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...

We're Going To Be Friends

Part Two of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, January 2007

On the seventh anniversary of the founding of Star City I compiled and republished my memoirs on NationStates during what looked like the long drawn-out dying days of that game. I'm unable to speculate if that's the case with CyberNations today, on the seventh anniversary of Hvamsfjordhur, as I've never been as involved in the politics of the latter as in the former. That's largely due to the mechanics of the game and the location of its servers in the US which has always resulted in a certain American domination. As update was scheduled at midnight Central Standard Time it meant the command structures of the alliances were firmly entrenched in timezones that would result in all the action happening whilst I was in bed. NationStates never had that because it lacked any realtime interaction between nations.

Personally, CyberNations came to an early peak with the era of the Great Wars. Unlike the Citrus and Polar wars, the Great Wars pulled in almost every alliance into the conflict. Yet at the end of the first instalment of this series the global powers were at peace. Where alliances were not treatied, they were at least signatories of non-aggression pacts. So how was the stability shattered? How is it ever shattered?

Then The March Led To Assault

Part One of Three.

Hvamsfjordhur signature image, February 2006

Let it never be said I'm not in it for the long haul. January marked nine years on NationStates and six on CyberNations (never the twain shall be mentioned on respective sites). In these online games two or three years are the equivalent of real world centuries; so not only am I old, I'm very old, and old people like to tell stories. When I republished my NS memoirs back in 2010 I stated that I didn't believe I had much to say when it came to my time on CyberNations as a member of the New Pacific Order. However, when the NPO marked it's sixth anniversary in January, I and twenty-five other senior members were asked by the media corps to comment on the evolution of the alliance in those years. As the oldest remaining member and fifth oldest nation in the world, I realised the more I responded with claims to have nothing interesting to say the more I started alluding to actual opinions and insights into those six years.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing

CN about to bash NS over the head with a rock in early 2006

It's glaringly obvious that NationStates is dead. Compared to its heyday of 2004, NS is now a post-apocalypse collection of the big regions that weathered the calm. The RPers are still there, but they never mattered. The PRP was right to complain about the complete lack of gameplay improvements as NS passed its 3rd birthday. Perhaps NS never was alive - Max Barry conceived it as a marketing exercise for his book Jennifer Government. CN was developed by Kevin (peace be upon him) as a perpetual nation-sim. The problem was there from the outset - it was soulless.

Foreign 3: I'm With The High Command

I've managed to get online today for €2.50 and as I understand it, the Great War is all but over - not ending with great victories, but with a cessation of hostilities after 10 days of stalemate. From my vantage-point, Legion appears to have emerged statistically in the lead. As myself and Dobb predicted; Legion, as the only alliance capable of that, would benefit from all 3 positions: the Order, CoaLUEtion or neutral.

Presuming the ceasefire is still in place on my return, post-war CyberNations will be wary of renewed conflict and see a cold-war emerge amongst the Pacifican and CoaLUEtion aligned alliances. The ODN and NAAC, for their actions against the NPO, will not be forgotten by Pacifica. Any future war will likely see both those alliances taken-down as soon as possible. I can't see GATO and the NPO speaking after the latter's about-turn with regards to the luecide issue - condemning it and then attacking Pacifica concerning its response to LUE. Legion will only be forgiven, grudgingly. NPO-Legion relations will likely be quite cold - a lot of nations are very upset with Legion's apparent opportunism, after the assistance in the WSA war.

Don't the best episodes usually come in two parts?

Post-Exodus

In my last post about Cyber Nations, I briefly mentioned an envisioned "NS Exodus".

The PRP seems to have enthusiastically embraced CN, after their criticisms of NS game-mechanics and utter lack of development in 3 years, to the point the new organisation on the block for NSers is named NPO and no-one is condemning it. I haven't logged into NS daily since Summer 2004, though every day for the past week, I've been on CN every few hours.

It can only be a matter of time until I completely give up on my nations in NS. But let's assume the same happens to prominent members of the Pacific. Eventually the core of the PRP would disappear by the end of 2006, leading to a power vacuum. A new government would rise in the PRP's place, other regions would experience similar changes, and the entire landscape of NS could alter drastically.

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Descent into Bickering

Everybody's other favourite political game (after Particracy) is Cyber Nations. As is traditional for a new political game, a massive influx of NS players will soon bring down their server, though not as bad as the NS server was way back in December/January 2003 because all the short-time players will not be there.

Will a critical mass of long-time NSers bring problems? I don't think so, the issues between personalities on NS should not arise because, unlike NS, CN provides a game-mechanics way to interact. NS gave us the regional message board and essentially halted - the regions then went away and created off-site forums and regional governments (interlinked). That's why personality conflicts and factionalism are abound.

There already appears to be a pan-NS alliance forming on CN. I think this could be the beginning of the NationStates Exodus.

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