Same old, same old?

Day 1,310, 02:56 • Published in India India • by BroodRoosterNL


About 8 months, that's how long my absence from eIndia has been and it were 8 months well used as I graduated and am going to university at the end of this summer. But have these 8 months been well used in eIndia too? That is one of many questions I asked myself since my return. So that's why I've been looking around, checking out the new things and learning what has changed and I've seen both good and bad changes and some things that haven't changed a bit.

Let's start positive with the good changes. The market place for example seems to be filled, especially the food market which new players so desperately need to get started. Cheap food is around and good jobs are available. And the best weapons are for sale in our country, maybe not the cheapest in the world but certainly not unaffordable. The housing market is one to ignore because ever since the Admins introduced durability and gave us the ability to regain a lot more health every day, houses have become expensive and useless. But in the end I think we can say that our marketplace has improved which means that India has been doing good economically.

Another good thing is that there are new players who have come through the ranks and worked their way up. Even though new players might be considered inexperienced, it's always important to have new minds within our community as these people will help us understand the eWorld better and they are able to come up with ideas none of the old players have ever thought off. And together with these new players it seems the IRC channel has become more active, with usually 20+ people around there's always someone to talk with.

But not everything has changed and on the one hand you couldn't expect everything to change, but on the other these are things that should have and must be changed.

One of the most important things being the lack of communication. We've suffered a lot from this back in the days and I sure have to blame myself for that at some moments. You'd expect things to get better over time but sadly that's not always what happens and because of that, arguments over these kind of things, things that shouldn't matter anymore, still exist and force people to leave (I am not reffering to a special event from the past days). Of course it's not easy to talk with everyone and to reach everyone and I'm not saying we have to as some people simply don't want to be involved too much. But we have our methods to spread the news around and we have a platform where we can discuss things more easily and it is open for everyone so why not use it more? I remember back in the days where people were asked to join our forums in almost every Government article, why not do that again? It could be very helpful and I remember they days of an active forum, being some of the best we've ever had.

What also hasn't changed, is the discussion about neutrality. For years now, India has been trying to stay neutral in this game because of the simple fact that we as a nation are still to small to participate in the big theatres of war and actually be of value. What also counts is the fact that our country has been pushed around by many of the big countries in this world for a long time and that most of them haven't ever taken us really serious. I know there are enough nations in this world who have been kind to us and offered us help and I am grateful for that, but I simply cannot lose the idea that almost all of the countries whom we ever dealt with were mainly talking to us or helping us for their own benefit (leaving aside persons who have been absolutely great and have done nothing but helping us, I am only talking about nations here). So that's why in my mind, India should still be neutral. But neutrality is a thing many people define differently. In my mind, neutrality in this game has always been not to take part in any violent conflict in the eWorld. Which means that eIndia will not fight in any war other than training wars. But there are also people who believe that neutrality means that we shouldn't even be friends with any nation that is involved in a war at all and that is the main problem.
Does neutrality mean you aren't active in any war, or does it mean you can't be friends with any nations involved in a war?
In my opinion the last one is simply not possible and thus the first one is the logical way to think of neutrality. What we might ask is why the last option isn't possible, a simple question actually and the answer is quite simple too. It is not possible to stay on the sideline in a world where 90% of the active world is involved in some sort of alliance. If eIndia was to stay away from every nation in this world involved in an alliance or war we would be left to deal with nations even smaller than ours who face bigger problems and aren't able to help us nor are we able to help them in any way. This game is build around social interactions and if we do not interact with the 90% of the nations in this game who are involved in alliances or wars, what fun would this game be and what would be the reasons left to play this game? It would also mean that we would have to propose trading embargoes to 90% of the world as we cannot deal with them because that would also be supporting a nation.
The neutrality some speak of is simply not possible in this game because every country in this world is connected to almost all of the other countries. Without the interactions between countries (both peaceful and hostile) this game would have no foundation and this game wouldn't have any reason to exist.

I say we start working on a better eIndia today, an eIndia where we can live together being happy, an eIndia where we communicate with eachother and an eIndia that is independent from the rest of the world. A better eIndia!

Jai Hind!

Join the eIndian forums! Go to http://forum.erepindia.com/?phpBB3/index.php and register, its easy and can be done in just a minute.

Regards,
BroodRoosterNL