Macedonia, Kosovo and conspiracies.

Day 723, 04:45 • Published in USA Romania • by MoonlightShadow

It's been a while since my last article. Today I'm going to express my point of view regarding several, let's call them “hot topics,” which lately have been very visible in eRepublik world. I want to insist on the fact that what follows is just a personal opinion, not an official statement. Anyway, by hot we approach the idea of flames, closely related to “flaming” which is a strictly prohibited action in eRepublik. I hope that it's clear why we want to avoid flaming, trolling, insults and things like that among our citizens: it is true that sometimes the passions and feelings get so strong that one might forget that eRepublik is a game, but this is what it is. A game where we want to have fun. Having fun by being insulted or flamed, it's pretty hard.

eRepublik is not a news site, a forum, a blog, or a place which extracts its content from real-life events, debates and happenings. It is virtual and moreover it is called the New World. To illustrate my point, there might be thousands of blogs/forums/etc debating for example the Kosovo region statute, where users troll, flame and insult each others.And this is OK. But we don't need this in the eRepublik game Why? Because those ultra-nationalistic feelings bring real-life hatred into our little universe. And why would 230.000 citizens be flooded with all sorts of “demanding”articles about Kosovo and Macedonia? Yes, the ones asking this have strong feelings, yes they might believe with their every single cell of the body that they are right. But the neutral guy it gets annoyed by all this.

My citizen name refers to a hero, not to a criminal
I`m gonna start with something very easy: avatars, names, articles, etc, which are related to real-life controversial or proven to be war criminal and things like that. That is “what the hell is wrong with my avatar, it's our national symbol, it represents our war hero x?” Yes, what for one might be a national hero, may for the inhabitants of the neighboring country or region be a war criminal that has killed many souls with his own hands. Once again, maybe an annoying reminder, but we are talking about a game here. There's no need to bring real-life faces and symbols connected to wars, crimes, terrorism, etc.

Macedonia
Some citizens demand the introduction of Macedonia as a country of eRepublik and they flame everywhere asking why Macedonia is in Greece. First of all, there is no country recognized with this name. The UN accepted it as a member, but under the provisional reference of The Former Yugoslav Republik of Macedonia (FYROM). This being said, any demands of immediate implementation of the Macedonia country, a name which already exists in the game as an official neighboring region of Greece (just like real-life official statute), is just flaming fuel that must stop. At most it could be demanded the introduction of FYROM, which would follow the standard procedure and analysis (no. of population, the degree of internet penetration, etc) But still, there is no clear situation regarding the name of this country. So why claiming this to a game, to clarify a real-life issue?

Kosovo
This topic burst into existence pretty lately, after the Serbian baby-boom. Countless articles, forum posts and privately submitted tickets demanded aggressively the addition of the Kosovo real-life region to eRepublik country of Serbia. OK, maybe Serbians believe that is their right, that this would be correctly, and we really won't deny anything, because it is not our job. But what is the real-life official statute of Kosovo region? We are talking here about the Republik of Kosovo, a country of its own, recognized as so by 63 countries of the world, where parties exist and elections are held under the UN surveillance, where we have other countries' embassy, President, Prime-Minister, and so on . We don't talk about the never-ending wars in this region, the history, whether that region is inhabited by Serbians or other nations, etc. The only thing eRepublik as a game considers is the official international statute and nothing more. And this statute doesn't recognize Kosovo as being national territory of Serbia, so again, why demanding a web-based game to "solve" this?

Also, there are some conspiracies theories flourishing, about some countries having no incentivized offers, and such. It was clearly stipulated that it is not eRepublik choosing which country receives how many offers, that is a solely advertisers' choice.

Anyway, I really understand deep in my heart that x citizens want to prove that x region belongs to them in real-life even if it is not admitted by international authorities. And that no matter what, it should belong to them in eRepublik, otherwise this game would "suck." I really do, probably I for one would feel the same thing, had I been born and raised there. But what I would also do, I would look through others eyes. And wonder myself how about the thousands of neutral citizens tired of seeing over and over and over again such articles, full of hatred, flame and trolling.

Would an Australian, or Venezuelan, or Chinese care about the local drama in Kosovo? Most likely, no. Would he want to see everyday eRepublik game debating this REAL-LIFE ISSUE? For sure, no. He would like to see hot topics about eRepublik world, not real wars. And moreover, at one point they might get so annoyed that even start to hate all this. Something like “OK, I got this, even supported your first attempts, but as you see, the eRepublik staff is following real-life official recognized statutes, so you can't convince them. So, let's start playing this game and leave this behind.” Probably for them would be hard to move over, it is their real history about so it is not easy. But they need to understand that they are asking a game to solve their “problems.” And that the rest of us are getting tired of seeing this battle between the involved parties.