The Mighty Pump from Voice of The Proletariat (Ed. EuroSoviets), Jan 8, 2006.
Pump’s Views On Activity In NationStates
It is commonly thought that the most interesting parts of NationStates are the feeder regions. This would explain why many of the most talented and powerful nations in NationStates are drawn there for example PopeHope’s citizenship of The North Pacific and Koona’s migration from Equilism to The Pacific. It is not always the case that nations will move to the Pacifics after making their names in other regions, many are able to carve out a great career starting from scratch in the Pacifics.
With the decline in popularity of NationStates, and therefore activity, many nations in user-created regions are retiring from NationStates. The reasons for this have been well publicised - the constricting rules in NationStates creating an incredibly uneven battlefield in the contest between Defenders and Raiders. This coupled with nothing original happening in these conflicts is killing off the more main-stream elements of NationStates. I will refrain from going further in detail on this subject as it has been said so many times.
The total retirement from NationStates of major nations in the Pacifics isn’t regularly seen. We have recently seen intra-Pacific movement in the form of Dilber and Hippograd, yet neither have retired from NationStates. Nations leave the Pacifics because of circumstances they don’t agree with and such, not because of boredom with the game. This is because the Pacifics are never eventless.
The North and West Pacifics have had turbulent times of late, this means that high-levels of activity will be maintained as they are much more interesting places to be around. The Pacific’s government is always stable because of its structure but because it is always embroiled in a high level of controversy, activity is always incredibly high. The South Pacific is the smallest and least controversial Pacific. It rarely takes a part in major events in NationStates and is consequently the least active, although it could be said that at the moment it is the Pacific that I would prefer to reside in. The East is incredibly stable, with Loop as a permanent delegate, and has a level of activity above that of the South but not as high as the other Pacifics, it is very role-play orientated and prefers to keep to itself. This looks like it may be taken to the next level as some within the East Pacific are looking to withdraw it from the rest of NationStates completely. I can only see this as a sure-fire way to kill off activity unless the nations who partake in the running of the East are continually doused in activities. Activity has risen in the East as of late to discuss this issue but if it passes, activity will drop at a rate faster than that of the other Pacifics with the general downwards activity trend.
The message of this is basically - keep up the controversy. The Pacific manages it just by existing, the North seems to be dropped in it regularly enough to remain with high activity levels. What the South appears to be missing that sets it apart from the other Pacifics is a lack of main-streamness. It is almost never seen in the news so never generates those nights where all the active citizens turn out to try to deal with a situation and in doing so activity is trebled. If the East goes through with this move to isolationism then surely it will become the least active Pacific? It would be like the South Pacific but with more stability, so even less change, and even less controversy. The West was stable and uncontroversial for so long, until nations deeming it to be declining because of these reasons took it upon themselves to attempt a coup. Activity increased almost instantly with such a huge blast of controversy and now the West is creating a new constitution to keep itself stable. The previous constitution was blamed for the decrease in activity. The stability in the West Pacific was based upon the happiness of the citizens because of the democratic constitution. The decrease in activity, in my opinion, was due to the West Pacific not taking sides on the massive battle that is the Nasicournia - PRP conflict, by allying (if not allying keeping up good relations) with both. This ‘friends with everyone’ policy resorted to the minimal arguing between the West Pacific and other regions so there was no controversy which the West was directly linked too, which eventually caused the nations involved with the coup to feel they were forced to do something to increase activity, and their tactic was by making an incredibly controversial move.
This formula of ‘controversy = activity’ seems to follow through with user-created regions. The regions that are in the news the most generally attract nations looking for glory and generate situations which the nations of those regions have to deal with, in doing so activity is increased. For example - Nasicournia is in the news all year round, so is controversial all year round and seemingly has ultra-activity. The pattern continues with The Proletariat Coalition, after the invaders forum destruction incident the TPC record for forum activity was broken. There are many more examples of this, I feel that it would be pointless to list them all now as unless you have an IQ of 6 you will have got the point I’m trying to make by now.
Article written by The Mighty Pump