Join the new world

V1 arrived to a fair amount of whimpering and has now been here for about a week. Has the game ceased to exist as was predicted? No. Is the game a little less fun now? Perhaps. There have been many bugs and I find that it crashes intermittently when I try to log in but it seems to be working most of the time. Of course there are things about V1 that make eRep very different than it had been. There will be an inventory restriction that will kick in for those of us who switched over from Beta so I've been trying to get rid of food and gifts that I had purchased so that I will be able to fit into the 10 slots that they want to give us (or I'll just pay the $15 to keep unlimited messages and 50 inventory slots for 6 months). I guess that's one of the changes in V1 ... there will be more opportunities for the folks who run the game to make money like that.

On one hand it's shitty that you can buy things like that for a game ... but on the other hand it's not a lot different than buying a CD or digitally downloading music to your iPod (and costs about the same) if you want to get unlimited email, 10 gold, or unlock levels of things that you have to earn the experience to do. And like the CD or the digital music download you're going to spend so much of your time each day enjoying this world we call eRep so maybe it's the same thing as that. Or how about this. You can listen to Public Radio for free but if you want for it to do well you'll contribute some money to support it. I know that I bought some gold to get started and I've enjoyed eRep a lot more having some extra funds to play around with and to be generous to others in the form of gifts and investing.

What are the things that I've struggled with in V1? Well, the trivia questions are weird and are often impossibly difficult. It would appear that a strategy has developed to just answer them as quickly as possible because if you do you can get a supershot bonus to your productivity. Yesterday I answered and didn't get any of the questions right but today I answered and got 3 questions right with 2 supershots and got a .5 as my initial work experience in agriculture instead of just .1 to start. So that would be my advice for the trivia ... ignore it as best you can and just hope for some lucky shots (though one of those supershots I actually did know the answer to).

Working has also been different in V1. I worked for Justinious and he has been a good employer (even giving me a generous raise last week). However, he has been posting in the eUSA forums about how he has had a hard time keeping his companies productive because of the cost of raw materials. I have logged on several times in the last week and have not been able to work right away because the hospital company I worked for didn't have wood for me to work at building the hospitals. I looked around at some other hospital companies (like FAQS) and saw that they aren't building hospitals right now because nobody is buying them. So that told me that I need to give Justinious a break and strike out for a new job. I feel a little bad about that though but Justinious himself said in the forums that he didn't think he'd be able to maintain his companies much longer if things keep going this way.

I went to the new human resources tab and saw that I had 1 in manufacturing, 3.3 in construction, and 0 in agriculture. Now, looking at the jobs in manufacturing and construction I saw that the salaries were a lot worse than the $6.30 I'd been making. I saw that a wood company that I had recently bought some shares in was hiring at $5 USD so I tried to apply for the job but was told I had to resign from my current job first. I thought about it and then emailed Korbin King to let him know I was asking for a job and then applied and seemed to be hired right away. I don't know if the hiring is automatic but I ended up getting those 3 questions with the 2 supershots right away and made a big splash in the new world. It won't be long before I'm at 2 skill and maybe Korbin can justify paying me my old wage. It seems that there is more money in the raw materials companies right now than there is in the established corporate world. I expect this will change as things settle down. For now, I took it as a chance to get some experience in an area where I didn't currently have any skills. Just watch out when it comes to hiring onto companies offering wages too good to be true. I've heard that some employers are doing a bait and switch by hiring and then knocking pay down and you're stuck working there for a 3 day mandatory period before you can switch.

I made it to the eUSA Army too after finally hitting 3.0 in my strength. I've been assigned a squad and platoon but I don't know exactly what that means. It should mean that I'll get weekly pay for my military training on one hand ... but it could mean that I have to go fight in a war soon if we get into one on the other hand. I have some guns and moving tickets if that is the case and will have to see how that all goes.

So that's my report. Oh wait. I've been playing around with the eUSA forums at http://erepublikusa.com/forums/ lately and have been enjoying watching how the movers and shakers go about playing the game when they're not in the actual eRep environment. I've gotten the notion to run for Congress after participating in many discussions on the forums. I don't know if I'll get it and actually don't recall if I was even here when they had the last vote for Congress (so I don't even know how it works). I just know that the vote comes up in a few days and I hope that I have a chance. It sounds like an interesting way to get more involved in the eRep community.

Till next time ... keep working ... so long as your company has raw materials to work with.