eRepublik once more

I heard the grapewine, just like many of you - that erep is going to the mothballs, they are downsizing, profit is dropping sharply, and in general, they are in deep-deep shit. Just like many of us said they would be. The company for a long time thought, no, they were sure that they can do the game, manage it, censor it, administer it with absolutely no consideration to the users' opinions. Because they deluded themselves into the dream of a perfect game, with no bugs, no criticism, no fakes and no hackers - and unlimited new players to fill the ranks of those who have been censored, who have not been listened to, who helped till the last to make the game better, and only got silence, censorship and bans as an answer to their concern... the so-called 'Rising' was only a last straw, not the sole reason - the reasons are the incompetence of the admin team coupled with their vainglorious attitude that made the basically brilliant ideas of this New World into a shitty game that makes people shrug and search for another internet-game.

How many warned them that erepublik should, no should but must preserve what makes it unique, instead of making it similar to the other dozens of strategy games, where it would not be able to win over more experienced and more financially sound enterprises? eRepublik's strength lies in its community and its complexity, that offers a niche to many kinds of players from economically minded through politicians till fighters and even the spies. The Rising centered it totally around the battle module, while neglected the all-important media and politics, and even the war module itself - not to mention the hundreds of great ideas to give new incentives to the competiton amongst countries, to give it a new, needed level. Like diplomatic goals, real alliances instead of the outdated MPP-system, and a variation of the oh-so-boring raw materials wars. The most important module of erep is the media. half of the wars, diplomacy, spying, trolling and TO-s go on there. All of the fun resides there.... or so it did, until the admin team's incompetence and the weakness of the code opened the door to the hackers there, and their only defense against this was to restrict the media so much that it made articles a joke - instead of making a full, interesting, lively and entertaining media module, it was practically hamstrung. And so the community reacted, and took its fun into the IRC - the ingame chat was never a competition to that, only one of the prime examples of the Team's deafness as to what players really wanted. Like the forum... nobody has ever wanted the forum - ok, except Kirill - and its renovation was, or ahould have been the thousandth thing on the list. But it was done, because the team could not tackle the necessary renewing of the media module and they wanted to show something flashy and working probably to the inventors.

Another of the deep-lying problems are the never-solved multiaccount-situation. It was never addressed properly, quite the opposite, it was practically ignored, because it made possible to boast outwardly hundreds of thousands of players, which the game in fact never had. Not even the tenth of it. But the admin team only ever hunted small time users who made 1-2-3-5 multies, and from them got a few dozen golds, a few votes and workforce - I am not saying it is acceptable, but when we saw people with hundreds and thousands of multies unbanned, I think most of us, players thought this situation absurdly unfair. Even nowadays when the biggest multi-farms are banned, we know that admins dont dare to ban real big people like the Polish President, even though they admit that he used fake gold for waging wars and battles. It is obvious that no matter how many fakes are banned if the gold they produce remain in the game, and if the guilty ones are not banned. The anti-faking measures were a good step, but - I have triedit so I know - it gives even more incentive to fakers, as the gold produced is more than before... so the making of multies were made a bit harder, but at the same time the rewards were made twice, thrice as big too. And because of the same measures, a real player, a real new character almost dies, because it cannot buy enough food before it can exchange its gold into currency. So the game offers nothing particularly interesting to a real newbie, as it doesn't yet understand the complexities of the game, but it makes them almost die without help from other players. A sure way to make most newbies give up after a few days.

Not tested, not unbugged, not perfected... this was Rising. We had a beta test for a few weeks, but admins practically ignored all suggestions that players made on its basis. Popele warned that it would make economy collapse - which it did -; that it would make the job-market collapse - which it did -; that migration was totally unfair because the real Rising values was totally different from the beta test one; that it would make the monetary market collapse, as the incoming gold became less, while the use for it was much-much more than before - and it did lead the devaluation of most currencies and quite a few market crashes -; that it would destroy the carefully built-up armies, because instead of the individuals in V.1. it was armies-fight in Rising - despite the PvP, because in V.1 we all saw our avatars in the battle, we were individuals, contributing to a battle, and not only small, insignificant country flags in a bland battlefield. Not to mention that in V.1. if all fighting counted in the 24 hour battle, it was one of the pro-s of the game, while in Rising, only the last hour counts, leading to totally skewed time-zone battles. Now, in any country, only about 10 % of the population fights, because let's face it, if you are not online in that hour that counts in a battle, then it worths absolutely nothing to fight. You gain no experience, you gain only a few skill points that are insignificant compared to what can be gained in training, but you can lose a lot of wellness - and it is totally disproportional to the gain. The necessary organisational, directional commanding channel was not built into the battlefield, so even those who go in to fight do so mainly by themselves, while the structure of the battle would require concerted movements of armi units. IRC is a way to do this, but it is an outside channel, and the turn-time gives not enough time for a commander to assess the situation and give orders.

