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Hello eBelgiums
Few days ago MoHA team made interviev with eGerman CP Edelmann so here it is:


1. Hello, could you tell something about yourself in RL?

Sure! I’m male, RL german, attractive (😛), 24 years old and currently studying at the university of Constance (maybe you know Lake Constance, the “Bodensee”). It’s a quite pretty place to be right now due to the lake in the summer, but it can also become a bit depressing in winter time due to the all the fog. Constance is definitely worth a trip - it’s not like our roads are overstrained, come over. 😃

2. In the game, how did you start to play eRepublik?

I can’t remember perfectly, but as can be seen in my profile, it was in November 2010. I was online-friends with a guy I got to know on a forum about video games, and he invited me to the game with his referral link. I somehow sticked around.. Maybe I was drunk. Unfortunately for him, he eDied months ago and can’t profit from my medal gold anymore. 😉

4. And what haven't you done, what do you wish to do?

Hmm - I think the biggest thing I wanted to achieve was becoming CP in order to gain a whole new perspective and maybe also to re-activate my political interest in the game, let’s see if this will work out. I definitely don’t strive for any alliance positions, so CP will be the highest position for me, politically. Besides that, I want to reach level 200/201 somewhen because I heard you can train for free then! And I also want to continue growing economically because this is the module that accompanied me from the very beginning and also made me stick to the game.

5. If you were Plato, what'd you change in the game?

If I was Plato, I’d probably first of all be happy about all the cash floating in during pointless contests. Maybe I wouldn’t even see the need to change anything as long as the $s are fine.. 😉 But for real: I think Plato recently did a quite nice job with implementing things that were there for ages, provided by external pages, scripts, whatever. I’d love to see enhanced statistics ingame as in egov4you - and I definitely hate the new map, the “cities” layer is just so pointless, and it replaced the very useful resource layer.. The most sophisticated and complicated thing to achieve is the overhaul of the economy, I think, but this is a matter that can’t be “solved”. There will always be people complaining. The economical part of the game suffers from the massive overproduction, you can’t argue with that. But imagine the massive uproar of people that invested heavily in companies after abolishing manager work! To sum it up, being Plato is a hard job, we all need to remember that every now and then.

6. What do you think about the future of eGerman in short term?

In terms of military and economy, we will always be limited due to to our geostrategic position and the importance of our regions to our much stronger neighbour Poland. We enjoy a really good relationship with them now, especially in comparison to former times when we were wiped for months, but it of course still is limiting us. So, the situation will stay the same: Rarely any direct wars, rather supporting allies, not much media activity, not many new players. We try to make the best out of what we have.


7. Could you describe eGerman society with 1 word?

Hard to decide, really. “benis”? No.. Well, “Filz”, probably. It’s the german term for “sleaze” and refers to the fact that most of the time, you see the same faces in governments all the time. I’m an exception, but still my cabinet consists mainly of well-known players. And there has been quite some discussions about the whole “Filz” thing in the past, sometimes seriously, sometimes jokingly, so I think it’s at least a decent word to pick.

8. What is your opinion about Sirius and Asteria?

Sirius seemed to be dead not that long ago with the whole eUS mess, but apparently they managed to stay alive and just recently gained Ukraine as a new (trial) member. I thought they would dissolve the alliance, to be honest and I am very curious about the future of Sirius and the eUSA. Asteria, on the other hand, is the enemy right now, no doubt. They consist of some of the strongest countries in this game and you can definitely imagine easier enemies. In general, alliances have always been interesting and they will continue to be so. We have seen many things happening in terms of alliances, countries switching sides, formerly unthinkable MPPs, etc. - and I believe this will continue. “Nothing is forever”, they say, and they seem to be right.

9. What do you think about eBelgium?

To be completely honest, I didn’t have any intimate contact with your country thus far. 😉 I just tried to thank of a citizen of eBelgium I know, and the only person coming to my mind was Director9 - we were both part of SEAL Team 6 somewhen, but I couldn’t come up with any more. Sorry for disappointing you. 🙁. Anyway, I suppose eBelgium, as a rather small country, suffers from comparable problems as eGermany. At least we’re both on the map right now. 😉 This is also one of the reasons why we signed the North Sea Protection Pact (NSPP) together - we are a bunch of rather small nations, but we still can try to make the best of it!

10. How do you make diplomacy in a virtual game?

As you do in the real world - you talk, discuss, negotiate with representatives of other countries. Of course, it’s a bit more volatile, but the general concept stays the same.

11. What do you want to be different in the eWorld?

This overlaps with my answer to question #5 to a certain degree because I’d love to see a more enjoyable and sophisticated economy module, for example. But an issue that I see every now and then is frequent trolling with RL background. I think it’s a pity that we have so much hatred and misguided nationalism in this game - on the other hand, you also need to mention that you also see acts of solidarity and respect. Still, I think that we don’t really need to insult each other as we do right now - oh well, I guess it’s human nature. Most people like to troll from time to time, we just shouldn’t forget that words can hurt. 😉

13. Regard something to the readers.

Hi there, fellow readers - thank you for reading the interview, I know it’s been quite long. I hope it was remotely enjoyable and that I didn’t bore you to eDeath because I wish you all the best for both your lives, the virtual and the real one. 😉 A final suggestion: Consider the game itself as a background noise, the most important and exciting part is the so-called meta game - interacting with people, talking in IRC channels, writing articles, commenting on shouts, joking in your MU chatroom, and so on. It’s how I do it and I still don’t plan on quitting, so it seems to work. 😃 Once again, thanks for reading - Edelmann out.




MoHA team: makases, HK416