[PoA] 2nd of March 2011

Day 5,216, 03:29 • Published in Austria Austria • by Prince of Austria

Dear friends,

As I write this, 11 years have gone by and I feel like it's my duty to tell this story. A story of will and determination, cooperation, frenemies that broke all schisms. Beware, the things that happened on 2nd of March 2011 stand as a reminder of unity, a part of history that will never be forgotten, nor the people who laid down their eLives in order to try and make this a better game for all of us. I’m not encouraging any similar behavior nor do I think that it will ever happen again. This is part of official history and most of it is recorded on official eRepublik platforms such as the eWiki. My goal here is to teach new citizens on how to approach the game and have fun while they are here, and by telling this story to honor the memories of my friends who are no longer here, all of them different but at one point in time - so similar.

It was the summer of 2010, the game only existed for about 3 years or something. In these years the active player count was at about 200.000. The game was easy to play and people got used to it. Alliances were made, countries fought each other valliantly and everything was smooth. In July of 2010 the administration decided it was time for a change. Their intentions of making this game better were honest and true. But was that needed at that time? Yes it's true that people asked for changes, they ask now and they will keep asking in the future. It's natural, different people have different opinions and the administration can’t please everyone. So what was different this time?

It was the first time that everyone united with the same goal. Same suggestions. It was the first time when people realized how strong they really are. It's the players who make the game, they are the power that keeps this game alive.

What were the changes? On 7th of July 2010 eRepublik got an “improvement” called V2 or Rising if you want. The old V1 was gone and along with it all the memories made during that time. The changes were so radical that it merely looked like we were playing a completely different game. Professions and a library were added, where players chose to study one or multiple professions, losing health and happiness but gaining skill for the respective professions thus becoming stronger economically. You had time management and the whole 24 hr day was divided into 4 groups. Working, training, leisure and studying.



So if you wanted, you could have “chilled out” during leisure time. Anyhow, the new changes involved implementing a new way of fighting as well. The battlefield was divided into many hexagrams which represented campaign goals, and with a little bit of tactical knowledge small countries were able to outsmart bigger nations militarily, but it was a very different and complicated feature.




What did the people actually want? This was the background of the rebellion itself. People actually feared changes. Rumors of the team implementing changes in order to heavily favor Gold-buying citizens, deleting organizations which would in turn mean destroying a great part of eRepublik history, concerns that the unified inventory and money accounts could again break the economy. People also wanted a limit on buying wellness packs (this was one of the long-requested changes back then). Also delays on the housing and hospital implementations as well as many other things were a sign that the rebellion was not started because of one thing. Instead it was a result of an accumulative dissatisfaction and anger over the years. So it got to a breaking point. More and more people felt that the administration wasn't doing enough for their customers. Not only for the real paying customers but for everyone else, because this game works as one body. One group wouldn’t exist without the other. The revolt was manifested in many ways, from wearing matching avatars which were highly revoltive and disrespective for the administration to forming a group of people and entering the official game wikipedia and sabotaging the pages there, thus trying to turn the admins attention to the problem. On 2nd of March 2011 admins announced that in 5 days “every citizen will be able to get, via donation or monetary market, a limited amount of Gold”. Until then it was basically unlimited. That, along with the leaked Top Customers program made Country Presidents go as far as changing the “New Citizens Message” to an anti-eRepublik text. This didn’t go unnoticed and soon after that all those presidents were punished and permanently banned. These include:


Krimpiekat, President of South Africa
Laya, President of Iran, and Game Moderator
Kistru, President of Serbia
1shakalas1, President of Lithuania
Howly, President of Slovenia
Cerber, President of Poland
gvstavo v2.0, President of Peru
Kallmar, President of France
Gregory Gallangher, President of Hungary
Antiko, President of the Netherlands (Temporarily banned)
The moi, President of Chile
Jan Parma, President of Slovakia (Temporarily banned)
Hans Molemann, President of Bolivia (Temporarily banned)

Many other citizens were also punished for their actions, most receiving FPs (Forfeit Points) or as people called them back then “Fabulous Points”. A channel was made on #IRC and quickly it became one of the largest eRepublik chats ever recorded in history. It had more than 1500 players from all over the world sharing anti-eRepublik articles and avatars, basically protesting in any way they could.

