I am keen to understand the logic for the return for USSR, as from what i have been informed is back in the USSR days, it was already on a downward trend, so NWO came out to try spice it up, which worked and is now on the downward trend, i am curious on how changing a faction (which will involve a lot of work btw) will actually improve the server? as currently NWO is in a great state to be morphed into anything it needs with GameMasters and lore, but it seems most players dont fully go that far for the lore nor care for the faction outside of just opposing NATO?
views here are my own and not representitive of all NL, I am trying to understand the thought process behind it all
MRP for the time being is relatively stable, when we changed from USSR to NWO it was mainly in response to some players being uncomfortable with the Ukraine conflict, USSR was doing pretty well at the time (I was leading the faction so can vouch for this personally). MRP was still doing pretty well at that point, and the NWO idea was introduced as a refresh (and also to closer align it to the content of SCP I would assume).
The community has voiced its approval for a return to the USSR, and the relaunch would do well in bringing some people back. USSR is a known quantity, and the title of NATO vs USSR did well to attract in new players to both sides. As it stands currently, most new players for the NWO are players from NATO, most new players typically go to NATO from my own experience.
The lore has been mismanaged and mostly forgotten by the playerbase which is unfortunate, but I think it was made too complicated to begin with. The old campaign worked because of its simplicity of good vs bad, most players kind of knew why they were in specific places (on map change events or on map rotation). There was an SCP approach to making the lore which was a bit of a misstep and it's been difficult to create anything engaging as a result.
Bringing back the USSR (it could even be a more futuristic USSR as to keep some of the current equipment) would allow for a (relatively) clean slate and hopefully bring back some of the soul that made MRP a unique community to start with. Some of the current event team are also familiar with the old lore and are more than capable of writing a compelling end to the campaign should we end up moving back.
Happy to discuss more in private with NL as I'm a keen advocate of bringing USSR back!