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Archive: [2008] [2007] [2006] [2005] [2004] [2003]
by Max Barry
You might have noticed there's a new link on your nation page that allows
you to reserve its name for
NationStates 2.
No? Huh. That's weird. It's
really obvious. I'm kind of surprised you could miss that. It's--yes,
that's it.
Click away, and when NationStates 2 arrives (not long
now!), you'll be able to use the same name!
And if--wait, you really can't find that link? Did you use it already?
Because it disappears if you do that. Okay, then log in and
click here.
This is probably a good time to reiterate that NS2 isn't replacing this
game: your current nation(s) will continue here. You can
operate nations in both games, if you like. I mean, you know,
if you're cool enough.
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by SalusaSecondus
OpenId is used throughout the web to identify yourself for sites such as blogs and comments. Now, you can use NationStates to do this. For the first time, you can prove to sites that you control a specific nation. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a technical feature to use. We only provide delegation so you'll need to link your nation to another OpenId account. If you have any questions, please post them in the technical forum, and we'll try to help.
YOU SHOULD STILL NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR NATIONSTATES PASSWORD TO ANYONE OR ENTER IT ON ANY SITE OTHER THAN NATIONSTATES.NET.
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New and Improved Hosting with OMAC Industries
by OMAC
Hi,
The same folks who are working like demons on the epic masterpiece
that is NationStates2 have
now taken over the hosting and general maintenance of NS. Although the
current forums are still hosted in Jolt (we're working on that as
well), you should find the site a lot faster as we've migrated it to
very beefy servers in our data centre (in New York City, if you're
interested).
To cover a little of the monthly server cost (these are
not cheap at all!) and make sure that we've got extra resources for
general NS development, we're going to put a very small piece of
advertising in the left-hand panel of the game. We promise it won't be
intrusive and it helps make the game better for everyone :)
Thanks, Tilt
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by Max Barry
I know a bunch of you just choked on your wheat flakes, but it's true:
NationStates 2 is happening. It's taken five years of discussion,
plans, tears, hopes, trials, and floundering, but at last it's come
together: I have the right people working on the right design.
Five years ago, I created this site, NationStates, in my spare time,
never expecting it to find the popularity it has. I actually designed
it to be a passing fancy, something you might find fun for a little
while, then move on.
With NS2, the design from day one has been all about longer-term
gameplay. While the core principles of NationStates haven't
changed—micromanagement is still a dirty word, diplomacy is
the focus, and customization rules—NS2 greatly expands your
nation's ability to affect its world. It's all about giving you
top-level control and letting you take your nation wherever the hell you
want.
I'm thrilled about this. I hope you are, too. For more information,
including an NS2 FAQ, check out
www.nationstates2.com.
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by Max Barry
The World Assembly wishes to announce that it does not intend to enforce
bans ordered by the now-defunct United Nations. It is, in the
World Assembly's educated opinion, highly likely that such bans were
the result of filing errors, bureaucratic bungling, or pure incompetence.
Thus, if your nation was banned from joining the UN, it may apply
for membership of the WA.
One should note, however, that the World Assembly intends to ensure
that
the rule restricting players to one WA nation each is vigorously policed. Any violations will receive a WA ban, to
be upheld until the end of time or the collapse of the World Assembly,
whichever comes first.
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by Max Barry
So it's April 2. And we still have a World Assembly.
What this means is if you were thinking this year's April Fool's prank
wasn't very believable and didn't fool you for a second...
you've been no-pranked.
No joke: the United Nations really has demanded we cease & desist from
using their name. That's a real cease and desist letter.
[ Get
the full story here! ]
When the letter arrived, the whole thing sounded so much like an April Fool's gag, we decided
to use it as one. It was perfect: experienced NationStates players,
hardened to our April 1 shenanigans, could no longer be fooled by anything...
except the truth.
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United Nations orders closure of United Nations
by Max Barry
[ Read the full Cease & Desist notice here ]
The (real) United Nations has demanded NationStates
"immediately cease and desist from using the United Nations name and emblem,"
as it "is unauthorized and in violation of of the provisions of international and U.S. laws."
