Seven Regions

[Todd McCloud]

So I've been going over statistics from Tex's NS dossier site, and there's something I've recently been interested in: populations trends. Do they change from region to region? I know they change over the course of they year, but when, and how much? How long does it take a region to recover from a purge? How do the collector regions (The Rejected Realms, Lazarus) respond to these trends?

Collating the data of population levels taken at intervals over the course of 7+ years (which unfortunately does not include the entire history of NS, but is sufficient enough), we witness the following relationships between the five feeders (The East Pacific, The South Pacific, The North Pacific, The West Pacific, and The Pacific) and the two collector regions. I had to trim the data up so that each region would match with each other, but the raw data was generally aligned correctly. Each data point represents one week, give or take a day, with each region matching with the appropriate date for accurate comparison. 2009, however, has fewer data points. This obstacle was unavoidable - the raw data did not measure a weekly count, but rather had the points 'spaced out' Still, it is enough data to identify trends and should not throw off the data. Here's what I came up with:

Upon inspection, some observations can be made:

• Perhaps the most obvious observation is population numbers have been decreasing. Now, any old joe who has played the game for a while can tell you about how NS is shrinking, or give a gloom and doom apocalyptic 2012-esque lookout on how the game will die, but refer to the trends in the graph. Again, seven regions can hardly account for the totality of the NS population, but it is nevertheless a measurable indicator. Feeder population numbers have decreased from 2005-2008, the worst year appearing to be 2006 if one does not account for the annual population trends, discussed later. It should be noted that influence was introduced in April of 2006, where a sharp decline is shown, and NS rival Cybernations was also launched in 2006. 2005 was marred with server "disasters" in April and August. Late 2008 was marked with the failure of NS2. However, from 2009 to present, numbers have steadied. Very little change can be observed over this period, where feeders vary from ~2,800 from The East Pacific in late 2009, to ~2,000 by The Pacific in very early 2010 (excluding the valley made by The North Pacific, discussed later).
• It appears that all five feeders correlate similarly. This is not the case for pre-late 2003, but by in large, all feeders experience an increase or decrease at the same time. This is not the case, however, for purges (where a feeder population suddenly "drops"). However, this shows that it is rare for a feeder region to "break out" and separate itself from the other regions. Really, only TNP was able to do that in 2005. It is unclear if feeder population rankings correlate to activity, but it is believed by the observer that such correlations do not exist. Activity appears to only affect individual feeder populations very slightly, if at all.
• Historically, feeders do not take long to recover from a purge and this trend can be identified by the peaks in the population curve of The Rejected Realms. The latter part was expected, but it's intriguing to me that, on average, it takes a region around two months to get back to current feeder trends. I am observing this based on three purges: The Pacific by Ivan Moldavi in late 2006 (lasting ~12 weeks), The Pacific by Moo/Moldavi in early 2008 (lasting ~5 weeks), and The North Pacific by JAL in early 2010 (lasted ~7 weeks). It appears from the trends in the data the most successful purge was Moldavi's in 2006, where the region lost at least 3,000 nations, at least 58.4% of its pre-purge total.
• Annually, feeders can expect two revival periods and two declines. This interested me as well, mostly because I've heard more of a focus on the "summer decline". Actually, there are two declines: one that happens around July-August, and one that occurs around every late December, coined the "winter decline". Likewise, there are two "revival periods": a broad one that occurs just after mid-January and lasts until around April, and a sharper peak that occurs from August to November. It can be inferred from these relationships that NS is still very much a "young person's" game, as these trends seem to follow that of the common school year. It should be noted that the severity of these periods have decreased over time.
• The Rejected Realms and (for the most part) Lazarus are independent of these annual population trends. Outside of the revival and decline periods experienced by Lazarus in 2008, these two collector regions really do not follow common feeder trends.

From this, conclusions can be drawn:

• Feeders have been decreasing in population, but since 2009, they have remained steady at about 2,500. Certain NS events, like influence and NS2, may have lead to some population decreases.
• Feeders tend to follow each other when it comes to population trends
• Purges disrupt the feeder region, but only for a period of about two months as far as populations are concerned.
• Feeders can expect two annual decline periods and two annual revival periods. These periods tend to follow the common school year.
• Collector regions as a whole do not follow the population trends of feeders, but The Rejected Realm's peak populations match up to prominent purges in feeder regions.

 

[Flemingovia]

It is quite amusing to remember how concerned we all were back in 2005 at the "dreadful decline" in activity. I wonder what some of the player active back then would make of current activity levels?

 

[James2spooky]

The NS has been deserting, I mean, look at the forum of any given region, there has been less activity last year and early this year. But it seems like NS is slowly gaining some population lately especially in some of the player-founded regions, although it doesn't make any significance change, but we will see how it goes in the coming year.