A Liberal Haven Becomes a Coveted Disaster
Faced with massive numbers of pilers, mysterious server lag halts liberation attempts.
Written by Pathoal
On January 2, 2022, a raiding force from The Black Hawks and Lone Wolves United invaded the region of A Liberal Haven. The region is an ancient one, founded August 7, 2003. The “point” of the raid (the nation that is endorsed by the raiding forces), Vando0sa, was using a six-year sleeper (a nation left in a region for a long time to gather significant regional influence, making raiding the region considerably easier), Got the munchies real bad man. A Liberal Haven had also been password-protected by the native Delegate, Garchyland. These facts already set the raid up to be a historic one, but future events over the course of the raid would make it a historic event in R/D history.
Shortly after the raid, Emodea, Minister of Defence for The South Pacific, began drafting a Security Council Liberation to remove the region's password, so that it could be liberated. It was submitted early the next day. The proposal reached quorum very quickly, and by the minor update of that same day, it was at vote. Many major Delegates quickly voted in favour of the resolution very early on in a process called "stacking" (which was recorded by Tinhampton).
In response to the Security Council proposal, the invading forces rapidly brought reinforcements to pile into the region, with Caer Sidi, Karma, Osiris and later The Land of Kings and Emperors all assisting the raiders. The raiders also brought in several real-life friends and retired raiders to help in the pile. With these efforts, the occupying Delegate passed triple-digit endorsement numbers in under six hours, according to a report from the Khan of Lone Wolves United A Bloodred Moon (commonly known as joWhatup), and attained 138 endorsements by the major update, dwarfing even the largest raids in recent years. The pile has only kept on growing since, and at the time of writing (January 9), Got the munchies real bad man has over 200 endorsements.
To beat the pile, defenders needed to muster an even larger liberating force. They quickly amassed a contingent of liberators that also reached into the triple digits, but it was not quite big enough to unseat the raiders. However, this would not be the only problem faced by the liberators, as the site began to suffer from extreme lag as the region was updating. This stretched the update time for A Liberal Haven by minutes and made it virtually impossible for the liberators to enter the region on time, and 63 defenders were ejected and banned from the region. Subsequent liberation attempts suffered the same problem, with the update time rapidly slowing down at the time of the update, rendering the attempt futile. Eventually, the liberation was called off.
While many initially believed that this was merely a case of the site servers suffering technical issues, some began to suspect foul play. Players pointed out that the only two updates when the severe lag did not occur were the minor update on January 7th, a weekday at a time when many could not attend the liberation, and the Major update of January 9, when there was no liberation attempt because it had been called off. Others noticed that the triggers (which is how military leads find out when to order their troops to move into a region) only failed very close to the update. This has led some to raise the possibility of a DDOS attack against the site to throw off the liberation. Although game administrator [violet] has commented publicly on the source of the lag, the cause of remains unconfirmed.
The EBC contacted HumanSanity, a member of Libcord update command and one of the organisers of the liberation for comment on the update. On the huge numbers present at the liberation, HumanSanity said that "This broad base of outreach across multiple regions, along with deep outreach inside of our own regions, was key to obtaining liberators here." Regarding the severe lag on the site, they commented "These out-of-game site failure considerations aren't something we should have to factor into our decisions, but nevertheless the only viable choice at this point is to give up the siege effort because our 12 second triggers became 7 minute triggers, making it impossible for liberation forces to stick." Nonetheless, HumanSanity did see the positive in the update, calling the liberation a "landmark achievement" for defenders, noting how "Consistently, over 100 updaters were gathered for liberation efforts, with the help of many organizations, including the Europeian Republican Navy, who has our sincerest gratitude for their assistance."
The EBC also reached out to Grand Admiral Writinglegend, who organised Europeian participation in the liberation of A Liberal Haven. He said that the Navy participated in the historic operation because "LWU and TBH signaled the possibility of community destruction occurring by creating a new private password hidden to residents." The Grand Admiral also noted an impressive turnout from sailors, stating that "The ERN supplied fifteen sailors to the liberation effort, with our maximum attendance for one siege being ten sailors." He, like HumanSanity, was disappointed by the update lag, calling it "an unfortunate asterisk on an otherwise monumental operation" and called on the NationStates Administration team to find and fix the root cause of the lag, which "enabled TBH and LWU to banject a plethora of nations participating in the liberation effort." Writinglegend noted how "ERN sailors were able to switch puppets three times during the time span of the update. Most of these puppets ended up banjected from the region before the update for ALH concluded." The EBC would like to thank both HumanSanity and Writinglegend for providing comment.
A Liberal Haven is a significant raid in itself, with its regional password and six-year sleeper. However, the whopping numbers from both sides of the battle and the mysterious site lag will certainly make this raid go down in R/D history.
