Where has it gone?

Day 1,245, 02:27 • Published in South Africa South Africa • by Bobady zoo

Everyday I become more disillusioned with this game. And no, it’s not because of the malfunctioning economic module, it’s not because of the 10 gold limit, it’s not because of the irritating tweaks to the media module and it’s not because a single person can do more damage than a country. I just feel erepublik is missing something, an epicness of sorts. It’s not something which I can attribute to a single change, but rather to a group of changes which each have contributed to a more and more boring experience.

What I mean by a lack of “epicness” is today; very few battles mean anything; very few wars mean anything. I cycle through the list of battles each day looking for the most important battle, and something hits me everyday; do any of these battles matter? In days gone by, we would have far fewer battles open, in some cases Training Wars were opened so countries could get an opportunity to hit their daily lot. But battles meant something; regions meant something. Who can forget all the major tussles for Lion King which saw players give everything to defend or conquer the region, or Rhone Alps with its 1 million damage wall. Who can forget about Limpopo in our very own country; or what about North of Brazil. Al these regions meant something and when there was a battle for them, everyone gave whatever they could. Regions developed folk tails, we were told by elder players of the battles for regions like WSR; and these battles made erepublik what it is today.

But today, there doesn’t seem to be an important battle bar the final battle for a country. It makes no difference losing the 5% advantage of a resource, even the 25% means less and with countries like the USA having 10 of most of their resources, they could lose 9 of the regions and still gain a bonus. No more do we have high regions which we will give everything we can for, rather we have multiple regions which have no special significance. The only time you see a battle which could be considered as epic is when a country is fighting to stay on the map, and even then they can be quite the anti-climax. But even if you get wiped off the map, who cares? Companies only shut down temporarily until you are back on the map, you don’t really lose anything. Before you would lose the companies in the region that was conquered, that meant that if you lost a region, you lost a major source of income. Sometimes I wonder why I should even fight; it’s not like the battle matters….

The second reason for this lack of “epicness” is that wars mean absolutely nothing. I years gone by, DoWs cost a fortune so when you made the plunge, you were going to do it for an important reason. There weren’t free NEs or free attacks, when you attack there was a reason behind it. It meant that battles were harder to find, but at the same time they were more important. And the MPP rule has done this no favours. Conquering and wiping a major nation off the map used to be an amazing achievement which required immense power or a mistake by your foe. Today, it requires your alliance to be able to hit more. Countries had to be clever, activating your opponents MPPs could be disastrous so it required a major decision by the aggressor. It meant that wars were more important, and that success was harder to come by. And that is how it should be; invading another nation should be hard!

Now these are by no means the largest problems. But if this game had retained that “epicness”, if it meant something them we would forget about the other problems because we would be having fun. I want to be able to remember battles; like I remember from my erep youth. I still remember Western Australia, I still remember Limpopo, I still remember Central Hungary, I still remember Lion King, I still remember Hello Kitty. But I cannot remember a single battle from the last month or two, and that saddens me.

A disillusioned erep player (but for how much longer)