CyberNations Talkshow: The Blog

You are simplifying the past and complicating the present in order to view a political progression where none exists. What you describe of the modern power-seeking alliance has always been the case. Even in early 2006 politics and allegiances were in constant flux. Who can forget Legion's sudden change of side in the Great Patriotic War, for example, or GATO's oscillations prior to that.

The same was true throughout the following 5 years, as no power structure was without the constant threat of alliances or groups of alliances switching allegiance or conducting some other power-seeking behaviour (FAN throughout early 2007, the UjP prior to the UjW, etc).

You smooth over all of this to view previous eras as full of the primitive politics of unity and 'lapdogs', but in reality this was never more than propaganda from both side. All alliances have their own interests and the means for achieving them can change in an instant.

You ignore these perhaps because they are single alliances, but back then an alliance was as significant as a bloc is today, due to the smaller numbers and thus greater political and military weight that one could hold alone.

And so we get to the heart of the matter -- what has actually changed is simply the number of alliances. This has necessitated bloc politics (as the number of voices increased one had to become louder) and has, as I noted all the way back in 2008, made war more difficult to come by.

Thus while more moving parts necessarily means less wars, the underlying principles of political discourse and activity remain unchanged. No political progression, just a slightly different context within which they operate.

Do you have a scottish accent Vlad? Because we might need to have you on as a guest host.

Vlad's post

So what you are basically saying is that back in the day single alliances carried enough power to control things or at least move other alliances their way now it is the time for blocs. The Blocs of today are like large alliances of the past. Not many alliances back in early times, so now with so many alliances on bob, blocs do today what single alliances like NPO could do back then.

I wasn't here back in the early days but I've seen some numbers and spreadsheets of old coalition wars and many alliances were bringing 500+ nations some 1000 nations. Do you guys see those days returning ever?

There is actually a pretty well-defined story arc that starts in 2006 with the First Great War and ends at the conclusion of the Karma War. NPO was at the center of that story arc. Certainly there have been a number of sideshows along the way, but the theme of NPO meeting early challenges (2006-early 2007), the dominance of NPO as it made and remade coalitions with various alliances (2007-2009), and its eventual fall from power kept players and fans of the game entertained for an extended period.

The problem has been the past year or so that no one really knew what was next. The answer initially seemed to be, "keep the Hegemony from rising again." That's not much of a story arc, particularly when the "bad guy" doesn't want to be the bad guy any more.

So now here we are, with some threads of possible story lines laying about, but nothing that you can say, "this is how the game will progress for the next 2-3 years". Sometimes a blank page is worse than a page that already has been filled in.

So what you are basically saying is that back in the day single alliances carried enough power to control things or at least move other alliances their way now it is the time for blocs. The Blocs of today are like large alliances of the past. Not many alliances back in early times, so now with so many alliances on bob, blocs do today what single alliances like NPO could do back then.

Basically, yes.

I wasn't here back in the early days but I've seen some numbers and spreadsheets of old coalition wars and many alliances were bringing 500+ nations some 1000 nations. Do you guys see those days returning ever?

Not without massive changes to the laws of our physical universe. What gave Bob its massive surge in growth between the GPW and GW3 were invasions from other universes (GOONS, FAN, Genmay, Fark, etc, etc). These have now largely exhausted themselves and they won't reinvade the same space twice so long as it stays broadly the same.

Do you have a scottish accent Vlad? Because we might need to have you on as a guest host.

While I concur with your premise that I am awesome, I do not currently have the means to provide an audio version of my wisdom.

Politics are great. When they're made public.

There is actually a pretty well-defined story arc that starts in 2006 with the First Great War and ends at the conclusion of the Karma War. NPO was at the center of that story arc. Certainly there have been a number of sideshows along the way, but the theme of NPO meeting early challenges (2006-early 2007), the dominance of NPO as it made and remade coalitions with various alliances (2007-2009), and its eventual fall from power kept players and fans of the game entertained for an extended period.

The problem has been the past year or so that no one really knew what was next. The answer initially seemed to be, "keep the Hegemony from rising again." That's not much of a story arc, particularly when the "bad guy" doesn't want to be the bad guy any more.

So now here we are, with some threads of possible story lines laying about, but nothing that you can say, "this is how the game will progress for the next 2-3 years". Sometimes a blank page is worse than a page that already has been filled in.

I like this post, I really do.