Teacup Journal

No, it's not Mr. Monopoly, it's ligtreb.


Editor's note:
I must apologize for this very late new edition. For those of you wondering what has happened to me and the Teacup Journal, well, I've been 2-clicking for more than a week, because it is holiday here. IRL, China is celebrating its 60th anniversary and also the mid-autumn festival (a.k.a. moon festival). Festivity after festivity, fireworks, parade, moon-cakes, family get-together, etc. It's fun and also kinda hectic. Also, the interview was delayed for about a week since I sent the questions to ligtreb, Director of Welcoming Committee (now as USA Welcoming Committee) due to his extremely heavy workload as PAC Director of USWP before and during September congressional election while rebuilding USA Welcoming Committee at the same time. So, ligtreb, thank you so much for your time and patience, it is great to have you.

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Breaking news:
At the moment when this interview was released, a few headless chicken interfered, and even worse, eUSA lauched attacks that are "not legit and have not been performed by Gaius Julius (the human behind the account)." (quote from DoD Orders)

DoD Orders: "DO NOT FIGHT in Mexico, Portugal, France and UK"

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As I mentioned before, among all the things I love about this game and the eUSA, the top one would be the community. Among all the eAmericans who are dedicated to the cause of making a better community and a more enjoyable gaming experience for new citizens, ligtreb is definitely an outstanding one of them. Not only because of his experience as the Director of Welcoming Committee and the GM of Fort Harlot (the company that serves as newbie's guaranteed job opportunity), but also his diligence, endurance, and above all, the remarkable outcomes of the helping effort under his lead.

The interview was done on October 1, 2009 (eRep Day 681) via eUSforum PM.

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Yang Wenli:
I'm sorry to start this interview with this: it is most unfortunate that about a week ago, you announced in your newspaper that "Welcoming Committee bugged/hacked". How's the situation now? Any hope to get it back? What was likely the problem?

ligtreb:
The admins are still analyzing my ticket, who knows what the outcome will be. I'm holding out hope we get it back, but it might not be for a while. The likely problem is I'm not the one who originally created the org, believe it or not, there were several Welcoming Committee directors before me, they just didn't do much with it. So the admins might not realize I'm the one who really used the org.

In the meantime, Chocolate McSkittles and I created a new org, the USA Welcoming Committee, which will do even more than the old Welcoming Committee did. On top of giving gifts to newbs and players under 40 Wellness, we will do more house raffles and have our own gift company where we will mentor new players and use the gifts created for the USA Welcoming Committee.

URL for new USA Welcoming Committee: http://www.erepublik.com/en/organization/1948046

Yang Wenli:
I did a quick study over "The Paperless Newspaper" of yours. 7 months ago, when you were still a 1-month old newbie, you published your first article there, and it was your campaign article for congress in Oregon. That was quite a start although you didn't win that election, but it was remarkable for a 1-month old new citizen. So, I am curious about your earliest days in eRep, how was it like? What made you get so involved in that short period of time?

ligtreb:
Believe it or not, the three main competitors in my first race were 1-month old first-timers (me, CaptainCAPS and ssomo, the eventual winner). All three of us went on to be congressmen -- in retrospect, it was a pretty packed race. It used to be quite common for most candidates to be fairly new, now there are still several but not as many.

When I first started eRep, we were at war with Mexico, a war which didn't go very well (I'll let the older citizens than me provide the detail and perspective, I only know the basics).

The country was much different then. Uncle Sam was president, but the general population didn't see much of him, he didn't communicate regularly like future Presidents did. There wasn't as much emphasis on reaching out to new players then as there is now. And the country was much, much more partisan than it is now. Every party hated each other and tried as hard as possible to gain as much power as possible.

Also, the general population as a whole didn't seem to worry about what was going on in the rest of the world, which has changed now obviously. We've come a long way.

I'll admit, what drew me into this game first was the political aspect. One of my biggest influences early on was Ananias, one of the greatest citizens this country has. He encouraged me to be active early on and helped guide me. President Scrabman gave me my first big break when he named me Welcoming Committee director (it used to be part of the Cabinet), and it was Cerb's idea to use the Welcoming Committee as a gift exchange. Those three people more than anyone else helped create the monster that is ligtreb.

Yang Wenli:
Within 7 months time, you have built a friend list with over 2.1K friends. That's amazing. Aside from the convenience for your shouts getting widely heard, does it make your game significantly more interesting (or more bothered)? How often do you PM chat with your friends? How many of those in your friend list are still active? (I think that could also be a reflection of how many active citizens there are in eUSA).

ligtreb:
I'm amazed by how many friends I have too, since I've never sent a friend request for the sole purpose of trying to get as many friends as possible. I've gotten most of the friends by sending friend request to people I come across at the Welcoming Committee, running Fort Harlot and campaigning -- I've ran for Congress 7 times and Party President twice.

Having so many friends definitely makes the game more interesting. I can see the shouts from so many people, which is informative (I learn new things and get links to articles I might not have seen) and entertaining (some people's shouts are hilarious). I definitely don't PM them all regularly, but there are several dozen I'm in contact with via PM often.

