Confessions of an eRepublik Addict

Day 878, 12:55 • Published in USA USA • by system0101

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Contrary to the title, you won't get any juicy confessions from me. I'm pretty much on the "straight and narrow". I was, even up until about three days ago, a model customer for the browser game here.

I started in August, in the middle of the North American invasion. I saw a link to join eRep in the signature of some guy who was posting like mad on Evony forums. That game blew but at least I could play co-op with my two brothers. Anyway...

It was a guy named Yang Wenli who contacted me on my third day and showed me how to play this game, and directed me to eusforums.com, where I learned just about everything there was to know about this game. It wasn't for a few more days that I finally realized that he was only a few days older than I was, and had taken the call to teach and retain new players to heart. And even though he was a real life Chinese citizen he embraced the ideals of the eUS. Chocolate McSkittles flew me to Florida the day we lost Missouri to the Russians. I haven't been back since ;_; That generosity and hands-on training really stuck with me, as there was precious little documentation for new players still fumbling in the menus. But this game was awesome! \o/

I had a few internet friends and a boatload of acquaintances from my years as a moderator on a fan-forum for a flash toy called LineRider. Man, as soon as I hit level 4 I dropped the ref link and had half the active players signed up in a matter of days. Within my first month I already had a Society Builder medal, and I was newb-rich off the referral gold. I had a Q5 casa and high Q guns at an eAge where most were still trying to afford bread. And I think that ruined me.

I started buying gold to micro-tank my way through the ranks, to start multiple businesses, and to give some coin away to do-gooders. The game was interesting, every battle was a concerted effort for freedom and also a hands-on lesson in game mechanics. It was fun being under the gun but having just enough strength to fight back.

Since I had frequented other global community games and sites, It was a little disappointing at first to be enemies with several countries that I like in real life. That quickly gave way to the heated rivalry we've had against the member nations of PEACE GC. I kinda gave in to the nationalistic tone of the game.

All the while I raked in ref gold on top of buying coin, on top of being the final benefactor when my eFriends leave the game. Being no good at running companies, I focused on getting my DMG up and keeping my meager business ventures from bleeding too much cash. This was months before lana, and also before admins shut down the way too common practice of babyfeeding.

We pushed all but Hungary out of North America, that was probably the peak of my enjoyment, and the peak of my purchasing. I learned the benefit of collaborating nations to build bridges watching as Hungary sat in North America with no open MPPs, able to take any region it wanted as long as it wasn't in the original nations' control. It took everything to defeat an enemy like that. I really started to hate those guys. Me, a Yank who at least pretends to like everybody 😃

And all the while the DMG piled up with the high weaponry I mowed through, happy to feed the cash cow of the game I spent literally all day on the computer for. Happy to help in whatever way I was able to do, without letting on about how much coin I actually had. At the time, getting to FM looked more important than a RW or BH medal :3 And at the time I knew I spent more money than 90% of our active players, still craving recognition I didn't want to let anything slip that may have ostracized me, or set me up for failure.

I mentored stranded players, and taught them how to get involved in the game. I saw how inefficient new player training and integration was, but it didn't really click then. I'd buy tix and food for half, and send the other half to Welcoming or FUS. Wasn't much really, a couple dozen gold can help a LOT of nubs. And all in an effort to show them how cool this game really is, if you know what to do.

About then I finally win an election and get into Congress, right around the time we finally mount an all out siege to rid North America of enemy occupiers. I mini-tanked Manitoba. Skatch was awesome. Nunavut was no cakewalk. Buy coin, get weapons, kill the people I love to hate. Rinse and repeat. I even reported a Hungarian named Janigga for his name. Hate became a reason unto itself.

Joined the Military just in time to march across Asia. Really, that was the most fun I had in the game, but even then it was starting to drag. I was having trouble reconciling the idea of winner take all with the ideal of the right of self-determination and sovereignty. And how a small handful of powerful territories are what control the entire game. It started making less and less sense. But it's a game, I rolled with the punches. And always helped a stranded new player.

Stuff gets a little hazy right about here for me, got super busy in real life. Smashed PEACEniks in Liaoning and mini tanked 5k DMG at 9 STR in HLJ. Lana's in there somewhere, and I lucked out and got the 1.8g option. Never missed a day from then on for months. It was the missed block that essentially lost HLJ forever is right about when I first questioned why I dumped so much capital into coin.

But I was still flush. I paid that coin guzzling Lana for months with what I had previously bought to try and run businesses and failed to do much more than break even. I was working in the State Department and admittedly spending more time helping nubs learn the game of eRepublik. I was getting more disillusioned each time the server would lag at way-too-convenient points. Each instance showing that our enemies were winning the metagame, the game outside the browser game. All while watching players that I learned the game from disappear and pupils I mentored wither away.

