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Hey guys,

I have recently noticed an interesting Bulgarian player - Sollam.

His insightful comments on different topics, were very helpful to me, but it wasn't until I joined the Plato foundation board, when I was able to fully appreciate the amazing stuff he is doing.

He is leading a group of active and motivated players and together they are managing some amazing projects like - The Power pack aid program and they are also publishing the eRepublik Weekly - a weekly article that provides us with a digest on the top eWorld news, some fun games and analyses.

I wanted to learn more about him, so I decided to make this interview. Luckily (for me) he agreed to do it and spared some of his private time in order to be thoroughly interrogated.

I hope you'd enjoy it as much as I did.





Who is Sollam in Real life?

A human, I hope.




A good movie or a good book?

Both





Would you recommend a book/movie/both, you enjoyed?

The last movie I watched was "Collateral beauty" and the last book I read was "Adultério".






You were eBorn in 2012. What was your favorite eRep feature during your 5 years in the game?


The social





What was your least favorite feature?

The political




Is there any aspect of the game that you think has greatly improved since the time you started playing?

Sadly, I don’t think there is one.





Steak or Cake?


Cake with coffee at 16:00 p.m. and steak at 19:00 p.m.





We have recently witnessed The 10 days of Mayhem event, which most players believe was a new ground meta test. Do you think that a well designed terrain mechanics, with a capped strength, is a solution for the gap between the old and the new players?


I don’t think so. The number 14 is still a mystery, although there are some theories/suggestions as to why exactly 14 terrains. Also selecting different terrains will leave a lot of players out of the action. And, of course, we have to consider the massive amounts of gold that will be drained from the players via the 50 Gold reset tokens.

Also, as we wrote in the eRep Weekly (and I saw you made an English translation of Princess Aspas.BG's article), what could be really interesting is if the April 1st Event from this year (switching strength) is implemented and even more so if that is combined with terrain switch. That would make the game interesting for a lot of players and above all will increase the players’ interactions within the community. Plato uses the word “community” a lot, but in fact disunites the players. We have all seen what the Maverick pack have lead to.





A lot of players keep saying that the game is dead, but you obviously keep making the best effort to help the community and especially the new players. What keeps you motivated?


And it obviously is dead.

The motivation comes with the newcomers. Every new player bears some specific feature - could be something new or something familiar, but in any case it is something personal. If the community welcomes them with apathy those players they will all be lost. That is why we designed the Pack aid program. Using that program the players, who do not have the means to purchase packs with real money, will be able to experience this aspect of the game. Our idea is for this programme to become international, including players even from the smaller countries. We are already discussing this with the Swiss government. Old Bilbao has agreed on the pack sales and Marti always gets things done, so I am hoping this will be a successful endeavor and we will be able to include foreign players.

The important thing for me is when the moment comes we can all smile to the people we respect and say to each other:

“Thank you for the minutes, days, years together! I love you all! I am missing you already!”






It is probably hard, but pick up 3 things, that if implemented, will make the game much better and interesting for old and new players alike.

That is the easiest question.

Honestly I still find it impossible to understand how did the admins lead such an amazing product - a diamond, to that level of development. The game could be a testing grounds for analysts of human behaviour and earn a lot of money from this. To some extent it probably is. It could be used as a sort of a guide by the players for their real life situations in a purely deductive way.

The real life is an endless well of ideas for eRepublik. There are still no banks and the orgs could easily be used as banks, there are no governmental bonds, no local governments, and there should be a majority electoral system in the dead political mode as well as countless other features. Of course there were a lot of good ideas and products that were once implemented and it might be a good idea if those are reintroduced to the game.

Example: The majority electoral system in combination with the proportional one.


So now to your question:

1. Avio training grounds, but players should be allowed to train either in the Training grounds or the avio training grounds and not both. A pack can be introduced for the spenders, that will allow them to train in both types of training grounds. That way the newer players will a better chance to be relevant on the battlefield and their help will be more valuable for their countries.

2. As I have already written to the Admins (and Princess.Aspas.BG explained in her article) the strength switch can help a lot.

3. Repurposing the rocket factories for the avio mode as a anti-aircraft defense systems. The same thing can be done for the ground battles, but with the damage modified. That would definitely lead to a better communication/relations within the community, help the young players with low quality weapon companies and revive the economy as a whole.





You and a group of active bulgarian players are publishing the eRepublik weekly. How was the eRepublik weekly born?


