Join the new world

I'm writing this for the junior journalist achievement... please leave at least 25 comments.

Since I'm writing now, just going to do a stream of consciousness piece.

It's sad to see this game become so tired and empty. It started out with amazing potential. Battles meant something, the alliances met something, what you did meant something.

Nowadays, there's next to no real excitement going on. Borders ebb and flow with no real impact on things. Oh your country got wiped? No worries, it'll come back sometime soon most likely. Hey we're having an epic tournament--no one cares, no incentive to get a battle to that state, let alone fight extra for no good reason.

The economy continues to be one of the silliest things I've ever seen. When you can't even make 75% of products without losing money, disregarding tax rates, there's something cataclysmically wrong with your setup, Plato. Nice job on eliminating banks, btw, that's a sore spot for me at least.

Politics are the same as they ever were. Ajay Pizza Reagan is right that a group of elites rule politics, but they've pretty much always looked out for the country, so I don't mind or care much. The top five are all the same--just different cliques. Again, don't mind or care.

Why do I still play? I think I've said this before, but essentially I'm just waiting to see if things could become exciting again. I earned a lot of gold back when you could do that within the economic systems sans using RL money, so I eLive very comfortably overall--no stress there.

I also still play because this still is the best public forum amongst somewhat likeminded people from around the world in a gaming environment. The social interactions have always set this game apart from all others--a product of the players and not the game makers, kind of sad to say. I guess they advertised in the right places initially to bring in a good founding class that has more or less echoed throughout erep's lifespan.

Will the game die? Yes, possibly sooner than later. As long as people continue buying gold erep will have a stream of revenue, and why would you cancel on money coming into a service you put in little to no effort to develop? From what I've heard people are buying gold less and less, and the total population of players is shrinking at a record pace, so we'll see which black hole we hit first.

Can erep get better? Realistically no. Erep Labs has literally had years to develop this game, and every major change has been made to make their lives easier and bring in more money:

-No more dynamic economy
-The expansion and almost total eclipse of the war component of the game over everything else (buy booster packs, energy bars etc)
-The amazing and sustained intensity of refusing to listen to the player base in regards to game changes

I don't have a closing statement. Someday someone will make something like erep and do it right. Good first effort I guess.

Also, just saw you have to pay gold to publish articles in other countries for 2 gold. The old jokes about charging you to do anything and everything have come true.

TL😉R meh.