Reaction inside the NationStates world was swift and brutal: faced with
this extra-dimensional incursion, the NS United Nations collapsed. Stunned member
nations stared on in disbelief; Gatesville regional residents wandered about in a daze,
unsure how to feel and wondering what to do with their lives.
But bureaucracy abhors a vacuum, so almost immediately the proposals rang
out for a new organization, one that would serve the same, admirable function
as the United Nations, but without the lawsuits. Thus, behold!
The World Assembly!
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by Max Barry
Frames were handy, in their day. Sure, that day was in 2002, but still:
You set 'em up, your pages go in designated areas,
everybody's happy. Except you can't bookmark them. And
sometimes pages break out of frames when they shouldn't, or get
framed when they shouldn't, and--yeah, you're right, they
always sucked.
And now they're gone! No longer does NationStates have that retro
feel: we're all one page, baby. Slide that scrollbar.
Yeah. Feel the groove.
We also have some slick new features that I know you'll like, mostly
because they're blindingly obvious and should have been
added years ago. These include highlighting of new telegrams and
issues in your sidebar, RSS feeds of the same, nifty "National
Happenings" to help keep tabs on what's happening inside your
borders and out, and the ability to restore an old nation
that was deleted for inactivity.
And not only that! Check out those cute flags next to nation names
in your logs and endorsement lists now. They look awesome. Even the
ranking tables look slicker! Not much, sure, but a little!
That's something, huh?
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NationStates 1.10: Regional Mods!
by SalusaSecondus
NationStates has hit version 1.10! We've introduced some new features to the game which should hopefully improve the quality of everyone's playing experience. What are these features? Well:
The intention of this change is to bring moderation closer to the players and to experiment with grass-roots moderation. With over 90,000 accounts, this should help to keep the game managable.
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by SalusaSecondus
We've been making some changes on the back-end of the code which should make our moderators' lives easier (and anything that does that is a good thing). One visible change is that official telegrams from NationStates have special colors. You UN regulars will quickly grow to recognize the look of new laws sent out by the Compliance Ministry. As for the rest of you, you'll probably never see it, but official telegrams from the Moderators and staff will come from the NationStates Moderators. Anyway, we were getting bored with our little graphics and needed some more bling.
Oh, as long as I was editing the game anyway, I slipped in a little treat. I'm still not editing issues, but that doesn't mean that there isn't anything interesting coming your way ...
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Regional Influence, Invasions, and Griefing
by Max Barry
All nations now have a "Regional Influence" label displayed on their
home pages. Regional Influence is how important a nation is considered
in its region. Similarly, the new "Regional Power" label for regions
describes how important a region is considered in the world at large.
Regional Influence isn't just a nice ranking: it's at the heart of
a change to how UN Delegates get to wield power. It's quite a
comprehensive change, so a special page has been created with all
the detail. Read More!
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by Max Barry
Shortly we'll be unveiling a significant change in the way regional UN Delegates wield power. This will primarily affect the invasion game--that is, the practice of storming other people's regions to capture the Delegateship, or defending regions against such attacks. Stay tuned for more details!
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The Great Disk Space Disaster of 2006
by SalusaSecondus
A disaster occurred in the main record keeping office of NationStates earlier this morning. Upon arrival, I quickly found panic in the streets, fires in the hills, and scraps of paper fluttering down from the heavens. I caught one and examined it; it was our core file on a nation. I rushed into the headquarters. Nothing could prepare me for what I saw. I stepped into the secretary's office and found that the door to his records closet had blown off its hinges and papers were everywhere. There wasn't room to breathe in that closet. As soon as the secretary had regained consciousness, I tried to find out what happened. No, he wasn't sure why our alarms didn't go off. I went to fetch our logs to recreate the time-line.
"Excuse me? What's this?" I pointed at a single pile of paper that filled over half of the room.
"That's the log!" He looked very proud of this.
I picked up the top piece of paper, "February?" I tried to look at the bottom piece of paper but couldn't lift the weight. "You know that you're supposed to use a fresh pad every month right?"
"Aha! I knew that I forgot something."
