Join the new world

Not so long ago I wrote an article on the downfall of eRepublik due to changes in recent months; how it started off as a fun, fair game 2-3 years back and has now become a complete waste of time and money. The active population of eRepublik is falling, and the developers still haven't learnt that their changes that might well be getting them more profit in the short term, are killing the game for the long term. Lets be realistic - who will actually still be playing (or paying to play) this game in another 12-18 months? I'm sure not many of us, especially if they keep it up with these changes.

Much of eRepublik's paying customers have been around for atleast 12 months. A recent trend I have seen is new players quitting almost instantly when they see how much real-life money investment this game requires. This then makes them think 'wtf is this shiz' and quit. Existing players don't quit because they have status and friends in the game. These are the people playing for the game to be run; they won't be around forever either though. Most online games can keep players active for an average of 1-2 years, before they get bored and move to something new.

Lets take a look at some of the ways the eRepublik team have tried to get more paying customers recently:
-The loyalty program - Only costs like £20,000 a year for diamond, which is the only way of getting any significant bonus (Unless you like to be classed as a 'diamond' customer). Lets all get that spare £20,000 we keep for playing games and become diamond people! Or, you can spend £15 to get enough Loyalty Points for an energy bar as a reward for your 'loyalty' over advancing to that diamond level that we all want to be at.
-The 30% bonuses - Sometimes they offer us 30% more gold to buy gold on certain days. This unfortunately makes me care about buying gold just as much as I do when its at normal price.
-The time they made it 50% off companies - Rather than making everybody happy, this made more people mad who had bought Q5 companies at the regular price. This drove away even more paying customers.

Despite the eRepublik Team's generosity and love for us all, as evident by the above, I'm still trying to decide whether to quit eRepublik or wait for some kind of improvement. Lets look at some of the recent things that make eRepublik completely stupid. (Most of them involve broken promises and money coincidentally)

The War Module
After being promised by the eRepublik Team that there would be limits on wellness packs; simply by buying thousands of gold worth of wellness packs a day, Romper alone seems to have changed their mind.

This creates a very unfair game for most of us. Romper alone can do more influence than entire countries can.

I chose a random day of this month, 9th May 2011. eUK came 31st in influence, with 3,4million worth of influence. eAustralia in their battle vs eIndonesia came in #23, with a respectable 6million influence. Romper on the other hand often does around the same influence of the two countries combined every day.


The stack of death from Civilization, I often think of Romper as one of these

That's right, a single person does the same amount of influence that entire countries and their allies can do, probably a combined population of 10,000 people. Despite the unfairness, there's still no signs that wellness packs will ever be limited, despite the promise that they would a few months back by Plato.

If eRepublik were to give Romper his own country, despite is having a population of 1, it would in fact be capable of taking over half of the eWorld. Does it really take this for the developers to realise how stupid their game is?

The Economy Module
As I don't have £1,000 to spend everyday on wellness packs, I have to resort to the Economy Module as a favourite module. After I deal my amazing 10k influence per day and Romper does 2,000 times this amount, I go back to running my companies, but oh wait, there's nothing to actually run because no companies make a profit anymore! So instead, I now have to just click 'work' 6 times every day. Fun right?



Well if you thought that was fun, wait until this ingenious idea of storage comes along tomorrow. I've heard in the forums that they wish to charge 35 gold to increase your storage to 10,000. Seriously?

This is another promise broken, Plato promised us that simply owning a company will increase the limit by an amount relative to this company. But oh, look at that! Just a month later we've been told we have to pay 35 gold instead for what we were told was free. Instead I'm going to sell my companies (Disolve the ones I can no longer sell!! Another crap idea.) And move on to the media module, the only thing I have left to resort to.



Other changes to the economy module are the following:
-No Path to the Capital - Region swaps are no longer possible in a lot of circumstances, as this little change meaning there's no route to the capital means that owning regions outside of your home country, or having your country cut up, means you can no longer get any benefits other than an ego boost.
-The 10 gold limit - We now can't transfer more than 10 gold to people. This means that tanks can no longer be funded by their governments, and must buy their own gold.
-Can no longer sell raw material companies - Now, when I wish to get something back for the four raw material companies I own, I can't sell them. Instead, I have to disolve them for a 50% return. This means that I lose 20 gold.

I can't be bothered going in to the rest, but I have an entire article on it somewhere, just look through my articles if you're interested in reading it!

The Media Module

Now, the final major module of eRepublik. The media module! The changes to this also suck too. Now, you have to click through all of the categories in order to find the newest or top rated articles. So now, government articles and battle orders are even more of a pain to get to.

I personally hate this new media thing, just like the saying goes, 'Why fix it if it ain't broke?'. (Or in this case, why break it at all?)

Related to This in the ToS and Privacy Policy

Also, for those of you with a good eye, you may have noticed this change to the terms of service not so long ago:

14.2 Any Content you upload to our Website will be considered non-confidential and non- proprietary, and we have the right to use, copy, distribute and disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose. We also have the right, at our discretion, to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any Content posted or uploaded by you to our Website constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

Which then leads on to this in the Privacy Policy:

3.5 We may sell or licence your shouts, articles, content, data and any other messages you post on any area of eRepublik to third parties for their use, in which case your username and any personally identifiable information you have included in your shouts, articles, private messages or through any other in-game communication channels may be shown to users of such third party websites. Except as set out in this Privacy Policy, we do not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any of your personal information.

So in other words, anything you post in eRepublik becomes property of eRepublik. To then re-iterate this, the Privacy Policy states that if your article is good enough, they may sell or license it! Also, it states that they sell data on you, just not your personal information. So, be careful what you post to eRepublik!

That's all for now, vote and subscribe for more!