Back on June 13, 2016, Europeia published its fourth and final issue of "The Europeian Standard", a collection of articles from authors across the NS world with the goal of enhancing Europeia's voice abroad, and strengthening our position in the wider NS world. While the issues it released were stellar, the amount of work required to maintain its activity proved to be too much, and it has been shuttered for nearly four years now. Since the paper is now archived, and its treasure trove of articles are out of the public view, I thought it would be worthwhile to republish one of the articles that I wrote for the paper. I hope you'll enjoy this look into NationStates' class regions, lightly edited for clarity.
Shortly after the major update on April 28th, 2016 HYDRA made an announcement that they had raided the region Edisonia, a founderless region. However, this wasn't just any region, this was a class region. The moderation team instantly struck against HYDRA for this raid, saying that it had long been a rule that class regions should not be invaded by those outside the class. HYDRA retaliated by stating that this rule was not made clear, and, had they known it was illegal, they would not have partaken in the raid in the first place. By the time everything was said and done, HYDRA was punished, and Eliot Isaraider, the military operative at the head of the operation was placed on an extended World Assembly ban (extended from a previous WA ban he was already serving due to Predator-related punishments), and new information was added to the "Forbidden Actions" section of the rules. On the face of it, this struggle seems like a raider organization overstepping its bounds, breaking the rules, and getting punished: something that has become increasingly common this year in the game. However, something stuck out to me about this story. Before news of this operation broke, I had hardly heard of class regions, and it seems a lot of gameplay had similar confusions over what these regions are, how they operate, and what their relationship is to the wider world of NationStates. So, to help clear that confusion, let's use this event to get an inside look at class regions.
First, let's ask the obvious question: what is a class region? According to the NS page for educators (found here) "To facilitate its use in classes, NationStates allows educators to establish a special class region, within which students' nations reside. This region is isolated from the rest of the game world, so students cannot communicate with or be approached by other players." That seems simple enough. There are multiple ways one could imagine the political world of NS being used to educate students, and class regions strive to set up an environment where those features can be accessed, without fear of the outside world of the game getting too involved in the education of students. Additionally, class regions may contain players that are younger than your average NS player, due to it being used in a 5th grade Social Studies class, for example. One of the features of a class region is that nations in that region, "will not receive daily issues that could be considered adult in nature." There is also a warning to educators along the bottom of that page that, "The game has more than a dozen Moderators who act swiftly to remove inappropriate material, but I can't completely guarantee that you (or your students) will never encounter it before they do." The unusual restrictions on telegrams are part of a series of protections that are imposed upon class regions to help protect young students from inappropriate material. We have probably all received telegrams that are nothing but spam or swear words aimed at us for whatever reason, and this is an attempt to mitigate that risk for what may be young students playing NationStates because their teacher told them to.
What does that leave students with, however? Well, almost everything that the rest of us players have. The differences include: being an automatic member of the World Assembly (without having to supply an e-mail), no telegrams from or to nations outside the region, and you cannot leave the region. In addition, issues that are "adult" in nature are not sent to these nations, and the only ads they will see are the ones for Max Barry's books. Clearly, the goal of these regions is to ensure that they are isolated communities, free from influence of the outside world. However, as the HYDRA incident shows, this is not always the case.
The only thing separating a class region from everyone else is one password. Ideally, that password is kept a secret between the teacher and their students, but things happen. Another interesting tidbit we found out was that, despite having a WA ban in place on him, Eliot was immediately granted WA status on his nation, even though he never applied. This is an interesting side effect of not having student nations use an e-mail to gain WA status. Since there was nothing that had to be checked in order to become a WA nation, Eliot obtained something that he should not have been able to obtain, because the game gave it to him. This is a ban-worthy offense, despite being automatic, and mods have punished nations in class regions for having two WAs at once, including for having a WA nation in a class region and a WA nation not in a class region. In fact, if this double WA holder does not immediately rectify the issue, and report the problem to the moderation team, they will be severely punished, like any other incident of being in possession of multiple WA nations. Another little misconception brought up during the HYDRA raid was whether class nations can make WA proposals. After asking moderator Mousebumples, it was determined that class nations are permitted to submit both General Assembly or Security Council proposals, just like any other WA nation with at least 2 endorsements. This is an odd quirk in the whole isolation factor of class regions. While there are obvious educational benefits to seeing what passes the WA and what doesn't, the ability to pass something without playing any other aspect of the game puts class regions in a unique power position, whether they know it or not. On the flip side, however, the inability of class nations to send out telegrams makes it nearly impossible to coordinate a telegram campaign, which makes it quite difficult to get submitted proposals to quorum and a vote. So, maybe take all this with a grain of salt.
All of these things point to one conclusion, which I think it accurately summarized by moderator Sedgistan: "Class regions are 'out of the game' when it comes to gameplay." The official rule that was added as a result of this invasion is: "Unless you are an invited member of that class, you should not move to a class region." NationStates is a place where all communities are connected: from the roleplayers, to the military-types, even the issue-answerers. We all live in the same world, and are subject to the same rules, regardless of whether we intend to be or not. Class regions, however, are in a world of their own. Their version of NationStates is very similar to ours, but should never crossover. The consequences, as HYDRA and others have learned, can be dire. I hope that this article has shed a light into the world of class regions, with the hope that now that we understand what they are, we can all agree to just leave them alone.
