Join the new world

So now we have been able to start to get to grips with V2 it has become clear that in reality it is still business as usual.

The changes, which I have to admit I was concerned about, have turned out to offer new levels of interest to the game something that in my opinion, of having been here for 2 years and 7 months, were badly needed.

Firstly though the military module is still unavailable looks like a dramatic improvement over the V1 wall system. Tactics in V1 ( and the beta in all fairness) where in reality, pretty simple. Smack as many people online at the end of a battle and then go mad. Hardly worthy of Sun-Tzu's "The Art of War" and really it led to little real excitement. The return to PvP was something I have wanted for along time, nothing was more fun in eRep than flexing your emuscles against an opponent even if it was a bug filled mess in the beta.

Whether the new military module is something that will live up to expectations is still unclear, but the added level of strategy with maps, and various classes of fighters as well as hopefully encouraging people to fight throughout the battle rather than just at the end, should breathe new life in to what was becoming very stale.

The new soft caps on rankings as surely made eRepublik more balanced now. Its probably strange to hear someone who was 40+ strength actually being pleased with the new system, but seeing as it would probably take me the best part of year to get to guru** it actual gives new players more of an incentive to stick around knowing that they isn't going to be such a huge gap between themselves and old timers like there was before.

My biggest concern about the V2 was gold and boosts. For me the introduction of Lana was almost a killer blow, one made solely for profit with the admins knowing full well those of high strength would not want to lose the advantage they had thus would likely use gold to keep themselves at the top. Obviously now we have boosts for everything, training, working, learning and resting, but now they don't carry the same weight and in all honesty with the ability to divide up your day how you choose means there isn't necessarily the same need to use the boosts. Again from my point of view the game has become more balanced and spending gold doesn't give the same large advantages as it did before.

Of course the desire to make a profit out of the game is still clear, making houses last for a limited period and by adding expensive vehicles to battles means those who want to can still buy gold and probably will end up spending more than before.

So V2 isn't exactly the end of the game as many people predicted. Sure we have had people quit, unfortunately I haven't witnessed as many rage quits as I was hoping, but thats probably due to the fact the admins haven't done a bad job at all in attempting to add new depth to the game. Whether it is the same for others or not I don't know, but V2 has rekindled my interest and maybe, just maybe, I might take some forward steps and get involved again.


Eadie