Policy of Truth

I have played eRepublik a long time. I was born in California, well over a year ago, just before PEACE GC launched its full-scale invasion of the USA. After the war began, I renounced my US citizenship and joined arms with the Indonesian invaders. Mind you, the eUSA was little more than a wretched hive of scum and villainy at that time (although things have since changed). It was treason, of course, but I remained loyal to PEACE until its dying day; even as the alliance was being torn apart from the inside. I proudly fought at the battle of California — all three of them. I fought at Alaska, Hello Kitty, Lion King and all the hotspots that captivated us back during the golden age of eRepublik. I was one of the few foreigners ever to be elected to Brazil's congress, much to the dismay and disbelief of the Brazilians. I twice served as Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs and I even ran a theocratic party in Austria. Yes, I was a drifter. It was a different era, one of rivalry and passion — back when this game had the potential to excite such emotions.

So why, after all this time, do I suddenly feel an inexplicable urge to abandon this character and ultimately this game? Allow me to explain.

I. THE BATTLE SYSTEM
The old battle system had its flaws. Let me state that upfront. It was laughable how back in the old days we would use a hospital like a convenience store, ordering wellness like fat-asses order Big Macs. But despite its many flaws, the old V1 battle system did several things right.

First, there was one battle and one solid wall of damage. One alliance dealt X amount of damage, the other alliance dealt Y, and whichever side dealt the most after twenty-four hours won the battle. Simple, effective, and fun to watch. Everyone, literally thousands of people from around the world, would just sit at their computers and watch PEACE and Eden pile damage on top of one another. At the end of the battle there was a total damage score to either gloat about or to vehemently loathe, depending on whether you were on the losing side. It sparked debates on the forums, in the media, and on IRC; that is to say, it held our interest, which is much more than the current module is capable of. The numerous mini-battles leave most of us with neither the time nor the funds to enjoy battles.

Second, battles required strategy in the old module. Your president and his generals not only had a big impact on the political landscape, but their ability to manipulate the war module could have made the difference between triumph or extinction. Back then you had to figure out precisely when each battle would end and which regions needed to be retreated so that your nation might win the initiative and thus be able to dictate the terms of battles. Distractions had to be monitored closely, feint attacks and region swaps might spoil a week's worth of meticulous planning. Again, this system was not perfect: many of us saw the enemy attack regions they should never have been able to, due to bugs in the map outlay, and many of us watched battles go down in flames as the servers overloaded and crashed. But despite and even sometimes because of these flaws, the game remained interesting.

II. THE STRENGTH SYSTEM
Now some of you might be doing a double take at the mention of the old strength system. Indeed, it was one of the worst aspects of V1. It advanced at the same pace for everyone, where after a certain level, five strength was all you would gain from each training session. The players who started one hundred days before you, if they trained each day, would always be at least one hundred day's worth of strength ahead of you. That was it. No advancement, no bridging the gap. Many people hated this system and I, in fact, was one of its most outspoken opponents on the forums. So why mention this universally loathed relic? I would argue that due to the unstable monetary market, this old system was superior since it didn't cost gold. Gold could be spent on wellness packs, allowing you to heal beyond what the daily hospital usage would allow. This meant that there were always people willing to spend real-life money for gold, so that they could always dish out more damage than others of their equivalent strength (anyone remember parter?), but the casual player could save his gold for that once in a lifetime battle, like Hello Kitty or Lion King, and be proud of the chunk of damage he contributed, though perhaps meager when compared to the damage output of the upper-tier tanks. Keep in mind that I am not claiming the old strength system was perfect. No, I am only claiming that it is superior to the current one.

III. THE FORUM
Unlike the previous two, this suggestion might be too subtle for some. The vast majority of players did not post on the forums, so few readers might be inclined to see this as a game-changing suggestion. But the truth is that to many of us, the forum was the game. The whole game. In the old days there were four main sections of the forum, with zero subsections. The popular hang-outs were the Military, Politics, and Economy sections. Add in a dash of Help with a pinch of Off-Topic and you had a recipe for a thriving community. Threads were easy to find and easy to keep track of. Once the new forums were instituted, however, forum activity plummeted. Lurkers did not even bother to lurk anymore. In its heyday, flame wars flared up daily, e-religions debated theology, the communists hurled Marx at the capitalists (who in turned fired back with Smith and Friedman and Von Mises), the outcomes of major battles were debated endlessly, multis accused multis of multi-ing, and e-history was told from a colorful kaleidoscope of various different perspectives — and through all that chaos and all that bickering, we all had fun. Anyone remember the 'Communism is the Only Way Forward' thread? How about the guy who posted the 'PEACE is a Bunch of Pussies' thread a week before PEACE's invasion of the US? How many of you can say that you read through all of Captain Sam's deranged and abysmally ignorant rantings? Now all we have is a pitiful suggestion section where the admins do nothing but delete our most intelligent and articulate complaints. How far that once great forum has fallen!

So, admins, these are my suggestions. Take them or leave them. I realize that they are mostly personal. I am just an old player recalling old, forgotten days. Until you can think of a system that does not require trashing our international monetary rates through shady bot purchases or flip-flopping on an economic system causing players to waste untold amounts of gold, please, I beg you, bring back these aspects from V1 — even with all their flaws and blemishes. At least you could claim one thing back then: eRepublik was a community.