I rarely post on the OWF but after reading this Thread I feel compelled to comment. CyberNations as a game is having some very serious problems when it comes to retaining playership. My nation is over 4 years old this month, I remember the great alliance wars and all of the interesting propaganda that was produced from the opposing sides those were the great days of CN. But as the years gone by that formed into a hegemony that started to dictate who could play this game by Eternal/Permanent Zero Infrastructure and IP address tracking. On top of this taking place the MOD gate happened around 07-08 and that didn't help the atmosphere one bit. Ever since the MOD gate and the alliances doing E/P ZI CyberNations started to shed players by the tens of thousands.
Right now CN is a shadow of its former self and this has nothing to do with people not wanting to have any wars. Most people don't realize that there hasn't been new content pertaining to game play since 09, it has been almost two years since Kevin (admin) added anything to the game. Those changes were the space wonders that people have been suggesting for years and Admin finally decided to add to the game. CN has been neglected for years now and people wonder why no body wants to play this game.
This leads to the biggest problem for this game, wars. Back in the early days of CN only the top 5% of nations could only possess nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon use was taboo, now in CN you almost can't fight in a war where nukes are used. The Manhattan Project wonder was probably one of the worst blunders in the additions to this game. This wonder gave the opportunity for small nations that haven't been playing the game for a long time to cause great damage via nuclear warfare. But this is only one example, more and more improvements and wonders were geared to fighting wars instead of building nations. This is where CyberNations turned into CyberWars.
In this game I have spent 4 years building my nation, getting all the wonders, having over 10,000 tech via tech deals, and keeping my nation in the top 200. Up until 09 I enjoyed this game very much. I even went to great lengths to have people in game donate to my nations so I could get more infrastructure more quickly. Spending many hours in IRC and alliance forums is a great aspect to this game. But when nuclear warfare on a massive scale was brought into the game, it took away all the joy. In the past year I have lost at least 18,000 infrastructure, and 3,000 levels of tech, most of those losses occurred with nukes hitting my nation.
Small nations don't understand about war, because the losses that they experience are small and are easily regained through tech deals and aid. This situation is not true for older nations, just look what happened to TOP. Everyone talks about having billions of dollars in war chests, but that doesn't help older nations recover from a war. Most bigger nations even if they spent all of their warchest will not recover from devastating conflicts that last more than a week. It is impossible to come back from being nuked over 20 times. Hell I still haven't recovered from the short bus/bi-polar conflict that happened a year ago. I AM TIRED OF HAVING MY NATION BLOWN UP IN IDIOTIC CONFLICTS, 4 YEARS I HAVE SPENT GROWING MY NATION ONLY TO SEE IT GET DESTROYED IN A WEEK'S TIME. This is the reason why I stopped doing donation deals, what is the point of having someone pay for infrastructure only to see it evaporate in a day or two. Also this situation has driven me to the edge where I think about quitting CyberNations everyday.
IF CYBERNATIONS IS TO BE SAVED AS A GAME DRASTIC MEASURES HAVE TO BE TAKEN IN ORDER FOR IT TO SURVIVE. The number one problem with this game is that you can't lose no matter if your nation is driven to ZI or ZT. This needs to be fixed, and I would think it would make things more interesting if you could actually lose your nation through bad decisions during a alliance war. People would be less likely to want to start wars if there was a chance that they could lose their nation.
But what do I know about this game.... The only thing that I know right now is that there is no joy left in playing CyberNations.
