As promised on the RMB, here's my story from 2003 NS, near the start of the game. If you're an old hat and have interesting tales from the start, feel free to add them.
The Aschen Confederacy
My first nation was Aschen. Shortly after getting a feel for the game myself and a few friends moved our UN and puppet nations into a new region named the Aschen Confederacy. If you watch SG1 then you know why we kept the name. From here we got ambitious in experimenting with how far you could push NS. We introduced UN Resolution #8 which required Citizen Rule on some level in all UN nations. Needless to say this pissed off many in the NS world. We had expected the measure to be defeated but low and behold it passed. So now there was a large contingent of nations that wanted revenge. This led to one of the very first inter-regional wars in NS as these nations (many being dictatorships) invaded the Aschen Confederacy. As a small region of friends we were incapable of repelling the initial attack and the delegacy was lost. The decision was made to have all nations other than the founder, Aschen, to fall back to various other regions to seek allies. This effort yielded a large defensive alliance that was first used to liberate the Aschen Confederacy. This alliance persisted for some time and was used to deter political retaliatory invasions. The alliance was eventually disbanded when the actions it existed to prevent were deemed to be griefing and banned from the game. I fell out of playing shortly after that.
It is very interesting to return years later to find that the concept of the defensive alliance became the ADN and a global war ensued. To see how the structure of the game has changed in astounding. Regional governments such as this one were never thought of back then. I find the entire dynamic of NS to be fascinating as what are called nations have become more likened to the individuals they represent and regions of taken on the nature of true nations. I can't wait to see what the future, and eventually NS2, will hold.