Thank you for that question!

The idea was conceived a long time ago, but due to my bad english it never came to be.
It was with the of Marti that the project was started. There are a lot more players involved, but a key member is Nadya.

Our unprofessional efforts and constant shout obviously irritated her, so she offered to help us. Luckily for us she stayed and she is a vital member of our team. She is a complete workaholic. I am peacefully laying around like a jellyfish and I get a notification - “Come on! Time’s up!”

The truth is that it is all a very laborious and expensive process. Plato helped us for a month. The idea was quite different.

I will give the articles of The JuliusCaesar and VampireA as an example. We really enjoy our cooperation with them. There are topics that some individuals or teams of players with similar interests cooperate and write about and we offer them a payment.

As another example SmileBG immediately got the idea. Well, she was a bit reluctant at the beginning (her sign is probably cancer), but then she sent me our treasure - the game. And of course she never wanted money for what she did.


But obviously the global eCommunity is in a state of coma. We wrote PMs to so many players from so many nationalities asking them to write about their countries or address some of their daily life topics, so we can get the relevant information from the source and not from the medias, where the information is either incomplete or distorted. Currently we only have 1 article, that will be published in the next edition of the eRepublik Weekly.

I truly hope that people will start sending articles, because I, for example, would prefer to get the info on … what happened to Dilma Rusev from Brazilians and not only from our bulgarian or american medias. Or I’d like to learn about the floods in Thessaloniki from the locals. About the earthquake in Iran from Iranians or the opinion of the american players on Trump and Hillary.







Can you point one or more essential first steps, a new player is recommended to take, for a good start in the game?



Of course! Look for players that share your view of the world, hobbies and other preferences from real life. Everything else is popcorn.

Keep in mind that whatever you are told about this game, without it you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet those people. It is possible that some of these players might have stayed next to you in the restaurant/coffee shop and you had no idea how many things do you have in common with this person before communicating with him/her via the game.





Do you enjoy music? If so would you share a piece of it with us?


That is a hard question!

Yes, I do love music. And it is really hard to pick one. I would like to share a song that always takes me away from the real life madness and the eMadness to some amazing places.








Would you recommend a must visit place in Bulgaria?



That depends on the person. It would also be affected by my mood, most of the times.

At the moment I’d prefer a solitary peaceful place like a monastery or Perperikon. Being on some high ground and watching the sea, away from the madness or listening to some bagpipes on the peak of Rozhen.

There are some amazing places in Bulgaria and surely everyone will discover or rediscover the right spot for him/her, no matter how selfish this may sound.






After all these years playing eRepublik what makes you keep logging in?



My friends!


There are lots of examples:
Here, in the game, one of the people I respect the most, helped me with some valuable advises about my son, when he was still a baby.

I don’t know if you know, but some time ago eBulgarian players donated money on SOS- Kinderdorf and I am very proud both with the ones that organized it and the ones who donated money for the cause.

There’s a lot I can tell about the “Ink Maze” writing contest, organized by Tablov (Morrpheus). I had the pleasure to write and compete with a lot of amazing players.

There was once a young bulgarian player, who asked me to help him with a school essay he had to write. The result was one of my friends' favorite stories. I hope the kid is ok, because he was at a hospital at that time and he has not been active in the game for a long time.

There are a lot more examples ...





Anything you want to say to the other eRepublik players - old and new alike? A sort of message from Sollam.


Be Human!

I would also like to address the hot topic of the day - Colin

I think he is a man, who needs friends and some fun. He has his own sense of justice, that he not only believes in, but forces upon others. It’s his money after all and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the thing that is wrong is that he plays on one of the worst strings of the human nature - the greed. He forces players from one nationality to fight against each other. Sooner or later he will find out that the more he plays on that string the higher its amplitude (its mouth) would become and I fear that he will leave the game, disappointed and broken down by his own weapon. Whenever that happens I hope he will use his money to help some real life people, that are in desperate need of help.

But it is not Colin that is the real problem here, if he can be called a problem anyway. What is more problematic is players who steal cc or gold from the national treasuries and are selling it on the black market for real money and also people who play the game with no moral decency and I will also add the maverick pack medal stealers and the cheaters here.

And of course the worst problem for this game is still the Admins, allowing all of the above said to happen.






I would like to thank Sollam for the time he spent answering my questions and I would also like to thank all of you, who spared some of you time to read this article.