NationStates News
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Archive: [2010] [2009] [2008] [2007] [2006] [2005] [2004] [2003]
Mon, 12 Jul 2010
Password Recovery on Baleeted Nations
by Max Barry
You know what's incredibly annoying about the
"Forgot Your Password?"
feature? It doesn't work on deleted nations. THAT'S WHEN YOU NEED IT
MOST. You had a nation years ago, you want to revive it, but who
can remember their old passwords? Not normal people. STUPID PASSWORD
RECOVERY.
In other news, password recovery now works on deleted nations.
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Thu, 29 Apr 2010
Liberal NationStates and Conservative NationStates
by Max Barry
I know what you're thinking: If only every day could be April
Fool's Day! Well now it can! If you thought this year's April Fool's
celebration was not just worth a chuckle but THE WAY THE SITE SHOULD
BE ALL THE TIME, then indulge yourself:
Please note that opening Liberal NationStates in one tab and
Conservative NationStates in another will cause your browser to become
inoperable due to partisan bickering.
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Wed, 31 Mar 2010
by Max Barry
I look back at the guy I was when I wrote this site and think, "WOW!
What an IDIOT!" Because clearly I didn't know anything about politics.
I was a typical mindless drone, opening my mouth wide for whatever
manufactured "truth" the LAMESTREAM media wanted to shovel in there
and swallowing it down whole.
Well! I've read a lot of very EYE-OPENING books since
then, which set me straight about how the world REALLY works. So now
I'm FIXING NATIONSTATES: correcting all those INCREDIBLY BIASED
government categories to be more ACCURATE!
This will probably upset some people, who are SLAVES OF A CORRUPT
IDEOLOGY, but the sooner those sheeple confront the truth, the better.
I hope you enjoy the new, ideologically correct NationStates!
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Fri, 26 Feb 2010
by Max Barry
For
some time now, the
World Assembly has housed both the General Assembly and
the Security Council. This created some practical problems, such as delegates elbowing
each other in the corridors, deliberately tripping each other, and
taping messages to the back of each other's jackets reading: "MY COUNCIL IS
TEH SUCK!!1!" And we shall not speak of the pantsing incident.
Clearly such conditions made it difficult to concentrate on ensuring global
harmony. The World Assembly therefore commenced construction of two separate edifices,
so that delegates of each Council could conduct their noble
work unhindered by the pointless bickering of the other. It is with great
pleasure that the WA now announces these works
are complete, and thanks
you for your attention to the mandatory invoice that will shortly arrive
at your respective parliaments, palaces, senates, and subterranean bunkers.
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Sun, 07 Feb 2010
by Max Barry
Apparently a moose chewed through some Bell Canada fiber optic cables and severed connection to our data center. That moose is now being tried for domestic terrorism.
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Tue, 02 Feb 2010
by Max Barry
When we started, there were no mobile devices. The only way to play NationStates was to dial in with your rotary phone and hold the speaker near your computer's CPU. To send telegrams, you had to go down to your local post office and physically wire a telegram. The daily update took two weeks.
But now mobile devices are everywhere! So here's a way to view NationStates that's not quite so mobile-hostile:
http://m.nationstates.net
This is just something I whipped up, not particularly slick. But it's better than trying to pinch-scroll your way around the main site. If it seems to work OK, we'll auto-redirect visits here from iPhones and Androids. Users on rotary-dial phones will be unaffected.
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Wed, 23 Dec 2009
by Max Barry
Well that was a tumultuous year. A falling-out with our
host, the death of NS2, a new forum, and some new features,
one
of which invoked howls of protest that reverberate to this day.
In fact we still have to finish cleaning up that mess. But
never mind! It's time to reflect on the good. And top of the list
is the fact that we're still here. Seven years on, I
still don't think there's anything quite like this place.
Thanks for making it that way.
So here is a card for you. I made it myself, can you tell?
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Sun, 20 Dec 2009
by Max Barry
A hardware failure in networking equipment at our host caused
a lot of timeouts and slow responses yesterday. This is information
that would have been useful to you then, but I couldn't post it
because the site was too slow. You see the irony. Our server was
just sitting there, engines idling, wondering
where everybody went. Then Cisco fixed the problem and everyone
descended on it again like a horde of rampaging Vikings. Vikings
with political opinions.
