Difference between revisions of "Wysterian History: The Early Years"

Revision as of 18:08, 15 October 2007

The Bruce first heard about this game from some people who were on a gaming site, the Townhall Forum, who founded the Gerbia region (still stubbornly perpetuated today by two of the region’s original players). The players in the D&D campaign The Bruce was in founded Wysteria but it quickly took on a life of its own. After a few nations wandered in here on their own, played by people unknown to the original Wysterians in real life, The Bruce decided to do a bit of recruiting in the Pacific. At the time, having 20 nations in your region made you one of the bigger ones around in the Nation States world. Back then Wysteria didn’t have any offsite resources and nobody had any animated flags.

December 2002

In this early time of Nation States, the only feeder region was the Pacific. There was no Lazarus, no Rejected Realms, no Regional Controls, no Founders, and only a handful of different daily issues to amuse us with. You didn’t even have the option of colour for your World Factbook Entry for your region. The Nation States Forum was slow and clunky. It took forever to load anything and much patience to use. The UN was unmanageable at best, with too high a percentage of UN delegates needed to approve a Proposal into Resolution form. That and any UN member could submit as many Proposals as they wanted to. There were usually 120 pages of Proposals at any given time for a Delegate to look through and most didn’t. It was a tough time for The Bruce as Wysteria’s Delegate.

2003

Part I: The World; Year of the Invader

This was probably one of the most exciting years to be in Nation States. It was when Invaders like the Farkers and the Driftwood Clan began sacking region after region, as well as other smaller groups of less noteworthy Invaders that lacked the organisational skills or the staying power to be much of a threat. Regions like the United States, Heaven, and America were among the most victimised, to the point where the Invaders became thought of as the natives of those regions, and Invaders somehow conned the Mods into installing them as the Founders, something they did in a number of other regions. Invaders relied on massed UN member states to take over the Delegacy of regions, but employed non-UN states for a variety of reasons. Some were used just for harassment and spamming. Others traveled from region to region (likely on a script) to check for potential targets that weren’t password protected, once regional powers were introduced. Some of the Invaders were nationalistic, as in case of the Irish regions fighting long protracted battles with the British regions. Not surprisingly the Nazi invaders often got into fights with the Soviet invaders.

Many of the older and craftier invaders are still around in the Nation States World. Many are fixated on the politics of the Pacific regions and some remain active Invaders, but many have left that behind them to be members of the same regions they once threatened. Despite the voracity of their battle with the Heartlands, some notable Farkers ended up settling there. Some Farkers even settled in Texas and Wysteria. Others continue to torment the natives of the region, America. Nations associated with the Driftwood Clan settled into regions like British North America, Royal Alliance, and Canada, although they have always maintained a claim on the United States.

A number of smaller regions (Lazy College Students, the Axis Region, and Poland) fell to the Farkers before they set their sights on the Heartland. Wysteria, along with Texas and other regions, provided valuable intelligence reports and defenders to retake the Heartlands. The spamming and griefing by Invaders was at times completely out of control and there was no Moderation control on obscene behavior. Without Regional Controls the battle for the Delegacy was a nightly occurrence. The defence of the Heartland brought about increased communications between Texas and Wysteria, and laid the foundation for the Triumvirate. The Farkers were troublesome and annoying, but at least they were far more entertaining and clever than what passes for Invaders these days. The Farkers did their best to hide their identity, by distancing themselves from their home region. A not very competent group of Invaders based in the 100 Nations of Conquest took credit for their attacks, resulting in a huge backlash against that region while the Farkers happily went about their business elsewhere. When the East Pacific was originally created, the last of the Pacific regions to be made, the Farkers got wind of it and camped in the newly created region, ejecting any UN nation that didn’t endorse their guy. In a way, the East Pacific defeated the Farkers, because they were limited in their Invader activity by the amount of effort necessary to hold onto the feeder region that they had seized. That or the nomadic Farkers got caught up in the endless schism over who their true home region was: Farkistan, Farktopia, or even Fark.

Early Defenders were just groups of interested players and regions banding together to protect regions they knew to be in trouble, as was the case in the defence of the Heartland. Later came the organized groups of Defenders like TITO and the ADN. TITO itself was the reaction to a failed invasion of the 10000 Islands by raiders from the Empires of Power. After barely surviving invasion itself, with the help of other regions, the 10000 Islands in turn created TITO to protect other regions in the Nation States World against the threat of invaders. Battles between Defenders and Invaders became very vicious and nasty at times, although in some cases the banter between them in contested regions was more a case of friendly familiarity.

