of GOONS, /m/, and The Phoenix Federation (primarily composed of Farkistan breakaway alliance TotalFarkistan) to bring Genmay and Mushroom Kingdom into the fold and the subsequent founding of a bloc with one foot in and the other out (The Unjust Path) was a very clear sign of an impending crisis. Behind the scenes it was quietly known that Moldavi was also a moderator on the CN forum. The banning of disruptive members of the jokey alliances resulted in a rift between Initiative members supporting and opposing moderation which spilled out into the Moldavi Rebellion.

In another demonstration of the faster pace of time online, it was barely nine months after the founding of the World Unity Treaty that the bloc imploded over internal struggles. In mid September all the remaining signatories save GOONS resigned in one way or another as the Unjust War began. From a minor conflict via the usual activation of treaty pacts, the war escalated to global scale. With WUT gone the organisation of the side fighting UJP was completely unfamiliar to me. Given its support of the Moldavi faction, the NpO formed the core of the opposition to GOONS et al, known as 'Bold Tilde', through its pre-eminent power in the Blue Leadership Ensuring Unity bloc. Much of the force was made up of independent alliances, including old CoaLUEtion powers, and the NPO was only tangentially involved in fighting GOLD for aiding FAN in its ongoing resistance. As FAN surrendered toward the end of September; GOONS, now bereft of allies, took up the mantle of suffering a long low-level war - the difference being that they had nowhere near the determination to see it through. This was the last time I understood the political situation in the cyberverse, five and a half years ago. The old system of the neatly subdivided MDP web was in disarray. One Vision and The Continuum formed in the wake of the Unjust War, but frankly they were completely interchangeable to me and I didn't know who was in and out. I fought in several wars from 2008 onwards, none of which I can name except the Continuum war and that's only because I kept a record of it - estimated cost to Hvamsfjordhur: €818,222,522.564.

The usefulness of this recounting of history breaks down with my inability to recount it. Beyond the Continuum War I have no other war ribbons until the first real threat to the existence of the New Pacific Order since the Great War. The so-called Karma War, its causes and the meaning for the NPO were the impetus for this entire series. To discuss it required retelling three years of history and this is ultimately were judgement is passed.

Armageddon war ribbon (aka. Karma)

DoomHouse war ribbon

CN is at the lowest level a crude simulation of war. As originally intended, the player's nation was the largest unit. With the formation of alliances they became corps of the larger unit, and further still were reduced to a division with the formation of alliance blocs. Winning the game is simply holding power for as long as possible whether through force or diplomacy. The latter is for one's enemies, the former for one's allies - in the quest for dominance they are essentially lesser enemies. It's like being taller than everyone by standing on a stool, your allies are a means to an end not your fiancée. In the case of the NPO and its figurative downfall in the Karma War, it was an inability or failure to adapt to a world far removed from that in the earliest days of smashing the NAAC twice. When the use of force had failed to defeat the CoaLUEtion in the Great War the master-stroke had been to engage in diplomacy and form allies that could help it accomplish that the next time around. The disintegration of The Initiative was not a failure, rather it had always been an inevitability. If the other signatories had not been reaching for power they wouldn't have been playing the game properly. It was all about climbing to the top by various means and the trick was to know which was appropriate and when. By the events of the Karma War I was never further away from being informed and I was obviously not in a command role at the time. Nonetheless, it appears to me that the NPO was being eclipsed in strength and influence. Whereas the emergent threats of FAN and GOONS had been dealt with in order to stay dominant within WUT, the NPO within these mega-blocs of 2009 had become just another alliance amongst very large and powerful allies. In instigating a war to serve the NPO's agenda it alienated allies, more importantly, who were not prepared to go to war over it. A spate of MDP cancellations followed. Archon's words bore truth - it was "arrogance".

I may have intended to write this for the anniversary of the end of GWIII, yet by chance I write this on the fourth anniversary of the start of the Armageddon War. One saw victory and the other defeat. And then another defeat when we bounced back too fast for DoomHouse's liking. Despite being defeats, something the NPO is not used to, they were actually the most involved I've been in years. There's nothing like an existential threat that brings comrades together. Those two wars were the only ones I've ever been present for update - I dragged myself out of bed at 0545 to log into IRC and co-ordinate attacks and then back to bed at 0615 for another 90 minutes before work. It was a chore at the time. Now it's a memory.

Written 20th and 21st of April
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