This must be the most useless status update I've ever posted.
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Thu, 10 Sep 2009
by Max Barry
There have been lots of changes recently, so it must be time for another
MaxChat! No, I'm not sure how one follows from the other either. But
we're still doing it.
This is an online chat where most of the mod/admin team and I field
questions from players about the game:
what the hell we think we're doing,
why we just did that thing we did, who put us in charge; that kind of thing.
Come along armed with your own question, or just sit back and watch!
When: Roughly afternoon/night on Saturday 19th September, depending
on where you live.
Click here for your local time!
How: Join #nationstates on irc.gamesurge.net. See
here for details!
Transcripts of previous chats can be found here:
#4,
#3,
#2, and
#1.
[Permanent link to this news item]
Mon, 07 Sep 2009
by Max Barry
Regions may now proudly hoist a flag over their domain! To ensure yours correctly symbolizes every aspect of all resident nations, speak to your WA Delegate or Founder!
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Fri, 14 Aug 2009
by Max Barry
Since nothing in the server room has caught on fire recently, we're bumping up
the frequency of the (now quite poorly named) daily update.
WA endorsements will now be tallied twice a day, not once, providing double the number
of opportunities to make your regional WA Delegate nervous.
You can find some discussion about this here.
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Sun, 26 Jul 2009
by Max Barry
Updates are coming thick and fast at the moment. A few highlights:
New custom fields! Reaching certain population levels now unlocks additional custom fields, allowing you to name your Capital City, National Leader, and National Religion.
New daily issues! We now have a grand total of 250. A code tweak also means older nations are much less likely to see the same issue appear twice in a short period of time.
World Assembly Councils! The WA now has two distinct sections: the General Assembly, charged with formulating international laws imposed upon all member nations, and the Security Council, responsible for new WA Resolution types that do not affect nation stats.
Speaking of which, we also have a new Resolution type!
Liberate
A Liberation Resolution overrides any Delegate password in the nominated region, allowing other nations to enter freely. (It doesn't restrict the Delegate's ability to eject, ban, or do anything else; nor does it affect regions with Founders.) This allows the World Assembly to further its aims of bringing freedom and justice to the world, or grossly overstep its moral authority, depending on your perspective.
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Sun, 07 Jun 2009
by Max Barry
The new forum
has officially passed its
load test—thanks
to everyone who helped put it through its paces! There are still
a few tweaks to be made, but since it's in pretty good shape, we're
peeling off the "BETA" tag.
The old Jolt forum isn't moving, but will be no longer linked from
the sidebar. A permanent link to it can be found
here.
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Wed, 27 May 2009
World Assembly: Commend and Condemn
by Max Barry
Now for something fun. The World Assembly has just gained two new Resolution categories:
Commend
Condemn
The usual Resolution rules apply: you need to be a WA member with at least two endorsements to Propose a Commendation or Condemnation, and passed Resolutions can be repealed (which removes the badge).
And, of course, exactly when and why these Resolutions should be employed is a matter for World Assembly members. But I'm sure you'll think of something.
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Wed, 20 May 2009
The Sad State of NationStates 2
by Max Barry
Jolt, developer of NationStates 2 and ex-host of this site, has announced the
imminent
shutdown of NationStates 2, with the game to go off the air
indefinitely on July 1st, 2009.
I realize that last you heard, NationStates 2 was my baby, endorsed by me and financially supporting me and this site. So allow me to clear that up.
For months now, Jolt has been operating NationStates 2 without my authorization, profiting from my trademark, domain name, and original game design while paying me nothing. As you might expect, I've been less than thrilled about this. I haven't taken action to shut them down, though, as I didn't want NS2 players to be left in the lurch. NS2 is not my favorite game—parts of it are great, but as a whole it's a pale, deformed version of the game I designed—but some people are enjoying it, and are invested in their nations. So I've let it run, even though I feel pretty ripped about Jolt taking my work.
