The Drewpocalypse may have been a bit of a headache for the NS admins, but provided an opportunity for regions across the game to entice more victims into their loving grasp. Here, I take a look at how a selection of large regions* have fared with regards to activity** in the past couple of months.
*I have looked at every region whose Delegate has surpassed 100 endorsements at some point since April, though there is the possibility I could have missed someone out. Apologies if that is the case.
**My definition of activity for the sake of this analysis is Delegate endos, because I think that reducing the vibrant and diverse communities of NS down to a single number that they may not even care about is the right thing to do.
A further note/disclaimer: I am not a GP person. I had never heard of most of these regions before I did this, and have little knowledge of their histories or how they operate. I suspect the good folk of this forum may be able to provide more insightful analysis of this data than I can.
I took three data points from the Delegates of the selected regions.
Pre-Drew: Delegate endos on April 19th, the day before Drew’s first NS video.
During-Drew: The highest Delegate endos from the month of May. Different regions reached their peaks at different times so I decided the fairest option was to take each region’s peak from May. Some regions may have reached even higher in June, but that will not have been directly related to Drew, hence the May cutoff.
Post-Drew: Delegate endos on June 19th, two months after the Drewpocalypse. Most nations who logged in a few times and then got bored will have CTE’d within 2 months, so those remaining have demonstrated some level of sustained activity since joining. Of course, most regions are continuing to decline, but this will likely continue for a couple of months at least, and I had to draw the line somewhere. Maybe I will make a follow-up at the end of summer if people are interested.
Here is the first table of data, showing the pre-Drew endos, along with the peak Drewpocalypse endos for each region. The table is sorted by the number of endorsements gained, decreasing.
The clear winner from the initial surge is 10KI, comprehensively crushing every other UCR, and even comfortable beating out every Feeder to take top spot. I don’t know what 10KI did in that time to cause such a huge increase in endos, but it clearly worked, as they almost doubled their Pre-Drew figure.
The Feeders were all reasonable consistent with each other. TEP had the highest gain, perhaps because their endos were still recovering after the coup attempt last year. TWP initially gained at a similar rate to TEP, but their tough RMB spam policy led to significant purges of Drewites, which slightly inhibited endo growth. TP had the lowest absolute increase, but the highest percentage increase, of any Feeder.
Conch Kingdom gained the most endos of any region who started with fewer than 100. Their increase of 137 from a starting point of 83 was an impressive 165% increase. The two biggest percentage increases, however, went to Drew’s home region Confederacy of Layem, who rose 329% from 31 to 133, and The Region That Has No Big Banks, whose astonishing 480% increase from 20 to 116 was well ahead of any other region.
Down nearer the bottom, the Sinkers, as you would perhaps expect, were relatively unaffected by the Drewpocalypse. None of Osiris, Balder, or Lazarus were able to gain more than 12% on their starting positions. TRR fared a bit better, given its different mechanic and TWP’s trigger-happy ejecting, with 55 additional endos representing a 23% improvement.
Here we’re going to look at the second table of data, which compares a region’s peak Delegate endos (from May) with their endos as of June 19th. Once again, the table is sorted by endorsements gained, decreasing.
Remarkably, two regions were unaffected by the mass of CTEs in late May/early June, and continued to gain endos. Karma’s Delegate moved from 133 to 141 endos, though it is worth noting that Karma had a Delegacy change in early May, which likely inhibited their maximum in that month. The Communist Bloc, on the other hand, had no Delegacy changes throughout the Drewpocalypse, but their total endos rose by 21 between May and mid-June. TCB perhaps didn’t attract many Drewites in the first place, as their gain from April to May was only 18%, one of the lowest of the selected regions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the other regions near the top were those who didn’t gain much during the initial surge, with Democratic Socialist Assembly, New Western Empire, and Forest among those who barely even noticed that the Drewpocalypse had occurred at all.
Down at the bottom we predictably have the Feeders, though it’s worth noting that 10KI, despite having the largest initial gain, lost fewer endos than all Feeders other than TP. The largest losses went to both TNP and TEP, who were in the process of Delegacy changes at the time (though both still had their outgoing Delegates in the position as of June 19th).
The largest percentage losses went to The Leftist Assembly (-37%), Wintreath (-46%), and Warzone Sandbox (-48%). Both TLA and Wintreath had to navigate difficult Delegacy changes in this time, with both having new Delegates by June 19th. Obviously, the change in Delegate essentially removes all of the inactive WA nations from the endorsement count in one fell swoop, whereas as regions who stuck with the same Delegate throughout will lose those endos more gradually, as nations CTE. I have absolutely no idea why Warzone Sandbox was the worst performing region in the period, but their initial 232% gain was pretty impressive, and led to them being comfortably the only Warzone to make this list at all.
Here is the third and final data table, which essentially just uses numbers you’ve already seem. I’m comparing the Pre-Drew (April 19th) figures with the Post-Drew (June 19th) figures, to see how regions have performed overall. Once again, the table is sorted by endorsements gained, decreasing.
I doubt anyone who’s read the first two parts of this article will be surprised by the ‘winner’. 10KI pretty much stomped everyone here, with their net gain of 318 being 90 more than any other region. This represents a 73% improvement, so it will be interesting to see how many they have retained in a few months’ time.
Of the Feeders, TSP had the highest net gain, helped in part by TNP and TEP’s Delegate elections, though TP had the highest percentage gain, with 38%. Both TP and TWP, however, also finished below Europeia in absolute terms, with Europeia holding on to most of their endos from the initial surge.
In percentage terms, three regions clearly outperform the others. TRTHNBB may have lost 30% of their Delegate endos between May and June, but still managed a 305% improvement overall, representing a quadrupling of their initial endos. Confederacy of Layem may have lost Drew, but clearly some of his fans stuck around, as their 255% improvement allowed them to remain in triple figures. In third is Union of Democratic States, whose strong initial gain of over 100, followed by exceptional retention (just 7 lost), has seen their endos exactly triple from 50 to 150 overall.
Also worth a mention is Conch Kingdom, who, despite transferring the Delegacy at the end of May, still managed an overall doubling of their initial endocount. This is probably the most successful Delegacy transfer of any of these regions during this time. Finally, Ascenthia didn’t particularly excel at any one statistic, but they still more than doubled their endocount overall, rising from 42 to 88. This completes the regions to achieve a 100%+ increase in endos from April to June.
At the bottom, 3 regions had net losses in this time. Forest and NWE, as mentioned earlier, didn’t seem to attract many Drewites in the first place, and their overall losses are likely just down to the usual NS summer lull. The Leftist Assembly, however, lost 67 endorsements, mainly due to a lack of gains in the initial surge, followed by a Delegate transition which lost them almost 80 endorsements in a week.
Finally, Lazarus was the closest to breaking even. Their Delegate moved from 285 endorsements in April, to 286 in June, a (rounded) change of 0%.
I hope you found this somewhat interesting. I’m sure many of you (if anybody actually reads this), will have far more detailed insights into the reasons behind this data than I do, and I would love to hear your stories and explanations! Also, apologies if I didn’t mention your region. Some regions just happened to be fairly average for most of these stats, and unfortunately the article would have been a little unwieldy if I’d spoken about everyone.
Did some LC, MoRA, CRS stuff in the past. Do a lot of World Census stuff now.
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