It was somewhere in there it finally came into focus. We can't retain new players because this game is boring to most and frustrating to play for the clueless remainder. Guys like me were the closest that some nubs got to a walkthru. It literally looked as if, at least for Americans, we lost 90% of our new players with little we could do about it. I always wondered why the coders of this highly addictive game wouldn't do anything and everything they could to guide as many new players as possible down the path of enlightenment and the love of coin. All the while we bleed out hundreds of new players week after week after week.

I set off to write a group of tutorials designed to mentor new players in their formative first days. Of course I knew that every other notable citizen has done the same exact thing. I couldn't find any of them, there's no search function! I couldn't let that stop me from helping. But by then it became real tedious and frustrating. Every conversation I had with a new player highlighted how confusing the game interface can be for the untrained. Each time I tried to explain how to use a hospital turned into violent headdesking and facepalming.

I even ran a study to see how many players were actually retained. All the figures I saw before that were anecdotal from guys in the Department of the Interior. Lost that first study of about 60 people. Determined, I try again. And again I lose half the data out of a scattershot field of 150.

3 parts persistence, 2 parts boredom, and one part compulsion. I dream up a multiphase study to test a statistically significant number of brand new players put through multiple contact scenarios. Wouldn't have been possible without the hard work of others, most importantly PiZ's "new citizen feed".

I slammed manually through an incredible number of new citizen profiles in just over a week. I always start strong on ridiculously complex projects that always end in failure, but this time was different. Because there has to be some way to get that lost 90% interested and addicted in this game. All the while my own interest is declining as fast as my once-massive gold reserves. What good is paying Lana if we lose from lag and glitches instead of tactics and damage?

And once I saw the results of that study at the two week mark, that in almost 2000 new player accounts, less than 10% could be considered active. I checked each of those accounts by hand at that interval. And although I didn't make notes about it, just under 50% of all those profiles had a shout or two asking a variant of "what do I do?" It was quite frankly disheartening. Not to mention the new hospital rules that killed more babies than anyone believes. Those players might have been saved if not for the arbitrary rule change.

All the while I could see old players dropping like flies, new players who never played at all. And a select few enemy nations who were far too good at scripts and bots. What the hell was this game coming to? And how could the eUS survive if we bleed out new players at an unfathomable rate no matter what we do?

Why is there literally no way to contact this vast untapped resource? Some nations have High Iron or Diamond. We have High Population. But we can't utilize it because an unacceptable amount of those players leave before even learning where their mailbox is. And while we spend an inordinate amount of time flailing blindly at this illusionary newb horde, our enemies consistently beat us not only at the metagame, but also the more nefarious tactics like DDoSing.

What good was it to play fair when our sworn enemies won by cheating and glitching? I clung to my moral compass as long as possible. I tried to remind myself that those guys were just other people trying to have fun and that there was some positive resolution that could be found. I forced myself to ignore the institutionalized cheating favored by many nations and walked the straight and narrow, hoping others would do the same.

Out of all that, I still held a glimmer of hope that things weren't as bleak as they seemed, that I was facing burnout and needed to step away for awhile. I resigned from State at a particularly stressful time, it was bad timing on my part and I could have handled that better. Piz's mistreatment at the hands of a select few powerful players rubbed me so raw that I even began to resent some of our staunchest allies, taking on a hypernationalistic bent. The last thing I wanted to do at that time was negotiate with many of those same players.

And at the same time I was gathering my final study data, showing that maybe 6-8% of all our new players make it to "2-clicker" status or higher. In fact, the eUS had more banned multi-accounts in that study group than accounts over 35 wellness at 32 days of age. I really honestly gave up.

Then, on a day that I forgot to work, train, and fight due to real life issues, allied forces failed to secure Western Australia multiple times in overtime before the enemy was able to tank it down and win. Dozens of people cried foul, and had video proof for their claims. I really couldn't believe it. Sketchy servers I could understand. DDoSing was old news and we had gotten better at managing that. But a broken battle that we won three times in overtime going to the other side? Ludicrous! And then it happened again the next day in KwaZulu Natal, with no word about the WA battle.

I think the rest is fresh enough to spare the in-depth recap. Somewhere in between a battle referee and a singing fat lady, something inside me snapped. This game, which so soon before was addictive beyond measure, finally showed a fatal flaw. New players don't matter, old players don't matter, rules don't matter and bugs become features. We get a "better luck next time" along with our Treasure Maps and National Forums.

And a player who spent a few hundred dollars on an internet browser game is now permabanned from their forums, 0-clicking with enough bread to last until the zombiepocalypse, and a nationalistic xenophobic troll in training. Oh what have I became through you, eRepublik? Caustic and callous online, obese and pasty white in real life sitting behind a screen on an internet browser game that once was the perfect drug.

There's no moral to this story. There's no fingers I want to point in hatred. I just want to love this game again. But I don't think it's possible. I hope I'm wrong but I'm worried I already know the answer. And if you read all this I <3 you and I hope you never come to this threshold that I'm perched upon, ready to finish it in righteous fire and glorious brimstone. My addictions rarely end well.