I Smell Something Funny

Day 988, 12:40 • Published in Canada South Africa • by Dycey Farley

There’s artwork that can help me express my feelings … I wonder if I can find it.

Let’s take a look at the new Insider, shall we?


Hmmm … Definitely Modern and interesting, but not quite the installation I’m thinking about.

First there’s the matter of tickets being ignored. Two sentences from the explanation gave us this information:

“we had an issue with one of the moderators. It may have affected directly only about 80 citizens, but that is 80 citizens to many so we decided to close down momentarily the moderator program in order to reorganize our process and controls on the moderator side.”

Then …

“So, we had to deal with two major things in parallel: Rising's launch and the fact that we were seriously understaffed with more than 60 moderators less solving tickets.”

So ONE moderator was a problem and affected only 80 citizens … the module was shut down MOMENTARILY ... and then the one cloned like Lana into 60 moderators?


Still not the one I’m looking for, but appropriate in its way.

Anyone else finding this explanation a bit sloppy? This wasn’t a matter of 80 citizens being affected, we ALL were as we watched eRep turn into an unmoderated game and not momentarily as they’re now trying to claim, but for days!

How do you suddenly find yourself 60 employees short of a staff? Do you choose to fire an entire department without having a back-up plan? Do you not pay them or mistreat them so they walk away from the project? Promptly answering tickets is essential to the quality of play. The bottom line is that one of the most important aspects of the game was mismanaged and we were all victims of that mismanagement.

Pedo Bear as art? Really? That definitely isn’t the one I had in mind.

“We are listening, always have, always will and we will do so more and more, better and better for all aspects of the eRepublik experience. Fortunately, things have already started to improve as we build up a new Community Officers team.”


I do love me some R Lee Ermey, but he’s not the Community Officer or the artwork I’m hoping to find.

Would anyone else like to know who these people are? Are they sycophants who will keep the spin going or are there strong voices of protest who are willing to speak openly about the game’s issues and the affect on the players? Will they report to us as well as Admin, acting as liaisons for the betterment of us all or will their actions be hidden and limited to tattling on articles and complimenting designers? Who are they and what, exactly, are they charged to do?

Here’s the thing, we are, at the very least, customers. At most, we’re Admin’s partners in this venture – the partners whose presence pays salaries and expenses. As such we deserve a voice in the solution of community issues and should be allowed to have a voice in the choices for Community Officers.

If someone reading this has been invited onto this counsel, I hope you’ll let us know. You are our voice – we should be able to speak openly with you about our challenges and ideas.


Yeah, ideas give me a headache, too, but I don’t ignore them. This still isn’t the one, though.

Addressing our issues:

“At the question “What do you enjoy most in eRepublik” we have, as expected, a wide distribution of preferences, with economy being in top (36,5 😵 followed by military, socializing, politics, other and ending with media (5,9 😵. When it comes to things that citizens dislike most we have bugs (89😵, military, rising and cheating (67😵.”

“around 60% of you are pretty satisfied with the result of your fights. Another result says that the majority of players consider that the current winning condition are “just fine””

“24 % of responders believe that eRepublik is today “rather complex”, whilst 62,2% believe it is either rather simple or at least simple enough that they can understand it.”


This sure ain’t it.

I speak with people every day, and I rarely see these comments. Who are the players whose contentment skewed the results and how many of them are now Community Officers as opposed to those who voiced true issues with the game?

I’ve never seen eRep as an economics game, except as it affects the war module. When a nation’s economy is troubled, do they call for more businesses or investment opportunities? No, they call for war. This indicates an anomaly or disconnect and may show an issue with how the questions were asked or the data was analyzed. However, if economics are, indeed, the leading attraction, it’s the responsibility of game builders to make sure citizens have an opportunity to succeed within that module. Forcing them to spend meager profits on Boosters and Wellness Packs will prove an even larger detriment to play than I might have initially assumed.


This isn’t even art, but it made me lol. Where the heck is the pic I want?

That leads to the issue that wasn’t addressed at all – the top issue that has been on everyone’s lips: GREED.

We just got a list of statistics that could be run through a computer and averaged in minutes. However, over 22K players were also given an opportunity to make direct comments. Are we to believe that NO ONE mentioned that the game has become too expensive? Or that only a small minority of us discussed our displeasure with the harlot hordes who try to entice us to spend more and more of the small amount of gold we might accrue in order to feed their coffers by buying Boosters? ORLY?

So, after all of that, we get a new set of outsourced moderators a mysterious Community Officer underground and, perhaps, shorter fight rounds? And that’s supposed to appease our concerns?

Yeah, I smell something funny.


Ah, there it is … the perfect artistic expression of the situation.