So incredibly bored...

Day 1,693, 06:38 • Published in South Africa South Africa • by mulderpf

Bored, bored, bored, so bored, I could cry, I'm so bored.

So the war and strategy game that I really enjoyed and loved has become incredibly boring again. The only thing I still enjoy is the social interaction, which I can still enjoy without having to log in again (not that I won't - I'm just saying).

When I joined back in 2009, the game was multi-faceted and I loved the idea of picking what you want to do and pursuing that.

Economic module

This was the thing that grabbed me from the start. I enjoyed being one of the big employers in a small, growing economy. There was loads of money to be made in diamonds back in the day. When the money started rolling in, I started dabbling in the monetary market and I made some huge gains and some equally huge losses (happens when you accidently make the post the wrong way around - e.g. 10 gold for 0.019ZAR). I hated it at the time, but at least it was exciting and I made up for those silly mistakes (great when you discover someone else made the mistake).

Today there's not much left. Everyone now owns companies and everyone works in companies. The solution to an unbalanced economy and severe over-production caused by a person able to work in more than one company a day (employee and owner) was a bot which killed competition in the market. You don't need to be smart with economics - you just put up jobs and sell goods around the price where the bot will buy it.

Same thing with the money market - there's no strategy involved...all you need now is patience. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages of currency offers and you simply have to wait for your number to come up (or for your offer to expire).

Media module

I accept that the media module is sort of better than it was before. My biggest gripe is that you can artificially make your article look more popular than it really is by paying some money to a voting club. Kudos to the voting clubs for making it work, but really, do we need this kind of thing in our country? It's obvious when it's being used and people can say whatever they want, you don't get 50 votes within an hour of your article being published simply because eSouth Africans read it and agreed with the content.

War module

So in terms of game-play, we are now in a better place with the war module than before...mostly. I would like to see hospitals and defence systems brought back and war being a little bit more costly than it is currently.

The problem is that as a country we are surrounded by allies. We don't attack anyone, we don't get attacked by anyone. The only time attacks happen is when we have to swap out regions because one of our rented regions were returned by accident. We are always involved in battles, but it's always for an ally. And there's nothing wrong with helping an ally, but it's just not the same as fighting for yourself. For many people it's simply just making the 25 kills required for the day.

During the region swaps, when we were fighting for our own regions to be liberated, it felt good, but not as good as it did before. Maybe it was because the outcome was pre-determined?

This is a war-game - there's not much war happening at the southern tip of Africa. I remember during the days of the Great Southern War how exciting it was to wake up in the morning and log in to eRepublik to see what has happened overnight - did we manage to bring down the wall, did another attack happen, do we even have a country left?

Now when I log into eRepublik, I know we have a country left. I just go to work and train and claim my reward. Then go and fight 25 times whereever the orders tell me to fight (usually Brazil or Romania or lately Australia if we're lucky!). I'll be honest and say that I fight 25 times, simply because the orders say so. As an "ordinary citizen", I am not really aware of the state of affairs in the region. My best indication is the daily order which tells me where there is something happening.

I want to wake up and be excited to log in to see if we have conquered another region or if we have a country left. Being in a war game without war isn't much fun at all!

Political module

Arriving back from extensive two-clicking earlier this year, I was put into the position of Minister of Security. I was told that the Ministry runs elections, because party politics is dead. I vowed to change that and decided that I was going to stir things up. I was elected to party presidency and for the most part, I achieved my goal. There is some good rivalry now between IA and UP and for a while, it was fun to get them all riled up, I'm kind of over that now too, because I'm not really here to make enemies, especially not in my own country.

Much of the politics of the country allowed me to make some friends and especially being in the IA, it allowed me to become even closer friends with some really good people. I am afraid though that the rivalry between the IA and UP might have caused some strain with some friendships (although, I don't like many UP members any way 😛).

Summary

All in all, I'm kind of bored. I log in, just to work, train and fight for some random country. As it stands, I log in and everything is as it was the day before - there's not much news and even if there was some report about a war somewhere in Europe, it doesn't really affect us directly.

That's all, I just wanted to share my boredom with all...