The Life and Death of eRepublik

Day 1,161, 23:56 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Mr Woldy




I have been telling myself to write this article for quite some time, but I have been distracted by some exams and have had a general apprehensive approach due to the over sensitivity of the admin’s censorship department. It does seem as though you can’t mention the admins in a bad light without being attacked and having your work deleted, unfortunately it also seems that the admins don’t really regard your content and have become somewhat trigger happy.

However, my intention is not to cry about changes (I will a bit) or generally just baww at admins and give my opinion of them, but to instead assess the decline in eRep and explain why it isn’t tackled and how we can hope to work around any issues we have in order to coincide with Plato’s regime, or tips for overthrowing it - drawing some inspiration from people across the pond.



The Evidence

In order to give this account of what has been going on some weight, I have used the voting attendances from the CP elections on the 5th of each month from a selection of countries. I don’t want to focus on babyboomers to much as their figures can distort the figures for decline, but the few I have chosen are;

USA,
UK,
France,
Germany,
Sweden,
Argentina,
and Hungary.

I’m including the USA and Hungary to portray that any trends are not exclusive to ‘small’ or medium sized countries.

My sample will begin, for the sake of not making it too huge, from December 2009 to December 2010. There are of course a few validity issues - how sure can we be that voting attendance is equal to activity? To be honest, it isn’t. There are always some people that for one reason or another do not vote. However, that number is small enough in each of these countries to count the variation it would cause as negligible.

With that in mind, let’s have a look at vote attendance over the 12 months and see where V2 and V1.5 coincide with the rise and/or falls in population. (With the use of shiny graphs that took ages to make.)









The trend here is clear; a consistent fluctuation followed by a large drop. Towards the end of the timescale, each country also sees a rise. If you haven’t guessed, the wonky red line (MS Paint is very handy) denotes the introduction of V2 and the flip-flopping changes for a month or so after June. Coincidentally (or not), the largest drop in each of the countries sampled was August.

Although I do not for sure if it is the case, I imagine the rise at the end of each sample is due to admin or player advertising, in other words the beginnings of a new rise in the player base - caused by admins direct advertising or, more unlikely due to each countries individual recruitment attempts. However, whether or not numbers rise (outside of babybooms) to previous standards or whether they reach a premature plateau remains to be seen.

To put better portray these points I have made a graph to show the average decline in voting attendance for the 7 countries sampled.


What can be done?

Many threads appear requesting admins make changes, and at the onset of V2 and V1.5 many threads appeared asking if we could revert back to the old rules and modules. In other words, and as the graphs show, people weren’t very happy.

So, if the admins were losing players, and losing popularity, you would expect them to change the game back to how the players wanted.. after all, players make the eWorld go ‘round, right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, a clever move by the admins with some alterations to the war module meant that, as popularity was dropping. spending was rising. Many people, including myself have complained about uncapped boosters, but on the other hand many people make use of uncapped boosters. We may not like the changes, but the admins do.

You have to constantly remind yourself that, if you don’t think the admins are good at appeasing the emasses, they are create RL businessmen. During the last months of conflict we have seen many people mega tanking, and many low ranked people tanking. Some players even boasted of a unending pot, and flaunted the use of credit and/or debit cards in winning battles. The admins, in other words had achieved their goal of making more money. V2 and it's variations may not have been a success for the players, but it was for the admins.


George Lemnaru

When I say that something similar to the American Revolution could fix this, I of course do not mean that we need an eSímon Bolivar and a large group of mestizos to go around a bunch of countries and rise up against the admins. I am of course referring to the less well known and less publicised revolution of the 1770’s. For those unfamiliar with it, think of the Mel Gibson film ‘The Patriot’.

To put it short, some Geezer called George (what a coincidence) and some guys called Parliament aimed to restrict trade to what were at the time 13 North American colonies. Specifically the stamp act and the Townshend duties act tended to grind people’s gears and eventually when a monopoly over the trade of tea was imposed, people got a bit rowdy.

Throughout the troubled period, multiple non-consumption protest were held. In other words, you done good, Americuh. In reality, if you want anything to change in this game, you have to make sure the admins have a cash incentive to change it.

In a Utopian world, this would reach #1 in the international news and everyone would stop purchasing anything from the admins, and we could make several demands which would be met in order to pay George Lemnaru’s wages. Or get George’s tea and sugar.

However, I’m not a bloomin’ thicky, and I know that that happening right now is somewhat unlikely. Even if halting all wars to slap the admins is a good idea. There’s no chance in the world that on my command everyone will stop spending. After all - there’s battles to be won.


Stopping war would be boring :/

Therefore, if there are any changes we want implemented the admins have proved it has to be in their favour as well as in ours. In other words if you want something changed, you have to come up with an idea that won’t impede people’s spending patterns. You need to see the business side of the admins, and unfortunately we need to stop viewing them as benevolent patrons, and as crazy capitalists.

However, at least we have some population growth to look forwards to..

~

Thanks for reading.

OBE, KCVS, MC, HRH.
Formerly CP, SG, bunch of other stuffs