Believe it or not, I'd say the majority of people on my friend list are active -- but there are lots of dead citizens in there by virtue of having so many friends.

Yang Wenli:
Another inspiration I got from you is that you are so enthusiastic and well-organized in helping out new citizens. You achieved not only the directorship of Welcoming Committee and Fort Harlot, but also contributed several formulated articles for newbies and baby boom effort. How did you get so persistent in that? How did you overcome the frustration when new players just walk away or not learning things at all?

ligtreb:
One thing that disturbed me early on is that this country had so few active citizens compared to the other superpowers of the eWorld. I realized back when I was more of a newb that I wasn't going to win the Presidency or be high up in the military, so I couldn't change the country that way. So why not do what I can to help this country in other ways?

One of the good things that resulted from my early political campaigns was learning how many citizens didn't know the basics of how to fight and use the hospital. I would be mass-messaging the states I was running in and I'd find a bunch of citizens who are over level 5, below 40 wellness and had fought before. Many people quit this game because they never figured out how to use the hospital.

If a similar percentage of Americans played this game as Indonesians and Hungarians, we could rule the world if we wanted, easily. The only way America will ever be strong is by recruiting new players and keeping them active, that's why I'm so persistent about this.

Trust me, I definitely get frustrated sometimes at players' refusal to learn the basics of the game -- people who refuse to move to a state with a Q5 hospital, people who refuse to drop their real-life political ideologies, people who fight against DoD orders or keep fighting to below 40 even after they've used the hospital, people who have no idea the forums and IRC exist, newbs who take a Q5 job because it pays $1 more than a Q1 job, I've seen it all. But that doesn't mean we should give up.

Yang Wenli:
What do you think of the statement "a game should be fun, and when a game turned into a job, it is not fun anymore"? Do you feel that implementing the routines of sending gifts and managing a company with over 1K employees are sometimes more of a job than a game? Did it take away a lot of your time (or even get you worn out) in real life? How did you manage to balance that?

ligtreb:
I can definitely understand the quote -- there have been times when this game has felt more like a job than a game, especially when the economy when crazy and Fort Harlot had over 2,000 employees. There were times I got worn out and annoyed.

But I'm obsessed with this game. It's an addiction. Whenever I have free time, eRep is the first site I go to. There are weeks I become less active than others, but I always come back.

This game has caused me to get worn out in real life before too, making me angry or frustrated, and I think about eRep all the time. I don't know why I keep coming back, but I do. I have to see what happens next.

Yang Wenli:
As of today, we restored 49 of our states, and we became the largest country by population. Do you think there will be a baby boom in the near future? If so, it is predictable that you'd get bigger workload to accommodate new citizens. What'd be your priority?

ligtreb:
Yes, I do think there will be a baby boom in the near future. This game is being advertised in more places, and more citizens realize the benefits of bringing in new citizens (both for their help and the referral gold).

A baby boom would result in a higher workload for me, but I'm not too concerned, that's a big problem. If need be, I'll just hire more people, like I convinced Choc to co-found the new USA Welcoming Committee with me.

It should be our nation's priority to ensure a baby boom happens -- we need to reach out to every message board and blog, and advertise this game.

Yang Wenli:
It is a fact that our population, our new citizens were became more involved and united because of this war when our situation was desperate. Suppose this war is coming to an end, and no more exciting attack and defense battles other than training wars, what should we do to maintain this level of involvement of our citizens? What should we "sell" to new comers to play on?

ligtreb:
I have a feeling we'll be involved in real wars for a while, but they'll be for our allies in other parts of the world, not on U.S soil. To the citizens already playing this game, we need to stress to them that they can still fight PEACE and help the allies who helped us get our states back.

To the newcomers, we'll need to teach them a bit about the history of the war. Tell them the only state we had left was Florida at one point, and that Indonesia, Hungary, Portugal, Russia, France and Colombia were all against us. If we put PEACE's place in the world into perspective, hopefully that helps keep them.

Yang Wenli:
I've seen some non-governmental newbie aid organization / projects came up in the past few days, both on eRep citizen ads and on eUSforum. What would be your advice to those organization / projects?

ligtreb:
I've seen some too, and I encourage them. The more the better, we can't have too many as long as they're run well. My advice: start out slow, but don't be afraid to do too much. Be active in helping out newbs, but don't promise more goods than you have. Feel free to mass-message new citizens, that's how I got started. And don't be afraid to ask for help of any kind when you need it.

Yang Wenli:
Finally, is there anything that you'd like to add from your side?

ligtreb:
I'd like to thank you Yang for interviewing me and for all you've done for this country.

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Previous articles:
> Teacup Interview: Josh Frost, #1 Player, Presidential Candidate
> Teacup Special: Campaign Article: Yang Wenli for Virginia
> Teacup Announcement: My Announcement as a Candidate for Congress
> Teacup Guide: A Guide to Civilian Fighters
> Teacup Special: New Border Connection Maps Released
> Teacup Guide: A Protective Guide to Job Hunting

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