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Hello fellow citizen,

you are reading a part of my series of articles about my trip to eRepublik Labs from 07th to 10th dec. In order to make it more easier for you to get in touch with every topic, this table of contents can be found on top of every article. It will directly link to the specific topic you click on.


Table of contents

1. Preamble and some rules
2. Clarification about some used terms
3. How did it come to that visit

4. What happened during the days
4.1 Wednesday
4.2 Thursday
4.3 Friday

5. Problems eRepublik is currently facing
5.1 Community
5.2 Economy
5.3 Military
5.4 Politics
5.5 Newspapers

6. Some quotes of players which appear regularly
7. Conclusion

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#6 - Some quotes of players which appear regularly

Especially during my interview, and of course from time to time while monitoring the news, I often encountered several comments about eRepublik. I would like to take a look at some of them and bring them into a connection to the things I experienced at eRepublik Labs.



“The support is crap, they don’t answer my tickets”
“Do they really have a support team or is it just one guy switching names all the time?”

Well, I mentioned it already in the beginning: I was introduced to their support system. There are real persons taking care of your problems, all of them answer your questions manually and yep, they even have to deal with a huge amount of tickets from time to time.
At least from my point of view they are doing a great job. Can things be improved? Of course, just think of the stuff I mentioned in the beginning and always keep in mind that there aren’t only payed supporters, there are also some who do this job for free.



“Plato isn’t aware of the current situation at eRepublik”
“Plato doesn’t care about the game”
“They don’t care about our feedback”

Believe me: Plato is aware of it. As I mentioned it already I got the chance to talk to Alexis Bonte and personally I didn’t expect that he is aware of the current situation in such a detailed way. Also, Alexis isn’t the only guy behind eRepublik and I have to say that the whole team around eRepublik is aware of it, it’s in a deep connection to the second quote.


They really care about the game. They don’t only care about it in a technical way, but also in a “gaming” way. They had discussions about political decisions in the countries, about ongoing battles, turning points in battles and all those discussions regularly evolved to a point where they switched over to discussing about ideas on how to improve the gaming experience even more.


Of course you may say: There’s a difference between discussing and implementing things, and yes: There is! But: Keep in mind that there isn’t an easy solution for everything, every new feature has to be planned and implemented in a balanced way.



“There aren’t any big updates anymore”
“They promise stuff and don’t implement it”
“It takes ages for new stuff to be implemented”

Yep, indee😛 In some parts it literally takes months (or even years) until a new feature gets added. But in addition to the stuff I mentioned above (the part about planning and balancing), you also have to take a look at stuff you don’t see directly.
Parts of the game got improved right “under the hood”. As I am running my website I get in touch with the “visible” source code of eRepublik from time to time. Did you notice that they changed a lot of stuff on the website`s code? Did you notice that they extended the usage of angularJS in order to create an easier way to implement new stuff in future?


Of course you could say: Man, I don’t care about the stuff I don’t see, but the thing is: You should, because that is also a required topic you need to have in mind when talking about this kind of stuff. This directly leads over to the next quote..



“Parts of their code are more than 8 years old”
“They don’t test their updates”

I’ve seen it, I knew it before, yep. And guess what: It’s hard to remove. Again you could say “look, they’re so stupid they can’t even remove this old crap from their game” and, of course, there is some kind of truth in it, BUT people tend to compare eRepublik with their regular software.


Think of Microsoft Word for example or any other application you are using. From time to time they release new major versions, but the interesting part is: Most of the time they start programming from scratch without having to deal with a system that just runs and runs. Statistically they are using between 15% to 35% from the old code in order to have a solid foundation for the next application.


Can you do this with a webservice which has to be online 24/7 and 365 days a year? Maybe, but then you would probably need hundreds of developers taking care of literally everything, all the time. So this isn’t an easy task as you still need to provide some kind of backward compatibility with stuff that has been added before.


Think of the newspaper articles for example: The used technology was good some years ago, right now more technologies were developed which could help to improve the service - the problem? Create a compatibility to the old system which is currently in use, or would you like to lose millions of great articles which are at some point also the history of the game?


But of course, mistakes were made and, I mean, I’ve seen it: They need to make the best out of this situation. And they are giving their best by improving the foundation step by step. It isn’t easy as they also got coders in the past who literally put their code at a place where it shouldn’t be, so you can’t just remove stuff as it may causes issues at other parts of the game you aren’t able to trace down in the beginning.


Regarding their testing system for updates, well: Yep, I would say just find a better way to deal with it. Again the problem is, more or less, the usage of old parts of the game. Furthermore it isn’t the best practice to create, e.g. so called test units which automatically check more or less everything for every situation. However, at least in my opinion they may have to invest some time into it, especially when testing the backend stuff, in order to guarantee a higher level of stability - otherwise it’s like “look, I committed this and that - did it break anything yet?” - which is, at least in my eyes, not the best way to deal with it (even though it’s not avoidable in every situation).


So, after all you could now ask yourself: What should they focus on? Should they focus on new features you want to see in the game or should they focus on removing older (and unused) parts of the game? Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of manpower available.



“Why don’t they just add the stuff which is implemented by scripts?”

I asked myself that question at the beginning and, well, it’s again a tricky topic. First of all: Scripts are forbidden, I don’t want to advertise them here in game. However: Even though the scripts currently available offer a variety of useful features, you also have to keep in mind what kind of people are using them. Are new players using scripts or old ones? Speaking of that: Is a new player aware that it costs moving tickets or currency in order to move to a different location or to switch sides on the battlefield (in terms of: The expenses don’t pop-up in every script)?


Again, you would have to find a balance between that. However, as much as I totally agree to that point, I also have to admit that there are things which are also very useful to new players. Furthermore, especially talking about eRepublik (keyword switching locations on the battlefield): Seeing a modal / popup nearly every time you enter a battle which just informs you that you are able to switch sides isn’t the best solution. However, they got one lovely person who just loves popups - and he knows I mean him while he reads these lines (this is for you: ♥).



“They are milking the cash cow”
“They are financing other (failed) projects with eRepublik”

Yes, this is also a very interesting topic. All in all you need to be aware that there is a company standing behind this game. Yes, it needs to finance itself somehow, yes it needs to find other strategies to create an income in case one project fails - and yes, one project may finances another one.


I am not in the position to judge the decisions made by the eRepublik Labs management. Do I agree with every decision they made? Of course not. Do I think they could invest more money and time into eRepublik in order to “make it great again”? Yes. Do I think they shouldn’t only focus on monetizing eRepublik to create an income? Yep. Do I think they should decrease the pressure on eRepublik from time to time just to make it possible to focus on really improving the game? Of course. But it’s not me who decides that.