The NOCTO Joint Headquarters, by far the most successful multi-national defense formation to date, will be lead by Hutori's Governor-General in Davostan Field Marshal Mason Berrigan as Chief of Staff and assisted by Klementīns Auziņš, a Dolgavian Field Marshall (who will be leaving retirement) as the Deputy Chief of Staff. NOCTO Joint Headquarters held a number of annual and special exercises, including Arctic Lion, Leviathan Wedge and others that prepared the armed forces of respective nations in a number of ways. The Joint Headquarters is often considered to be one of the most successful multi-national efforts because it prompted a close cooperation between several nations, primarily Dorvik, Hutori, Lourenne and Kazulia. The Joint Headquarters also established a baseline for logistical and support operations, including shared basing rights giving the Northern Council members at the time unprecedented access to conduct operations across the globe. The return of the Joint Headquarters, notably underneath the leadership of two accomplished Field Marshals, will likely prompt a resurgence in all its respective nations armed forces capabilities.
Less than 4 weeks since the nations of certain players were downgraded in the rankings for plagiarism, there is clearly an agenda within the Moderation Team to have them restored to their former status again.
This is questionable for obvious reasons, but my concern goes beyond this and to the likely future influence of the Northern Council within the game as a whole. Amongst its membership are powergamers, plagiarisers, and as everybody who is clued-up enough knows, two Moderators with a history of using their control over the rankings in order to boost the influence of their own ingame nations and that of their allies.
Only one day in to the relaunch of this organisation and they were already engaging in godmodding of the most obviously dickish variety, which any other group of players would not have gotten away with, but they did, because they can. I invested my personal time in outlining the issues here, but was not even given the courtesy of a proper response, or even the courtesy of an acknowledgement from Auditorii, the specific Mod I complained about. Because he doesn’t have to.
As a result of this experience, I feel considerably prohibited from RPing with the Northern Council in game, and I do not expect to have to give it “recognition” it does not deserve, no more than, for example, I would expect to be required to recognise the RP of a bunch of newbies who are RPing in a seriously unrealistic and rule-breaking way. I know others feel similarly.
What we need now is an assurance these nations will not be upranked on the basis of all this nonsense. Dorvik and Hutori are no longer objectively “Great Powers” (if they ever were) and need to be downranked. Kazulia and Lourenne should probably fall a rank as well; they should have fallen 2 ranks, not 1, following the plagiarism scandal, but falling one rank then and another rank now, a few weeks later, would be okay by me.