Banning the presidents was the very last drop for the protesters. It is still unbelievable for me how in 2 days every nation from every alliance agreed to stop the wars. It was so amazing to see how determined and united they were. How far they were willing to go to fight for their rights. World peace was made and there wasn’t a single battle to fight in. So if you’re thinking what's so weird here, let me explain it a bit. Every game online that has a purchase system works the same way. This is natural and it's just how things work. Administration does this by making a competition and “letting” players fight each other, thus generating money - or simply said keeping the game alive. Both for players and for owners. So from a time when both were profiting (owners in funds and players in pleasure), it got to a completely different position because by stopping the wars they didn’t receive any money - but in turn players didn’t have any fun or pleasure. So players were basically prepared to sacrifice that and cut their lifeblood in order to get a little bit better gaming environment in the future.



That doesn’t mean that the admins weren’t ready to act as well. What happened next? Just as the community was starting to feel concerned about the minimal communication between the game administration and the players themselves - a meeting was organized by a dozen players who really cared about the game and it’s future. Every country had a representative, and they met in order to decide about the things they wanted to talk about with the admins. Naturally different people focused on different things but in the end everything that really mattered was written down on paper, a charter was made and they were ready to meet the admin. These “suggestions” involved reversing the bans of the country presidents who were previously punished.

It's still so amazing to me how so many countries put their differences aside and tried to do something for the whole community. My personal opinion is that it will never happen again. The first and probably last time when people got together and united towards a common goal.

At this point in time everything was prepared and the group pushed towards the meeting with Belea2008, a member of the eRepublik team set by them as a negotiator. In total 43 Country Presidents or representatives signed the document that was presented to Belea. Surprisingly the meeting ended extremely quickly with Belea stating that the “players had non-negotiable demands”, after which he left the chat thus leaving the players stunned and shocked. The riot continued but it seemed like it lost its momentum. Protesters lost their will and it became harder and harder to play the game without feeling any consequences. In the meantime someone else was on the move. Trying to think of a way to keep the players in the game, calm them down while ensuring the game stays alive and with as many players still in it. Shortly after that the owners\managers of the game, Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru published articles explaining what actually happened from their point of view, they made a few promises (none of which concerned the actual problems nor a solution on how to fix them). In the upcoming days changes were again made: new missions were added, most of them promoting war and putting NE, with gold and currency rewards which were unfortunately too temptatious for the eRepublik community. This was the saddest part of the whole operation. After a few days of no wars and with the protesters who finally had a way to express their feelings - it was over. You can’t get the gold, strength and other rewards if you don’t have wars… Suddenly you saw messages like “Nation A” proposed a war to “Nation B” etc, making a crack in the fully operational plan, and then another one, and another. And soon everything got back to normal. All of a sudden it seemed like everyone was happy with the new missions and rewards, both admins and the player base itself.

The Aftermath:
Many players remained banned, along with the presidents who used their power in order to protest on a much higher level. None of the proposed changes were accepted but Rising was shut down and players got a more interactive game with different changes, not the ones they were asking for but maybe the ones they didn’t know they needed. eRepublik itself still exists and players come and go, and in turn we got something that every “game” needs in order to be as worthy as any other great game - history.

The message:
We live in dangerous times and I’m not going to mention what's happening these days and debate why there is a war in Real Life, or even talk about it like a true “expert” but the most amazing thing about this game is that we can all learn something from this Rebellion and implement it in RL. First of all, it's important to speak out. And remember, there are legit and legal ways to do it. More importantly - try to do good, try to fix things - not just accept them.

“To me, looking back now, the things we were presenting to the admins were almost besides the point, because the beautiful thing was that everyone stopped fighting.”

Rangeley, Austrian representative


I want to thank Rangeley, Hans, Krimpie and everyone else for sharing their memories,thus preserving a great moment in history.

Prince of Austria, proud nostalgist.