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When a region in the fantastic game NationStates dies, especially one of the older and most powerful ones, someone will always try to steal the glory of it all. It’s a sad fact that Gatesville has run it’s course, ending in Gates the God deciding to eject and ban all the members of Gatesville, moving himself to the Pacific lodging a message about coming there to die. Many years of fighting against the World Assembly (the former United Nations) and their attempts to force laws, acts and other evil things over the heads of poor countries, is over.

Or is it? Despite this sad decision by Gates the God, some of the nations from the former Gatesville has decided to make a stance, to keep on the fight against the evil of the World Assembly. My great nation, The Holy Thiefdom of Hrotsijka, have decided to do this from the comforts of the Holy Moosean Empire, where 42 other nations from the former Gatesville have gathered to continue the fight. We’re trying and will continue to do so!

A new region called Gatesville has emerged from the ashes, but let me warn you straight away! The new Gatesville (which I won’t link to) was created seconds before the old members of the original region could do it, by a puppet nation called The Confederacy of Gate Fences Make Gates, clearly indicated by the measly 26 million inhabitants in the puny country. This shows us that this is a nation merely created to ride the former glory, respect and name of Gatesville. Not cool!

Enough about all that and let’s talk a little about some of the new features added to NationStates during this ‘Feature February’ as Max Berry calls it. Firstly I’ll talk about the new trophy icons, which were added on the 5th of February. It looks like this (taken directly from the country profile of the glorious Hrotsijka):

To put it simply, these trophy icons shows how your country fares in the daily world census updates and as you can see Hrotsijka has done neither good nor bad during the first 19 days of this feature. I could sum it up a little by saying that we’re amongst the top 10% in the world in the ‘Most Cultured’ category, in the top 5% in the ‘Most Beautiful Environments’ and the one that makes fearsome leader Maxim Gromyko most proud: in the top 5% in the ‘Highest Police Ratios’ category!

It’s a fun new feature, which shows the efforts of how your country fares, instead of just being placed on a list. As Max Berry puts it: ‘For many years, the World Census has ranked nations. Eight, in fact. Eight years and a bit. But the glory (or shame) has been fleeting. You’re ranked, then forgotten. Who was #1 yesterday? Which scale is your best? Nobody knows.’. And I can only say that I agree, it was about time that we saw a change like this, so Max I salute you! It is great that you get to show of exactly how you were placed in a census and I know that you’re all jealous…

But this is not all that has changed, because as of the 20th of February we’ve gotten a nice new feature that adds graphs to our nation profiles. This means that we now get a graphical representation of different statistics, as an example I give you the leading causes of death in Hrotsijka:

This is a neat feature, that gives leaders of nations a better overview of what is going on within the nation, but also gives some nice and quirky information that you can ponder. For instance, I’m wondering how 6% of deaths in Hrotsijka happens when people get lost in the wilderness. I do know that it’s a massive nation, with it’s 10.314 billion inhabitants, but it seems like many people tend to be morons!

As if these two new and wonderful changes to the game, Max claims that they’re not done doing changes this fantastic ‘Feature February’: ‘And Feature February isn’t done yet! There’s one big new feature still to come! ‘. I guess all we can do is sit down and wait to see what the big new feature will be, I have my fingers crossed for something so big that it’s going to blow my mind! Like maps of countries or something like that, a feature I would love to see.

To sum up this massive post about one of my favourite browser based past times I’m still enjoying playing this great game, even 7 years after signing up. Seven years of playing NationStates and I’m still thrilled about getting a new issue that will change my country, still amazed that my citizens pay a flat 95% income tax without complaining and wondering when I get the two issues that will allow me to enter a custom nation capital and religion. Also, I’ve added a sidebar widget which shows the latest RSS feed updates from my glorious Hrotsijka, so you all can see what is going on.