Shortly after the major update on April 28th, 2016 HYDRA made an announcement that they had raided the region Edisonia, a founderless region. However, this wasn't just any region, this was a class region. The moderation team instantly struck against HYDRA for this raid, saying that it had long been a rule that class regions should not be invaded by those outside the class. HYDRA retaliated by stating that this rule was not made clear, and, had they known it was illegal, they would not have partaken in the raid in the first place. By the time everything was said and done, HYDRA was punished, and Eliot Isaraider, the military operative at the head of the operation was placed on an extended World Assembly ban (extended from a previous WA ban he was already serving due to Predator-related punishments), and new information was added to the "Forbidden Actions" section of the rules. On the face of it, this struggle seems like a raider organization overstepping its bounds, breaking the rules, and getting punished: something that has become increasingly common this year in the game. However, something stuck out to me about this story. Before news of this operation broke, I had hardly heard of class regions, and it seems a lot of gameplay had similar confusions over what these regions are, how they operate, and what their relationship is to the wider world of NationStates. So, to help clear that confusion, let's use this event to get an inside look at class regions.
First, let's ask the obvious question: what is a class region? According to the NS page for educators (found here) "To facilitate its use in classes, NationStates allows educators to establish a special class region, within which students' nations reside. This region is isolated from the rest of the game world, so students cannot communicate with or be approached by other players." That seems simple enough. There are multiple ways one could imagine the political world of NS being used to educate students, and class regions strive to set up an environment where those features can be accessed, without fear of the outside world of the game getting too involved in the education of students. Additionally, class regions may contain players that are younger than your average NS player, due to it being used in a 5th grade Social Studies class, for example. One of the features of a class region is that nations in that region, "will not receive daily issues that could be considered adult in nature." There is also a warning to educators along the bottom of that page that, "The game has more than a dozen Moderators who act swiftly to remove inappropriate material, but I can't completely guarantee that you (or your students) will never encounter it before they do." The unusual restrictions on telegrams are part of a series of protections that are imposed upon class regions to help protect young students from inappropriate material. We have probably all received telegrams that are nothing but spam or swear words aimed at us for whatever reason, and this is an attempt to mitigate that risk for what may be young students playing NationStates because their teacher told them to.
What does that leave students with, however? Well, almost everything that the rest of us players have. The differences include: being an automatic member of the World Assembly (without having to supply an e-mail), no telegrams from or to nations outside the region, and you cannot leave the region. In addition, issues that are "adult" in nature are not sent to these nations, and the only ads they will see are the ones for Max Barry's books. Clearly, the goal of these regions is to ensure that they are isolated communities, free from influence of the outside world. However, as the HYDRA incident shows, this is not always the case.
The only thing separating a class region from everyone else is one password. Ideally, that password is kept a secret between the teacher and their students, but things happen. Another interesting tidbit we found out was that, despite having a WA ban in place on him, Eliot was immediately granted WA status on his nation, even though he never applied. This is an interesting side effect of not having student nations use an e-mail to gain WA status. Since there was nothing that had to be checked in order to become a WA nation, Eliot obtained something that he should not have been able to obtain, because the game gave it to him. This is a ban-worthy offense, despite being automatic, and mods have punished nations in class regions for having two WAs at once, including for having a WA nation in a class region and a WA nation not in a class region. In fact, if this double WA holder does not immediately rectify the issue, and report the problem to the moderation team, they will be severely punished, like any other incident of being in possession of multiple WA nations. Another little misconception brought up during the HYDRA raid was whether class nations can make WA proposals. After asking moderator Mousebumples, it was determined that class nations are permitted to submit both General Assembly or Security Council proposals, just like any other WA nation with at least 2 endorsements. This is an odd quirk in the whole isolation factor of class regions. While there are obvious educational benefits to seeing what passes the WA and what doesn't, the ability to pass something without playing any other aspect of the game puts class regions in a unique power position, whether they know it or not. On the flip side, however, the inability of class nations to send out telegrams makes it nearly impossible to coordinate a telegram campaign, which makes it quite difficult to get submitted proposals to quorum and a vote. So, maybe take all this with a grain of salt.
All of these things point to one conclusion, which I think it accurately summarized by moderator Sedgistan: "Class regions are 'out of the game' when it comes to gameplay." The official rule that was added as a result of this invasion is: "Unless you are an invited member of that class, you should not move to a class region." NationStates is a place where all communities are connected: from the roleplayers, to the military-types, even the issue-answerers. We all live in the same world, and are subject to the same rules, regardless of whether we intend to be or not. Class regions, however, are in a world of their own. Their version of NationStates is very similar to ours, but should never crossover. The consequences, as HYDRA and others have learned, can be dire. I hope that this article has shed a light into the world of class regions, with the hope that now that we understand what they are, we can all agree to just leave them alone.