So that's the story of The Great Disk Space Disaster of 2006. We've lost about 16 hours of data, and that includes telegrams, region moves, etc. Hopefully there won't be a sequel and the replacement secretary will be very carefully instructed on how to use more than one pad of paper for all of his notes. Now, I'll go get a forklift to move these logs.
P.S. I've also rewritten our instructions that the secretary may not run a dating service in his spare time.
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by SalusaSecondus
In an effort to keep from going broke and needing to take down the game, we've decided to change the game to NationDates. It's the same game that you know and love, except now we're moving into social networking and hoping to help you meet someone that you know and love.
The data that we've collected from your issues and play style place us in a unique position to accurately match you up with a fellow player and not need to worry about political incompatibility. We are working on effective ways to monetize NationDates in the near future.
We hope that you like this new direction.
SalusaSecondus[Permanent link to this news item]
by Max Barry
|
My new novel, Company, hits stores across the US and
Canada today, so if you were wondering what that ill-defined urge
you had to rush out and buy something was, now you know.
For more info, check out my blog: http://www.maxbarry.com/. As a way of thanking NationStates players who buy Company, or have bought one of my books in the past, I now offer a way to remove ads from your nation! I'm also doing a short tour of the US in a few weeks time to promote the book, so if you want to ask questions about NationStates and you happen to live near these cities, come along! |
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NationStates 3: The Search For Admin
by Max Barry
It seems like only yesterday NationStates was helplessly gurgling in its cot,
blowing bubbles and spitting up on itself. Nowadays it walks, holds opinions,
and frequently expresses them with its extensive vocabulary of as many as
several dozen words. Yes, NationStates is three years old today! And still cute as
a button.
In celebration--or, possibly, by sheer coincidence--I am pleased to announce that
NationStates is hunting for a new admin. Not that there's anything wrong with
our current admin; no, no, those fine people are doing a bang-up
job, and are drunk far less often than is rumored. But we can do more with more
admins, and so we've decided to see if we can get some.
If you've got some free time, a few ideas, and a hankering to make NationStates
better, we'd love you to apply!
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Hucked on fonix wurked for me!
by SalusaSecondus
One of the most common complaints that I've seen about UN resolutions is that they're spelled poorly. Well, that's all fixed now. Now you can Spell Check your proposals before you submit them. We'll be slowly rolling this feature out to other parts of the site as we update them. A quick thank you to Don't Poke Badgers Inc. for releasing this code to the world.
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by Max Barry
It's just a little thing, but: our URL is smaller! No longer are our links be cluttered up with "/cgi-bin/index.cgi"s. And if you want to show someone else your nation, the link is much neater: simply http://www.nationstates.net/yournation. Check out the very bottom of your nation's home page for the exact link.
Some players may notice that their autologin stopped working. If this has happened to you, re-set it by going to your nation's "Settings" page, checking that "Log in automatically?" is set to "Yes," and clicking "Update Settings." If you can't remember your nation's password, enter via the old, longer URL first. (This is a temporary fix, so make sure to "Update Settings" once you're in. And maybe change your password to something memorable while you're at it.)
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The Great Disk Space Disaster of 2005 (Take 2!)
by SalusaSecondus
Yes, folks, it happened again. We filled up our hard disk. Apparently our fixes from the first time around didn't quite work. So, what's the situation? We ran out of space and the game tried (valiantly) to go on by making more space, by wiping out your accounts. Clearly it had its priorities messed up. Fortunately, a backup completed shortly before the game crashed. (Personally, I suspect that the backup caused the game to crash.) This means that I think that we lost just a few hours of data. I don't know how much yet. I'll get around to figuring that out after the game is fixed.
Our current status is "inconsistent". This means that the game is a tad confused about what's going on. So, until this is fixed, I've disabled new accounts. If you created an account between the last backup and the crash, your account is gone. Sorry. There are other problems that we'll be dealing with over the next week, but the game should be back to normal for most of you within a day.
Oh, yeah. I'm writing new code to keep this from ever happening again.
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by SalusaSecondus
For all those who missed it or forever wish to remember this day in their life, we now have a prettified log of the chat. It's all there except for parts/joins/modes. (No, I'm not feeling creative enough to compose a new news entry for this.)
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