Looking at the 'eWorld' a year on

Day 2,656, 05:48 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Max Blue
Hi, all. Some of you might remember me, some obviously not. I stopped playing this game over a year ago, but now I'm writing an article back here. I wanted to pass on some observations of changes from an outsiders perspective.

The battlefield

The graphics on this are completely different to how I remember them. Before they used to be terrible, and I mean terrible cartoons of weapons that looked like something out of clipart. Now you can see people fighting in real time with the Q of weapon they are using and you can see people fighting in other divisions alongside you. This is better.
The old battlefield.


Combat Orders

These were around before, but were only used a bit. IRC supplying was still a significant thing where you had to go to a chat-room offsite and provide your info and assurances you would fight were you said you would. CO's are so much better in my opinion. They are more efficient and you don't waste your life (or at least to much more) going offsite and waiting for someone to manually send you weapons.


Military Unit Chat-Rooms

I don't know if all MU's have these but I'm in a relatively big MU in the UK which has one. When I left the game there were some basic chat-rooms people could make for themselves or groups/whatever but they were only in beta stage and pretty poor. MU Chat-rooms as they are now are a much better improvement on what I left, and in my opinion much better than using IRC's.


eRepublik wiki

This appears to be dead. When I click on the link at the bottom of the page nothing happens. Maybe this is just me and someone can correct me, but if the wiki is dead that's a bit of a shame.


Guerilla Fights

When I used to play you could join a guerilla fight and actually win!


Now when you join you are met buy someone with huge strength and a kit bought with Gold. You also get your ass handed to you, not something I remember.


Perks for Gold buyers

Yes there are more of these but I expected this. The Power Pack, Damage Accelerator and guerilla fights crossbow are all new. But the biggest change is the ability to buy countries with the dictator feature. Being able to start a civil war for 200,000 CC and if you win it you get sole and unlimited access to the countries currency and Gold reserves. This is a move I never expected to see.


Houses

Another surprise but a good one. Houses and house raw materials such as sand, clay, wood, limestone and granite were not a 'thing' when I left.

It shows hope for the economics of this game. For example I have worked out I can make an extra 70-75 currency in profit over 8 days with just 1 Q1 house. This is by working overtime with the 'overtime points' gained by owning a house. If you don't have a house consider buying one, and if you own a house company or house RM companies maybe you will endorse this article? 😉




Endorsing

I love the idea that writing articles/benefiting others will now give writers cold hard support. When I left the game there were about 2000 citizens in the UK and now there are around 1000, however news articles are getting more votes now (and therefore I am going to assume reads). This could be down to the quality of articles, and if writers are getting endorsements for interesting work, then they are going to put more effort it. Another great change.


Player numbers

I would say these are roughly half of what I remember. Now this could be good news and it could be bad. If it has halved because the admins have got tough on multies, cheats, trolls and unpleasant behaviour - excellent! If its real quality players leaving and not being replaced then this game is in trouble.


Spell check

As someone that types quickly and somewhat inaccurately, combined with poor spelling the addition of spell check is very welcome. This will no doubt make communication between different languages much easier and generally improves interactions.


Overall not all bad changes. Obviously room for improvement, but if you look at what I've said there is a better military module, economy, media and communications since a year ago. I would like to see changes in the business module of eRepublik so the game doesn't have to bend further to VISA players. I also think the game developers could do more to promote this game to people not yet playing so it becomes more active.

Hope you found this interesting,

Max Blue.