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Particracy Forum • View topic - Cultural Creation Thread - Update here!
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Particracy Forum • View topic - Klavian News Service
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Particracy Forum • View topic - The Neuhaus Times (Talmoria)
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Particracy Forum • View topic - We need less Presidents and Prime Ministers!
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Particracy Forum • View topic - Gotcha, IML!
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Particracy Forum • View topic - Tukarese News Agency (TNA)
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Particracy Forum • View topic - Phlale - Third World Game
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Particracy Forum • View topic - What cultures would you like to see more of in Particracy?
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Particracy Forum • View topic - Kirlawa Chronicle
Long story short: "Third World" was originally used to refer to countries with the Budget and Map Bugs (Lourenne, Sekowo, Talmoria, Verona). Other on-map countries were variously referred to as "third world" depending on how they were Role Played. In meta discussions, some players variably used "Second World" to refer to countries they perceived as neither very rich nor very poor.
So ICly, there were actually Four Worlds:
- the Second World (middling countries)
- the Third World (bugged countries and countries RPed as poor)
- the Colonies were a Fourth World
- and countries that owned colonies were the First World
When Liu Che lobbied moderation to ban colonies, no one was allowed to play the off-map countries at all. In the 2nd link, you can read part of the Public Consultation that led up to the creation of the RP Team. There, on-map countries (player nations) were still being referred to as "Third World." About a month after that thread, Zanz created the "Third World News Network" thread, which is still visible in the "Global News (RP Team)" forum. Zanz described the thread's purpose in the first post: "This thread will hold RP Team news posts related to Dovani's post-colonial, NPC nations."
So in the intervening month between the Nationmasters Public Consultation and Zanz's Thid World News Network thread, moderation (Aquinas at the time) had created the RP Team through a Game Rules change and given it the power to the control the Former Colonies. I don't remember if Aquinas's rules referred to "Former Colonies," "Third World," or both, but by the time the RP Team launched, someone on the RP Team and/or Aquinas had made the decision to refer to the Former Colonies as "Third World."
So the RP Team did not invent "Third World." But their OOC influence helped transform the meaning of the term from "bugged or poor country" to "NPC country." All player nations began being referred to as "First World" almost immediately after the RP Team was launched. I think that change reached a climax during the last Dovani War where several Former Colonies governments condemned "First World Nations" like Lourenne and Talmoria for intervening against Medina expansionism.
Given that record, I encourage you to consider building on that history rather than retconning because the RP record gives rise to additional interesting questions. For example, now that there are no colonial empires, does the "First World" exist anymore? If so, "Second World" couldn't reasonably be applied to rising powers like Lourenne, so which countries would it refer to if any?