My Goodbye

Day 1,016, 16:28 • Published in USA USA • by Desertfalcon

It's been a little more than 2 years and 5 months since the day I started playing erepublik. During that time I have made it a point to log in to erepublik everyday, only missing a few hard worker medals due to me simply forgetting to work. I used to enjoy playing this game but overtime it has become more and more of a chore. As some of you have probably noticed over the past month I have been becoming more and more withdrawn from the game, for the last two weeks I have only logged on to IRC twice (something I used to do multiple times a day) and logged on to erepublik only to work and train. The simple fact is that I now have too much going on in real life and between college,ROTC,Athletics, and my personal life,I just don't have the time to waste on erepublik which is why I have decided to finally leave the game that has been so much a part of my life for the last 2+ years. Now this isn't going to be one of those rage quit articles where I string a few cuss words together or a 17 page history about myself, but rather a short reflection on what erepublik started out as and what erepublik has become.

When I started out erepublik was much smaller with only 400-500 people living in the United States. While many of us hoped that more people would join and that the game would take off I've come to realize that erepublik is actually more fun with a smaller number of people playing. It's sort of like playing a game of catch with a few people, when it's just you a few a friends you get to catch and throw the ball around a bit more and you are more connected with the people you're playing with, but as more and more people join you start to lose that connection and the game loses its appeal. It's true that back when erepublik started I wanted to see the game grow into something popular but looking back on it erepublik was better with smaller communities.

The main problem erepublik has (aside from countless bugs) is that like a game of catch, the game isn't too fun unless you get the ball every now and then. As erepublik grew the amount of people trying to get the ball increased while the amount of balls within the game didn't increase much at all. No matter how many people join there will always be one president and about 40 congressmen to a country, as the population grows this means that the percentage of players who actually get to be involved with the political aspects of things will continue to grow smaller and smaller. Sure there are other ways to be involved in politics outside of congress or the presidency such as being in the president's cabinet or helping run a top 5 party, but other than those few positions most of the jobs end up just requiring a lot of time and effort and end up being pretty pointless with little reward. This really just leaves most people with the economic module (a huge snore unless you own a company which most players can't afford) and the military module. The military module is probably erepublik's most effective way of retaining players but the problem is that it gets old after a while.

I've always thought that erepublik needed to add other modules to the game rather than just make tweaks to the ones they already had in place. I would've really liked to see them bring back mayors and cities but actually give them something to do. Maybe make it so that construction companies could build buildings for a city that the city could buy to improve the town. Some examples would be buying a Q5 factory to boost production of residents and companies in the region or buying roads to allow more people to live in the city. I would've also like to see them make it so housing companies would have to build houses within the city and then have them stuck there (instead of players being able to buy a house and carry it around in their back pack). This would make things difficult for the military but they could also have included military bases which the government could have build in certain regions to act as a temporary home for military personnel.. Some of the stuff I said might be hard to implement, but I still would've loved to see a sim city aspect to erepublik. Now to move on to something other than me rambling about stuff that will never happen.

As most of you know I was also around in beta and as you know there was quite a bit of cheating going on during the beta period, I will admit that I did cheat once although this was in the early V1 period. Back a long time ago I had a friend join erepublik, and he played for awhile before getting bored and quiting by posting a shout saying that he was quitting and put his password in the south. Nobody ever bothered to log into his account since he didn't do much in game but because of that I gained access to his account. Despite having this multi on my hands for several months I only used it once in order to snipe myself into congress, after that I never really bothered with it again. Other than that incident I've been pretty clean in how I've played the game for the past 2 and a half years. All I ask is that if the admins ban me for that, that they leave this article up, or at least leave the article up but just take this paragraph.

Looking back on my time in erepublik I have to say I'm happy with my achievements in the game. Most notably my newspaper getting as many subscribers as it did and me being the party president of the CVP for 9 months (8 consecutive). In those 8 months I quadrupled the size of the party from about 200 to 800 and made the party a force in congress elections, while the party eventually went down the tube a couple of months after I stepped down I would still say that being party president of the conservative party was the most fun I ever had in this game. It feels a bit weird since whenever I used to thing about what I would write in my quitting article I always thought that I would go into great depth about my history but really I just don't care enough about the game anymore to really devote a lot of time to this quitting article.

Looking back at all the time I spent on erepublik I've also realized that while this game was a great way to kill boredom, it's also been a rather large time sink. All together I wouldn't be surprised if I spent more then 2,000 hours on erepublik or doing erepublik work, now that I am quitting I really wish I could have that time back but there's nothing I can do about that. Also, I would like to offer some of my parting wisdom to those of you who have read this far, don't take this game too seriously, if you do the game just gets boring. I'd go into more detail but I really just don't care anymore. Also, don't feel like there is only one to play erepublik, it's always been a pet peeve of mine when people try to tell other people they should play the game this way because its supported by "game mechanics". It's one thing if it's someone trying to help out a new citizen and offer advice but I just find it asinine when someone goes around saying that other people should play the game this way because of game mechanics, to me that's just like a RL senator running around telling people that they need to do things this way because of RL mechanics.

As a little treat before I go I'm going to finally tell you guys a little about myself. During my erepublik tenure I always tried to avoid giving out personal info, mostly because I wanted to keep my real life and erepublik life separate but also because I didn't want to be judged by my age. I actually started playing erepublik when I was 16 during my sophomore year in high school. I am now 18 and have just started classes at the University of Nebraska Lincoln where I am planning on completing the Air Force ROTC program so that I can graduate and receive a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force.

Thank you for reading through all my useless rambling and before I log off for the last time I just wanted to thank all of those who helped me out in this game even though a lot of you are probably dead, I'd also like to thank all those who subscribed to my paper over the years. I've made some great friends in the game and that's what I will try and remember erepublik by. Well I guess this is it, goodbye erepublik.

Desertfalcon