v2 Review

Day 960, 13:34 • Published in USA USA • by gagah
~want some mood music~

Today is the first day of v2, and as a beta tester of both v1 and v2, as well as a veteran of eRepublik beta, I thought that I’d weigh in on the new version, compare it with previous versions and similar games.

I’m feeling like this is eRepublik’s coming of age. Finally, the game is looking polished and professional, finally it’s becoming more of a game that requires a bit of thought into strategy put into it by each and every player, not just the war strategizers and the scheming politicians. Finally, it’s a game where each player is important on an individual scale and a game where each player can feel a sense of importance just by participating in a battle, running around grabbing hexes and fighting once or twice against some German kid who will probably try to invade Europe in 20 years. irl

I’m coming off as really optimistic, and I think that it’ll confuse a lot of v1fags. I’m going to tell you right now as a betafag: v1 was an awful game. And you see, as a betafag, I have the clear vision of a beta that made certain promises and set certain expectations, only to treat us with v1 and trivia. Fucking trivia. And the wall. Oh god, how we hated the wall. We got used to it, and v1fags know only the wall, but those of us who have put ourselves through the 2+ years of eRepublik from beta until now have distinct memories of fighting against other people, and feeling something other than pure and utter boredom from war. And don’t tell me that clicking fight a few times and then healing was stimulating to you, you did it because, for some undefined reason, you enjoy doing some duty to benefit a team. Team America.

Now, when I first began eRepublik, I saw it as not just a game, but web2.0 redefined in game form. A massively multiplayer game of immense proportions where we write the story, we create the characters, we make the decisions that will change the game forever. In some ways, eRepublik has followed through on that expectation. Somehow, I managed to become a hugely respected member of society after being an outcast, and then I promptly began pissing on everything that laid before me. The story of Emerick is a glorified tragedy tale, and it was a hell of a good time playing it through. But I only stuck with it for two reasons: first because I didn’t want to pay money to play a massively multiplayer game, and then because my stats were so high, and well, I’d come that far already. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that eRepublik gave me the opportunity to play it out, but, especially in the beginning, when I wasn’t used to eRepublik’s limitations, I was frusterated with it. It wasn’t until I was well into v1 that I dropped my expectations and began to enjoy eRepublik for what it was: a semi-customizable real world geopolitical simulator, as opposed to what I always wanted it to be, which would be a fully customizable geopolitical simulator, featuring customizable government styles(from a completely free republic to a tightly wound tyranical totalitarian state, where citizens aren’t even allowed to publish newspaper articles without consent from the state, complete with a rebellion module), renamable countries, and different styles of war(I’ve put zero thought into this, and will continue on in that same manner). I wish that eRepublik would make a side project like that, but, from the murmers that I hear, they couldn’t afford it. Which is a shame, because they could own the entire genre if they could.

Still, eRepublik is to mmogs as Mario is to platformers. Especially with the introduction of v2, they’re still the first to come to mind, the most successful, and the most polished in the field. It’s not a huge market, but if it happened to explode, eRepublik would be on the front lines.

Anyways, the whole thing looks much cleaner and refined than v1 and beta. The profile screens are a huge step forward, and look much more professional than the mess that we had on v1. It contains more information yet makes space for everything very nicely. The buttons above a user’s shouts and the expanding shout box is a nice touch. You still have to scroll through pages of 3x4 friend pages, though. I had wished that they would have upgraded that annoying process, but this is eRepublik, what do you expect. Also, another small touch that beta had that got lost in the transition to v1 was the ability to write short description on your profile, in your newspaper, and your party. I didn’t expect this to return in v2, but it would have been an extra touch of love.

The Uptown/Downtown screens are also a nice addition to the text game.

Working and training have been upgraded, and now we don’t simply press a button once a day, which is super boring, now we allocate 24 hours between working, training, studying, and resting, none of which are mandatory. This adds some of the individual strategy that I alluded to above. Do you want to just put fuckall time into training and become super awesome on the battlefield, or do you want to be super rich, and work all day long, then study in your free time? Or are you going to be a regular person and allocate your time in a moderate fashion and be well rounded, healthy, and happy? The power is yours. Enjoy your day.

In terms of the rest of the economy module, titanium has replaced diamonds, and it’ll go into helos and artillery units, there are new weapons and there’s new ways of measuring the quality of items, which is cool, more customization. I’m really bored by anything economy and don’t care that much, but the new qualities will certainly make things more interesting, and differentiate products more than just the numbers next to them, a complaint I had when I first began playing, so I’m optimistic about it. Also, everything costs gold, which is a bitch, but I understand that there’s a need to burn gold. I don’t know. I don’t understand micro or macroeconomics and I don’t pretend to. It’s annoying, though.

The biggest new addition is the new war module, which I played extensively in v2’s beta phase. It’s a lot of fun, and finally, PvP is back. Dear god yes. This is, for some odd reason, what has v1fags complaining all over the forums. For some strange reason, they don’t believe that adding in a fun little battlefield game with 4 different weapon classes and terrain capturing and fighting against that same German boy who will one day conquer Spain for defeating his team in 2010 to eRepublik will be good for the game. I’ve heard them claim that it will put eRepublik into a category that they can’t compete with, but when I consider that, in addition to this battle game we have a geopolitical simulator, a huge society, and a whole world in front of you, I find these arguments weak. Also, the new battling method will, hopefully, make botting a lot harder, which means that certain countries that are known for bots may lose power in v2. And that will be awesome because then China will be reclaimed.

Overall, v2 is a huge upgrade, and they only revamped two of their modules completely, and made good additions all around. Another good little addition is that they scrapped the old way of telling when a comment or article was posted and put in a time stamp. The old way was flawed and made historical research almost impossible if you were not there to see it happen. My only complaints are that there are gold boosters everywhere, and those without money to use them will fall behind fairly easily. In beta we had only wellness packs, and in v1 training boosters were introduced by Lana; but now in v2 there are gold boosters for literally everything besides making a comment. This is going to make being a regular player suck a lot more, but thankfully they did reduce the prices of the boosters I’ve seen so far. Also, a small complaint, but avatars on profiles don’t resize to fit inside of the square they’ve been allocated on the profile screen. It’s actually not really a problem, I kind of like it and I could get used to it, it just took me off guard at first.


Score by module
Society: 8
(includes everything to do with posting, media, and profiles)
Economy: 7
(includes working and market mods)
War: 8


Bottom line
Keep in mind that this is compared to other games of its type, and I’ve been here for a while, so my expectations may be lower than a newer player. However, this is still definitely eRepublik’s coming of age. The admins are clearly excited about it, as we can tell by their new subtitle for it, the totally not lame eRepublik Rising. It’s still v2 to me.

Anyways, I’d play the hell out of it, maybe spend up to $20 a month on it, but not much more. It’s a fun game, but not worth blowing a paycheck on.



Also change it back to v2. Rising is lame.