Now Jolt says that NS2 is closing, and "substantial work" will be performed on it, and eventually it may rise again in retooled form. I have no idea what this means, but I note that Jolt's strategy these days is all about herding players from less profitable games to more profitable ones. I was told to push players from NS1 to NS2; now NS2 players are being pushed onward to something else. The ultimate destination of this quest over burning bridges, I imagine, must surely be a game in which players compete to throw the most cash at Jolt.
I also note that Jolt's two flagship products are copies of other people's games with an unrelated brand name stuck on top:
"Legends of Zork," for example, is a clone of
Dragon Tavern, and has little
to do with Zork,
while "Utopia Kingdoms" is a rebadged
Khan Wars that has little to do
with Utopia. Other Jolt games, like Truckz
(and, for a while, NationStates), were acquired from indy designers
and Jolt's contribution has been to insert ads.
Which is fine; after all, Jolt is a business, albeit one that ignores my invoices. But this is not the kind of thing that implies a commitment to gameplay or community. So if I was a NationStates 2 player, I would not hold out much hope that this "substantial work," if it occurs, is for my benefit. I would guess it is more about developing exciting new ways to pay Jolt money. And I would not be surprised if any reworked NS2, if it does eventually emerge, turns out to be an entirely new game, copied from somewhere else, with a big brand name and no real connection to NationStates.
I've always said that if it ever became impossible for me to host NationStates, I'd release the source code for free. Because I'm not here to make money. Even when I created this game, back in 2002, I hoped it could help promote my novels, but a big reason for doing it was just because I thought it would be cool. And that's the main reason I run this site today: because we're a cool site, with a smart, quirky, sometimes prickly, and occasionally bizarre community, a style of debate and discussion you don't see anywhere else, and almost seven years of history.
We have millions of nations, and probably as many stories. Players here reminisce about regions that rose and fell, about Delegates who were betrayed, about alliances that were infiltrated, and ideological battles waged on the forum. I don't think Jolt gets that. I don't think they understand there's more to a game than its revenue—that games can become universes, and people live there. And that sincerely disappoints me, because I hoped NS2 could be something special.
NationStates—the original—is, thankfully, self-hosted these days. We have some plans, but our most important one is to not go anywhere. Thanks for sticking with us.
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Wed, 13 May 2009
by Max Barry
Those new NSCode tags proved popular, so now you can also use them in telegrams and Regional Message Board posts. For examples, see the Technical section of the FAQ.
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Sat, 09 May 2009
by Max Barry
Regional leaders, you have a couple of new tags to spice up your World Factbook Entries. We've added [nation] and [region] tags, so you can steer visitors directly to the person they need to endorse to avoid your wrath. And there's a new [url] tag for creating links to your region's own site (or perhaps a key thread in our very own new forum!). See your Regional Control panel for details.
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Wed, 29 Apr 2009
by Max Barry
We are trialing a new forum! Check it:
http://forum.nationstates.net
Things to know:
- This is a test. It's possible the server will spectacularly implode under the load, in which case we'll probably have to abandon the idea and stick with Jolt.
- Once you visit the new forum while logged in as a nation, the sidebar's "Latest Threads" will show you topics in the new forum, not the old one. (To visit the old forum, use the "Jolt Forum" sidebar link.)
- The Jolt forum isn't going anywhere. Even if our new forum survives this load test, the old one will remain, and you can move between the two as you wish.
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Tue, 31 Mar 2009
by Max Barry
I'm pleased to announce the latest NationStates expansion: NationStates DS!
We looked at a variety of mobile platforms--the Apple iPhone, Google Android, PlayStation
PS--before settling on the Nintendo DS. It's a terrific, cutting-edge device that's just
beginning to attract some attention... just like us!
For more information about this exciting development, see
http://nintendo.nationstates.net!
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Wed, 25 Feb 2009
by Max Barry
I had a dream: we would snuggle close to a professional games
development company, and they would deliver a brilliant, shining
NationStates sequel while hosting us here for all eternity.
But that didn't really work out, so we split.
NationStates is now hosted by me, and doesn't
have terribly much to do with NS2 any more. The good news is
that means we are free to do what we like here, including adding
a few new features.
One thing this experience has taught me is how special the
game is. We have something here. And it's due a little
love and attention.
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