Another large and well organized group was called the Atlantic (ACC). They were aiming for domination of the entire Nation States World. They threatened regions to join them or face invasion. They threatened Wysteria, but by then we were strong enough to tell them where to go. They were the bullies of Nation States Alliances, forcing those who submitted to membership to avoid invasion and to post about it in their World Factbook Entry.

Regions weren’t the only things being fought over. Early on, the Meritocracy attempted to take over the United Nations and force upon it their right wing conservative agenda. Failing to do that they withdrew on masse from the UN, before being caught up in their own schisms of various Meritocracy regions. Because of their withdrawal, the left wing was left as a dominant force in deciding UN resolutions and many corporate police states left in disgust that their pro-slavery and torture stance was being ignored.

The Nation States system faced a huge overhaul in 2003. In April, the United Nations started to become a more manageable beast, after the Nation States Administration began weeding the Proposal listings for stupidity and making it so you had to have two endorsements to submit a Proposal. There was still a ways to go on lowering the requirements for Delegate backing to make a Proposal into a Resolution, but things were at least starting to turn around. It was suddenly a lot easier to be a Nation States Delegate.

April was also the beginnings of Regional Controls for Delegates and the creation of the Rejected Realms. Founders were introduced and we no longer had to put up with spammers and griefers camping out until they got tired of being annoying. There was the problem of regions created before Founders were introduced, because they didn’t have Founders. Some of the older regions, including Wysteria, petitioned to get this resolved and by May, The Bruce was given the status of Founder. There was a cut-off of July for older regions to apply for Founder status and some regions never quite got it together or could agree on the subject. There were also some irregularities, where Invaders got to be Founders in regions that the Natives had put a lot of work into, allowing the Invaders permanent authority to torment their victims.

By May, there were hard and fast rules regarding the etiquette of Invaders and Defenders, resulting in some complaints by Invaders about the system taking away their fun. By June, the need for refereeing the various troublemakers and spats between players overwhelmed the Admins so much they brought in Moderators. In July, players were able to submit their own Daily Issues. By September, Nation States increased the size of the telegram boxes from 10 to 15. In November, players with Nations States with populations in excess of 500 million were able to create custom titles, like the Green and Pleasant Dominion. With December came ignore options for telegrams, in the effort of cutting down on spam and griefing.

2003 was when Francos Spain began to make his mark on the Nation States World, becoming the Delegate of the Pacific and ejecting huge numbers of nations. They became the talk of the Nation States World as the biggest Dictator Delegate of them all, preying on a helpless feeder region. Other Pacific regions were also ejecting huge amounts of nations, but because his opponents were making the most noise everyone had eyes only for Francos Spain, resulting in much of the Nation States World becoming polarised.

Organised groups of spammers, like those from the Pudding Regions, drove some regions insane to the point where a lot of players quit the game or sealed themselves off from the outside world forever. Even regional controls were not enough to stop these annoyances, because these gnats usually never stayed in the regions they victimised long enough to get kicked out. Once the Moderators started taking a heavy hand with regards to spam, things sometimes settled down a bit, although players who exist in the game only to harass others seems to be a constant in the online community.

Part II: Pre-Forum Wysteria (Jan-Mar)

When the Quadratic States became the first nation to fall victim to Vanishing Nation Syndrome (went inactive), the region was rocked! The Grendels and Cailion set about looting the infrastructure, while others were more concerned about the refugees. Out of this tragedy the Wysterian Relief and Resettlement Project (WRRP) was created to come to the aid of future refugees from vanishing nation syndrome. While nations were all trying to figure out what would come of this abandoned nation, Auravia came up with the idea of a regional space agency. Auravia was itself claimed by Vanishing Nation Syndrome before the creation of the Wysterian Forum, when the Wysterian Space Agency it founded really came into its own. Auravia did come back to us, via resurrection at Lazarus, years later, but has once more been claimed by vanishing nation syndrome.

Cleo inspired a lot of the diplomatic role-playing in the region, starting numerous threads of a peaceful nature on the Wysterian board. Han Shan’s missing monk was one of the highlight threads of this time. One of his monks went missing at a religious retreat and was then seen in nation states across the region. The viewing in Ummagumma was particularly suspect, since the monk was partially obscured by blue smoke at a rock concert.

Wysteria started to get on the Nation States World radar when the Grendels started getting themselves on the first page of the World for UN Reports. That brought numerous nations to the region, including Auravia and Treznor, themselves strong economic powers in their own right. The Grendels rankings in the UN Reports and relations with nations outside Wysteria have long brought nations to our green and pleasant region. Auravia originally led the Grendels in the economic UN Reports but they were eventually passed. For a long time, Sketch was the unabashed UN Report economic monster, leading all other nations, although he resided in another region at that time. The Grendels eventually took over this position of honour and were first in the World in many categories.