So people are frustrated by admins not listening to them, by bugs, by hackers, by multi-farms and fake gold, by distorted battle-scenes, by failing economy, by admins handling the effects of bugs and hacks totally incompetently, by daily changing rules that not even the most devoted can follow, by illogical rules and sablon answers to reports, by moderators, by admins and finally by erep itself. And so, the frustration slowly overwhelms the addiction to the game, and people first stop recruiting, then become twoclickers, or turn to hacking/multying themselves, and finally leave. And very few new players come, as the old ones, the devoted ones, the many-times let-down, mocked and mistreated users stop investing energy into the game, into organizing the community, and into recruiting. The level of competence and devotion to the game falls, and as admins cannot do things properly, and have always relied on users to do at least half of their work (from recruiting through translation till moderation) the level of the game drops drastically - leading even more people to leave, and even less to come and stay. From this point on it is a downward spiral, almost impossible to get out of.

I see no way out, for the problems lie with the core still, in the administrative team of erep, their general attitude and incompetence, and some particular people whom we all know. We saw some changes lately, and they were positive, but they were far too little and far too late. Drastic changes would be needed, drastic changes in attitude, coding, customer-service, moderation, game-management - and they might all not give the results, as the game was let to rot for far too long. It acquired a bad name in gaming circles, as a game of unfixed bugs and shitty admins. It is hardly possible to recruit anyone to a game with such a reputation, and it is almost as hard to call back people who became deeply dissappointed in it and left. The communication of the admin team - or lack of it I should say - does not help, as practically nobody believes their lies any more ('we have solved this bug' - sure, that's why it comes up monthly; 'we have found nothing wrong in this' - sure, can I make a thousand of multies too?; 'try refreshing your browser' - yeah, a bug in the code will go away with a refresh; 'we have solved the effects of hackings successfully' - yeah, that's why both sides scream for their stolen gold and companies, and fucked up MPP-s still... and so on...) - I do understand the necessity of a positive note in the EI articles, but then, it should have truth in it too, because lies don't work in a long term, no matter how positive they try to sound. And in the middle of a hacker attack it has an atrociously bad taste to cheerfully promote the ref-link badges to advertise the game - almost as bad as celebrating the 1000th day with 'you can buy gold cheaper today' article... whoever made that up should be tied up and sent to a mental asylum.

I cannot understand how nobody in the team understands even the most basics of human psychology? Are they not humans so they don't understand how people work? Because if they understand, but choose not to care, then they are undermining their own game, their own business - as in a long term, games are making profit from people who play them, and if these people are ignored, despised, ridiculed, censored and treated like dirt, then they will cease to make profit for the company. The time of easy money in gaming industry is gone, now there is competition, there are hundreds of games to choose from, there are new ones popping up daily, and as they grow, it is not enough any more to throw a few good ideas into the pool and couple it with shitty management, shitty coding, and not caring about customers. The time of that is past, and erep shows a crystal-clear example for it. Maybe it was enough when it started out as a new and unique game... but it is not enough now, and erep must either change, or... end.

I do not consider myself an expert in either online gaming or game management, or anything fancy in this field. I am a player only, and these things are what I saw. But I know that most things that I'd tried to warn admins/owners have come true... so what I see might not be totally off the mark. I was silenced, banned for things I said, and the way I told them... and some admins' envy of my fame, I can see it now. But I hold truth very important, I value it more than being a player. I can't say I am not missing the game, but what I am missing is the ideal version of it, that I saw while I was still naive and optimistic and helpful... what I see now is much different.


Quicksilver