Teddyyo

if you actually believe your views represent more than about a dozen people worldwide you are delirious

I was recently browsing my posting history, because every so often I go back to the AcTi posts wondering if I made the right choices at the time. (On a side note, I also recently reviewed my Kim Jong Illest OWF posts, that was fun to read.) Looking back over my content, I clicked a few of the Boiler Room topics I posted in around the same time. Good lord, how things have changed! The most extreme posters were, by today's standards, exceedingly moderate for the Boiler Room. It's sad to see most of those moderate voices gone. With only a few posters representative of the majority opinion, such as myself, Kain, Thrawn, KMM, Icewolf, and a couple of others, the Boiler Room is almost majority extremists by most standards. Even the previously-extreme posters like Hereno and Juslen would seem average today. The unfortunate casualty has been the verbose, thoughtful posters like Aeternos Astramora, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Voodoo Nova, and others. Even they were second-generation Boiler Room folks, versus the first-generation I was too late to experience who posted long, well-detailed posts about more philosophical topics and ideology. Nowadays the forum is more populated with Hawaiian nazism, anti-Feminist lesbians, Chinese fanboys.....it certainly makes it more colorful, but the magic of the Boiler Room is drowned out by demagoguery. Some of the older posters still around, who are now the moderates, spend more time replying to the inanity of the modern Boiler Room than having legitimate, thoughtful discussions. It's sad.

So, I've decided to delve back into the CN world. It appears that the population decline seems to have leveled out around the current number of players - good. On the bad side, it appears my old nation, with full wonders and billions of dollars.....was deleted in probably the week before the February 7th, 2014 change from deletion to deactivate for inactivity, seeing as I made one of those 'unban me no nation' posts two days after that. That's a bummer. Wish I could have that back, somehow. It was a pretty competent build for its time. But it's not the end of the world. I heard tech prices are through the roof, among other things. Wait, how much has this game changed? Crime? Battleships no longer have attack bonus versus destroyers? Actually listing benefits for the government position choices? Okay, nothing's really changed. Sorry, admin. Other than the political landscape that I'll have to get reacquainted with. Amazing Sanction Race seems to still be around, so that shouldn't take long. So, what happened before that made me lose interest in Cyber Nations? It wasn't my own personal development, I believe. I was still involved in groups within other games, such as NavyField and World of Tanks, the latter of which I still am today. Despite my changing priorities, with games dropping to third behind my budding interests in motorsports and hookah (yes, you can be an enthusiast with it), it wouldn't have been difficult for me to log in. Neither do I believe any of those took away my interest from this game. No, it was clearly related to this game itself. I think it was a combination of a few things. I had been a part of too many failed experiments, crashed alliances, and political debacles. Some of which I played key roles in and I can still be found on wiki today, for better or for worse. For worse, usually. I tried to guide DLK, Batallion, whatever you want to call him, through a route to make the alliance we made successful. He did the legwork I wasn't willing to, with recruiting members, seeking out allies, and such, while I sat in a largely advisory role (other than pursuing a pact with VE, which failed. They would still prove to be invaluable later, the reasons for which I can't disclose without permission). Most of the decisions I made to avert total failure managed to do so in the sacrifice of anything resembling pride, but we held it together through two or three major conflicts before I simply couldn't deal with DLK's style anymore and threw him under the bus to prevent his doing so to the alliance. After the deposition, I didn't see or speak to him again, on here or on any other game. I couldn't find him today, even if I wanted to. Never have wanted to, though. Afterwards, I found a new friend and ally in Chax and Europa. We went through plenty of drama and wars together. It was a tight group and very enjoyable. I think it was within Europa that I attempted to implement my plans to re-imagine how wars are fought in CN. I developed it using experience from other games, focusing on soft stats and player tendencies rather than hard stats that people were organized around at the time. I don't know how they do it here today. My plans were around grouping players with the highest and most similar activity levels around certain regions of NS as squads, rather than picking the closest members together and such. Those 'top' squads would go after the heavy hitters of their NS ranges, those with nukes, high tech count (this was well-before the discovery of OP land I've heard about) and big names. I still think it was a fine plan, but my efforts proved to me several things. Firstly, that I was totally incapable of creating a competent survey. For instance, in one question, I had people rate their own activity rather than using metrics. Despite my insistence that it was only to be used for the squad groupings, I had about half the alliance return with the answer 10/10. Next I discovered I was totally incapable of properly sorting data. And, finally, that I was not capable of communicating my meaning and ideas clearly. The whole thing fell apart and was never used in war. After that, or rather starting during that, I pretty much dwindled into inactivity, returning sparingly to collect taxes for another year and a half, and continuing into BFF, and then later VE again, I think.......I was pretty useless at that point. Not so much a paper tiger, as I had around $3b in warchest (which for a nation of my size in.......2012/3? who fought often was probably decent) and fully built everything, but I was totally incapable of actually keeping up during a war. I think at one point there was a 1-week war and I never even found out about until afterwards. Eventually, I stopped even putting that much into it sometime around January 2014 and slid into deletion. When I found that out, I created the glorious Kim Jong Illest (which the mods never figured out I accidentally spelled with three L's on the forum, much to a couple people's displeasure when their reports were rebuffed) and had a little fun messing around with it. I still lurked regularly after that died down until the present day. One of Chax's recent Boiler Room posts got me interested again, so I'm back with a tiny nation already stronger than 23% of the population (never change, CN) and a renewed interest in getting something done. Those who knew me before, I'm sure some of you have rerolled, others of you have changed affiliation, and others haven't moved at all. I'm eager to hear from you again, as I don't know where to even start with regards to re-establishing connections other than a specific couple of people. I'm also interested in finding a home, if anyone will accept players these days. Don't expect any more ships. Sorry. I can sense the disappointment from here.

33. Ryan Greenberg comments about them ^worst part

YOU NEED TO COME BACK TO THE FAMILY!