Notable 2003 Wysterian Nation States now gone:

3vil L33T, Amtsa Yevor, Bellina, Blackbears, Bonstock, Buscar, Caseypolis, Chalphy, Croventus, Cuervetor, CutThroatJack, Cyberdonia (Necros), Dadav, Delenn, DontTouchMe, Drezden, East Bridgewater, Egfroth, Elizabethdom, Ferraraton, Flobossia, Freeshire, Gadungder, Gingermen, Gold Land, Hyzenthlay, Ice Age, Jennaleen, Jezzail, K Yeah, Los Liberados, Magic Things, Meddlingdorf (also De Kruisvaarder and Darkendorf), Menehunes, Mothman, Mooseville, Naughty Shapes, Navarondack, Neo Bahumet, Outer Dementia, Raddanouge, Reploid States, Rio Be, SGWarning, Solid Water, Sweet Feet, the Bengals (Padmini), the Eastern Tribes, the Steppe, the True North, Truffleflower, Yggdrasil, and Zecro.

Part III: The Wysterian Forum (Mar-Dec)

Offsite region forums were becoming the new accessory that no serious region could be without in 2003. Partly this was due to the extremely slow loading times of the Nation States Forum, but also because they allowed a region to create more of a focused identity for itself. The Invision boards became the most popular format and at the end of March, Wysteria had its own forum, resulting in a role-playing renaissance in the region.

At the same time as the forum was up and going, work began on a Map of Wysteria and other regional resources followed after it. Thanks to the hard labours of Equus, Epona, and others, Wysteria had its very first regional map by April. It has changed a lot since the earliest version, with the addition of new continents and a southern hemisphere. In May, Los Liberados created a Global Map of Wysteria, a picture of which was later used on a WSA thread. Also in April, Meddlingdorf started up a newspaper, the Free Regional Informer. By October, the Free Regional Informer had fallen into neglect and was taken over by Levity, to keep the presses were running again. In September, with some interest generated by the region, Rio Be created Wysteria’s first Chat Room. When this one proved unreliable he created another one for us on his own initiative.

On July 3rd, first Billionaire Club report for Wysteria was published. The Billionaire Club was a purely statistical association, charting the largest populations of the region. At that time the Billionaires of Wysteria were:

Boldness, Chalphy, Chronoscion, Cleo, Croventus, Delenn, Elizabethdom, Epona, Equus, Flobossia, Han Shan, Pangaelica, Righteous Lefties, Silesia, Strong Bad, the Bruce, the Grendels, the Zocalo, and Ummagumma.

By September, Wysteria had 50 nations with populations of a billion or more and by October we had our first 2, Double Billionaires. By the close of 2003, Wysteria was a region with over 200 nation states; 89 of them with populations of over a billion; and 19 of them with populations of over two billion.

The WSA (Wysterian Space Agency) and the WRRP (Wysterian Relief and Resettlement Project) had already been created prior to the existence of the Wysterian forum. By the time summer came around, a number of new internal regional alliances were built. In August, Meddlingdorf founded the Independent Wysterian League of Equal Nations (IWLEN). This organisation was initially created to provide a counter to the growing dominance of superpowers prowling the region. IWLEN had its growing pains and identity problems, especially early on when the SSA (Another internal alliance) admitted itself as a voting block to IWLEN where they attempted to hijack, destabilize, and drag unwilling member states into a convoluted war they were the main participants of. From their earliest days, they sometimes had problems defining what they stood for or what type of nations should be members. Despite these early setbacks, IWLEN persists to this day as the oldest internal alliance in Wysteria.

The Great Heavens created the Strategic Social Alliance (SSA). The other members were Munisha, Northern Artic, Samaru, and later Niagra Falls. After less than harmonious relations with their fellow Wysterians, the SSA eventually crumbled under the friction between their neighbours and enemies. Galicia-Volhynia established the Wysterian Monarch League, a social organisation to facilitate unions between noble houses. Feeling that some of the smaller nations felt a bit intimidated by the Billionaire Club, the Bruce founded the YWNA (Young Wysterian Nation Association). It existed as a counter culture to the Billionaire Club, but despite early interest the YWNA had a serious flaw built into it. Since no member can have a population of a billion or more and it takes only six months to reach a population of one billion, after its core member states age, the YWNA lost momentum because of its design.

