So I've always had something of a soft spot for this tiny genre of games. Basically they're almost entirely text-based (using maybe a few stock images) browser games where you create your own fictional nation, build it up, join alliances, wage wars etc. The interesting thing being that unlike most MMO's there's only one "world", so there's thousands of nations like yours. As protection against having your nation wrecked early on it's advised you join an alliances.

As a "few minutes every day" distraction they aren't too bad.

Here's a list of the ones I'm aware of:

CyberNations (http://cybernations.net/)
Pretty much the game that started the genre, it's been around for like a decade now, and it's never been reset once (so you will never get into the upper tier of nations). Very impenetrable for newcomers due to the "meta" of nation-building guides you need to follow to build your nation "right". Has by far the biggest number of players. Also once you have the "building guide" down-pat CN is basically a game on cruise control where you can get away with with only checking your nation once a fortnight or even less. The admin hasn't really updated the game for years though (beyond keeping it running and getting rid of cheats), though after 10 years you can probably say the game is "finished".

Politics & War (http://politicsandwar.com/)
A competently made CN-clone. Fixes the most glaring of CN's issues, namely by replacing the manual tax collection of CN with an automated system where resources and money generates automatically every two hours. Has a large and active community. The admin/dev is also constantly updating and improving the game. Also unlike in CN where resources are static buffs, resources in PW are tangible objects which can be bought and sold on player-controlled market. Most fun thing is probably saving up thousands of tonnes of steel, then when an alliance war breaks out and the steel prices skyrockets (you need steel to build tanks and ships) you sell it all.

Nations (http://nationsgame.net/)
New and still in beta, so it might get reset once it goes gold. I only played this for a few weeks, the mechanics are really WEIRD and unbalanced (Farms and food increase your population, so if you spam farms you win), you spend heaps of money buying "Items" which are employees whom you pay to go find resources (Geologists find stuff like Iron and Coal etc). You NEED to continually search for resources with these "Items" so you can fuel your power plants and feed your people with food and consumer goods, but the amount of resources you find when you use an Item is very random and you have no idea how much of it is left. For example you can spend a fortune on Items, and then use them all and only find 3 tonnes of coal, which is infuriating. You have to collect resources manually by clicking on each factory type, so you need to be pretty active. Basically if you're a strategy game who hates wasting money you'll hate this game. The war system is weird too, kinda like a card game where every military unit is a card type. On the bright side the developer is a really active and nice guy, and the design of the website itself is very snazzy and professional looking.

Bloc (youreallydontwanttoplayit.com)
Really poor web-design, terrible community, not very active/many players.

Project Terra
Don't bother with this either, dead game, the admin/dev/players have abandoned it.

So if anyone has got any suggestions for games like these, please post them here. But keep in mind that games like Tribal Wars DO NOT count as they have multiple worlds, this is about persistent "one world" online nation sims. Neither do those "Cyber Citizen" type games where "you" are an individual not a nation in the game.