I have been playing NW all over the world for years. Asia OC SA NA EU even sub region mini events. I have talked to old Korean Colonels Chinese Colonels SA cols and even deranged peoples who use Medium speed for melee. I dont mean to act like yeah im a pro at nw and ik everything. But I would like to say that I have seen some stuff around NW and begun to take notice on how things have changed.
1st, Demographics of NW are changing, Now there is actually quite a few NW players wanting to play the game from developing countries. Examples of these are in Asia, South America Eastern EU + North Africa. I can bet active recruiters have noticed this as well as it seems not so uncommon anywhere to find recruits from all over the world. However, obv many of these new players are not going to be able to play the average NA or EU event as much as they would like to anymore. In fact, although NA has only 3 events per week, if you would include the SA events, there are actually about roughly 7 events being hosted every week in the Americas alone which if you look at things numerically most of the SA regiments that used ti play NW back in 2019-2020 were playing in both NA and SA events (I would probably a mix of the two but leaning towards SA). However, now that the SA community is becoming a lot larger compared to the NA, SA regiments have been much more able to congregate and make their own community where they can have better ping. This is why I have always preached to NA and SA regs that they should work together to develop some form of integration with eachother despite ping and language barriers. (If you dont account for recent events with the ERB)
1.5 Furthermore, I would also like to ad that many new NW players are from developing countries as ive said. Since theyre from developing countries, amny of these recruits are not able to speak English very well if at all. This is also why NA and OC regs have been the hurt the most from this because I believe their playerbase relies heavily on people from Anglophone countries to play in their regiments.
ar
2nd, Lack of colonels/officers - This may be somewhat of a controversial opinion, but I dont believe that the current pool of players that are streaming into NW are really as interested in being officers or colonels anymore. Sure you do have some people who want to try and become an NCO, but I have noticed that many of the colonels today the big officers of regiments have not changed at all. 21st hasnt changed with Alexander, Although Jetch is gone, NickyJ was always helping run the LIR, me with 61e and etc. You could say well what about the 3e and 84th, yeah theyre newish regiments but many of the guys on top who run the regs have been dealing with leading stuff for a long time.
2.5, entry barriers to new regs - I am sure everyone has noticed though that there has been a lack of "new" regiments surfacing. And well, you could just flat out say "its cuz nw is dead" but I think there really is more to it. There are regiments in NA still getting recruits and we are still able to figure out how to make shit work but this is something that can only be achieved by people who know have had some experience with recruiting in NW. I think we all know about the guy who spent 6-8 hours once on BBG Bot Survival/Tropical Paradise trying to get recruits and all he got out of it was a couple of nos and a couple more "fuck off reggies".
The real issue is that new colonels have no idea how to adapt when it comes to leading a regiment in the new environment of NW. And to be fair, this is something that Holdfast has us beat on, colonels there just need to go on one of the public servers where they can easily get in contact with players and ask them to join the regiment. This is the real issue with NW is that people who are actually interested in leading a regiment are most likely going to go to games like Holdfast just because leading a reg there is more noob friendly. I mean, look at the melee there compared to NW and tell me which one is easier for a new colonel to get his regiment jump started in.
And to be fair, there is no reason to blame for example NA regs for causing this, why would an NA reg publicly disclose their methods of recruiting. Its basically a prisoners dilemma we got in NA NW. This is also an issue for the communities all across the globe. Maybe I wouldnt include EU in this situation sinc there is still a large player pool, but even then, I would still say its in an issue nonetheless.
2.9 Why is this relevant to the NW Statistics discussion? - Because generally speaking, more cols and decent officers = more people willing to mass recruit and create a regiment that can provide to the needs of some new players. Obviously having too many colonels would be a flaw within itself but I do believe a big reason why NW is having some trouble is because a lot of players are having trouble finding a regiment that fits their needs. for example, look at something like the CSC that Robert O Connor has, his "totally not a regiment" regiment is active in a way that is different from most NW regiments. Even regs like the 24th have a crowd that they cater to which although controversial does increase activity in NW as a whole. Then you have those groups like the Empire which people just want to larp theyre in an irl Empire, not just in a regiment. Call it silly all you want but it still is nonetheless a want from many players.
3. Lack of people willing to admin - So yeah, this is something that is also an issue. I dont believe this is as much of an issue in NA anymore than last year in 2021, but in other regions such as OC and SA, I have noticed that the reason why those regions have stagnated is simply becuse nobody wants to admin events as much as you used to And well to be honest, who can blame them, admining sucks dick and even though regiments like the 61e are really great at following rules, admining is something that can exhaust people. Also, I feel admins of NW always end up trying to bite more than they can chew, a good example probably would be Ginga Josh when he didnt like how most events were being ran and tried to bear all the responsibility of head admining the vast majority of events which then eventually just exhausted him. This one happened a while ago, but I clearly remember this happening to Divineruler back in 2018-19ish NW as well.
There are solutions to improve this such as maybe adopting Auto Admin in NA and SA which can drop the workload of admins by a shit ton. Not known to many people is that Auto-Admin also includes a feature where rambo protect is disabled and also FOL instead of harshly slaying the FOLer can only just make it so the person who FOLs has their damage annulled and thus has just wasted their round. Call me crazy, but if admins really wanted to cut down on alot of the micromanaging thats needed for events, then maybe just add the script to their events? Thats my opinion to the matter at least.
I could probably write a bible on what I think is troubling NW and despite statistics showing the game has not changed much within the last 2 years, but I am sure everyone has good reasons too and I dont feel like writing anymore.