One of the most structured internal organizations came to Wysteria late in the year, evolving from LONAS. The League of Non-aligned States or LONAS was a very small organization, representing only three nation states and forming a counter to the other organizations in the region. As a result of the devastation in several Franconian nations from nuclear war, LONAS looked to expand in the southern hemisphere under the umbrella of a new organisation. In November, the Steppe and Galicia-Volhynia found the SWEC (South Wysterian Economic Community). They held monthly structured summits; rotated the chair position; and were quite organized. The SWEC had their very own offsite forum, run by Galicia-Volhynia. The membership of the first SWEC summit were: Galicia-Volhynia, the Steppe, Turnipstan, Melcelene, Truffleflower, Novarondack, and Blackbears; with the Zocalo added midway through the summit. The SWEC was a very democratic organization that voted on everything: the structure of the alliance; social and economic responsibilities of member states; international relations outside the SWEC; and the creation of the South Seas Fleet. In their 2nd summit, in December, they added SGWarning to their membership and adopted their first charter.

Treznor announced the existence of the Non-Democratic Alliance, which at that time was mostly to do with nations outside of the region. Where Treznor really put his stamp on the History of Wysteria was when he introduced the Mutual Defence Pact in June, gaining strong support from the region’s nations, as a means of détente. The Mutual Defence Pact has surfaced in more roleplaying threads than any other treaty, with varied results.

The Farkers invasions of the Heartland taught many nations from many regions to work together. During these troubled times, the Delegates of Texas and Wysteria began working closely together, and shared their intelligence reports with each other and the Heartland. As a result of this friendship between the two Delegates, a mutual defence treaty was signed between Texas and Wysteria in May, and ambassadors were exchanged. Pegs became the first ambassador from Texas to our green and pleasant region and we sent the House of Swords to take up residence as our first official ambassador to Texas. This defence and social alliance was extended to the Heartland, as a natural progression, named the Triumvirate. Ambassadors were again exchanged. Caleb Deep arrived Wysteria to represent the Heartland and Augustalia became our first ambassador to the Heartlands. With the threat of invasion becoming negligible, the Triumvirate was for the most part a social alliance between the three regions, with a number of sporting events organised for the participation of the entire Triumvirate. The single blight on the Triumvirate in 2003 was in December, when the Great Heavens disgraced their office as the ambassador to the Heartland. They abandon the embassy; pretended that someone had hijacked their nation; and are caught in their own lies when it was suggested the Moderators could deal with it. As this was the last in a series of disagreeable acts, the Great Heavens is ejected from the region, with the rest of their nation states.

In July, Cyberdonia brokered an Intelligence Sharing Treaty with Sisgardia, a region that had already had dealings with a number of Wysterian nations. Ambassadors were exchanged as a sign of good faith and to facilitate communication.

There was Delegate Uncertainty in October, after Equus logged in with her UN nation at home, on the same computer used by the Bruce. The Mods booted the Bruce out of the UN, but after days of earnest appeals by Equus and many other players in the region, the Moderators reversed their decision. During this time, Blackbears stepped in temporarily as Delegate, as the nation on the spot with the most endorsements. Despite the momentary chaos, the region handled themselves very well.

Outside of the waves of nation states recruited from the Pacifics, and others drawn here by Auravia and the Grendels being on page one of the World, there were three major regional migrations to Wysteria in 2003. The first came as a result of the meltdown of the region, Land of the Lions. The Land of the Lions was very similar to Wysteria in many ways, but when its founder/delegate nation died, the borders were sealed. The region then went through a protracted leadership crisis that was never resolved, resulting in a very slow and chaotic eventual death. Escaping the crumbling region to immigrate to Wysteria where: Meddlingdorf, De Kruisvaarder, Blackbears, Mothman, Turnipstan, Jasminia, and Saschen-Dresden.

When Regional Powers became available to Delegates and Founders, not all used them for the benefit of their region. Sometimes it was not the Invaders who turned the regional powers on the region’s natives, it was a dictator delegate. The Alliance of Democratic Nations had its nations terrorized by the Delegate, Jimtopia, and some of the region’s natives came to Wysteria for safe harbour: Esperanza, Zukir, Thumud, and Elizabeth. The Alliance of Democratic Nations was eventually liberated by forces from Armageddon and returned, what little remained of it, over to the natives.

The third migration came from the region, National Hockey League, who’s Founder had gone inactive. They were in a leadership crisis; lacked a founder; and no longer had a mapping project of their own. The nations coming here from the National Hockey League, included: Zecro, Canuckleheads2, Bonstock, Brian Burkes Boys, Broadstreet Bullies, Go Canucks Go, Solid Water, Ice Age, Hemi Cuda, and Drug City. To make them feel welcome, the Continent of Stanley was added to the map and the NHL section of the forum was created.

Part IV: Forum RP; The Wars

Part V: Forum RP; Culture and Calamity

2004

Part I: The World; Year of Intrigue

Part II: The Forum and Alliances

Part III: Space and the WSA

Part IV: Calamity and Diplomacy

Part V: Commerce and Innovation

Part VI: Wide World of Sports

Part VII: Pomp and Ceremony