Elite'tism -vs- Noobs

[mysterydave]

First of all I would like to congratulate Rassputtin on a fantastic post. Very moving. The game would benefit immensely if every player thought about their first set in this game. I will recount my own experience below. I think it even dwarf's some of Mr. P's longest speeches so some of you may wish to skip. However I invite everyone to recount (much more briefly if you can) a) how you discovered the game, b) what happened in your first set or two, c) how you learned the unwritten landgrab rule.

When I first started people often asked me "What is your best finish" and would sometimes scoff and call me "n00b". However I enjoyed the struggle for acceptance through achievement in game.

Rassputtin, I have to disagree with your assessment of all elite players being in major nations and all in one big alliance is wrong. There are many old loyalties and feuds, the currents of which can run deep. Certainly more than I am even aware of and I know far too many to detail them here.

Even in the broader sense that although some are enemies they all perpetuate the same standards (unwritten rules) is also not true. There was outcry when the [KIHT] & [EEK] states first came to nation-wars from a variant world-of-war server in Estonia. There they had developed their own "unwritten" rules that were very different from ours. When they first started playing here they were labeled suiciders by many old vets here as their game etiquette was very different.

Those accepted standards do change. I have seen them change while I have been playing. When I started doing 2 standard attacks against a state within 36 hours of each other was unacceptable. A small change but one that has happened non the less. Back then it was also an unwritten rule that you kept balanced units, and 100% inf states would get attacked too.

I agree with you. These "accepted rules" are not rules of the game. The only enforcement of them is by other players. There is no other reason to follow them and no reason why a player should not choose to ignore them, or try and change them. The difficulty with changing them is in the nature of accepted rules though. For a change to replace them the change also has to become the accepted. The ex-Estonian server players are having to change their own accepted ideas in order to conform to ours, but there is no reason why it should not be the other way around.

How I came to the game and learned the etiquette (apologies in advance over length):

Discovering the game.
In 2002 I played an online game where you created a boxer character, set his tactics and every week he fought against someone else's. It was a fun game and I enjoyed it, but found it very slow. A banner I'd seen a couple of times on its website advertised World-of-War. One time I clicked it and read something like "one of the fastest moving turn based massively multi-player games", "turn every 10 minutes". I was interested, being bored of waiting a whole week for action.

First set.
I started part way through a set and had a similar experience to Rassputtin. I played a mixed strat and minded my own business, expanding and building happily. Someone attacked me with a standard attack, I looked that person up, spied on them for intel, bought a few units and standard attacked them back a couple of times. Later they did a few SA on me and moved up the scores and I found I couldn't win attacking him with SA anymore, so I used a different kind of attack instead. They attacked me back and increased their units until I could only terrorise them with spy ops. The whole thing was a little exciting but also frustrating as the other state was clearly less n00b and able to move beyond my reach.
At some point during the tit for tat battle I got recruited into a casher nation. This nation had a "retal request" (section in their in-game forum in which I posted some of the attacks this guy had done on me. Nothing happened but through the players posts in there I started to grasp the 'gentleman's rule'.

2nd set.
I got on the forums as I was bored waiting for the new set to start. I got planning with another n00b that we'd start a nation together, we posted on recruitment forums etc. Some replies to the thread asked what strat we were going to run. I didn't have a clue what strat meant but from what people said and reading the manual I plumped for farmer. I had ideas of running it as a total democracy, electing a new leader every week and so created Farmers Weekly [FW].
A few joined, I think there were 8 or 9 of us. I ran farmer and after a couple of weeks convinced of the advantage of pure strat.
Another state multi-tapped or war attacked a member and I sent a polite message to their leader asking them to stop and the reply came back something like "*** DON'T THREATEN ME YOU **** IF YOU MESSAGE ME AGAIN I WILL **** KILL YOU". I replied saying I didn't threaten just wanted for his member to stop hurting my member etc. Another message in bad English and full of expletives came back along with a war declaration and lots of war type attacks on several members.
That nation [NVS] had over 2x our members and over 4x our NW fortunately they were n00bs too and didn't know how to war. I didn't know that though and cut and pasted the whole message chain into the Wars & Relations forum. Several replies expressed sympathy. A co-leader of a vet nation [E] got in touch and offered help, before they could they took a FS from another bigger vet nation [UAAF] before they could help. However from talking to their co-leader and seeing what they did I learned how to war. We got organised and managed to killed 3 [NVS] top states before the set ended.
I kept the whole thing updated in the forum thread and a few who'd been casually following it the whole way through offered congratulations. After that I continued the nation to the next set slighly more seriously and called it Farm Wars[FW]. More members joined and we netted to a decent finish. A couple of sets later we were starting to become a major nation and a couple of sets later still we won the set as the top nation in the game.

Supporting the n00bs
Right from when [FW] was small to when it was bigger, [FW] was consistent. Actively recruited n00bs and offered advice and guidance rather than trying to "train" or "groom", members could run their state how they liked and have a vote in how the nation as a whole was run. We had I think 3 national rules regarding mult-taps & war attacks, spy ops and activity. If one of our members was attacked with multiple SA or war attacks I would send two messages, one to their leader (if they had one) the other two them. Theirs would read something like:

In world-of-war a standard attack is a "friendly" skirmish over borders that gains land and does little damage to the defending state (if not used repeatedly.) Other attacks or multiple standard attacks damage the attacked state and gain little or nothing for the attacker. These are purely destructive and used only to hurt or destroy states.
You attacked a member of [FW] with XXXXX attacks and hurt his state while gaining nothing for your state. As far as I know this state has done nothing to harm you. Please do not attack members of [FW] in this way again. We are a peaceful and democratic nation but we will defend ourselves if we are forced to.

I'd also include a cut & paste from the event viewer of the attacks in question. The responses of states in small, 1 man or n00b nations or not in nations was usually either:
"Sorry I didn't realise, I won't do it again", or "He attacked me first".
For the latter it would nearly always be a single SA. Either way most often a positive dialogue ensued that quite often led to the state joining [FW]. Some people who started their playing career being recruited to [FW] this way are probably still around as some of those "elite vets" you mention.

[Will]

Calvin - what was the nation that Scav had (Euro?) and how did they cheat? was it that bug which created extra armies?

I believe this was with Martyrs and they found a bug that allowed you to vastly increase indy production (by several times) and their states could not be caught up with even by feeding.