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One year and a month ago, eRoC and eChina declared war on eSK. It is one of those date that it seems no one remembered. For eSKers, that is the date that they lost their home land, many players as a result have to move and scatter to other countries to continue the resistance, it caused a complete breakdown of the community. For eRoC, they probably got bored, because for the last three hundreds and sixty odd days, everyday felt the same.

So what was the reasons for invasion? Depends on who you talk to. there were many explanations. The official one given by the eRoC government was that eSK signed a number of MPPs with countries from a rival alliance, and they believed eSK was planning an invasion on them.

One year and a month later, eSK was returned back on the map, minus a few regions, but with the same set of MPPs, and perhaps more, and the number of invasion by eSK on eRoC over the year?? Zero. It seems strange that out of all the things eRoC said they wanted to do at the time, like having better relationship with Koreans, trying to get eSK to stop allying with their enemies. They really havent make too much effort to do that, but they sure fought tooth and nails in order to keep hold of our lands. And in one time, they even wiped us because we accidentally winning one of the RWs.

So why is this date still important now? Not everything happened change the course of history, the wars between eJapan and eSK from way back was important at the time are no longer relevant to the relationship between eSK and eJapan now.

I think this is important now because from that day onward, that was the end of a healthy rivary in East Asia, eRoC emerged as the sole power here, and a healthy competition became a monopoly. And with the emergence of the monopoly, all the countries in East Asia suffered a decline as a result. Although some may argue this decline can be explained by the fact that the game is poorly run, and many players basically tired of the game as a result. However, by comparing the statistics about player population in other regions, the evidence show there is a much lower player retention rate in this region than other countries in eRepublik.

My theory on this is relatively simple. People dont stay in the game because their country have the most land, people dont stay in the game because they have the most bonuses, people stay because there is something for them to do, and they are needed.

Peace is the worst thing that can happened in a game that is based on war. It means that no one have anything to do and everyone is waiting for something to happen. And by swiftly winning the war, eRoC surrounded themselves with countries that are allied to them, this is good in real life, but in this game, it means there are nothing else for people to do at all.

eRoC really dont have to go far to find another country in the same situation. The mighty eChina was once one of most populist country in the eWorld with over 10000 active citizens, but now, they are down to almost less than 3000. They were one of the better run country in the world, and probably still are, and one of the few that managed to keep all 10 resources, but unfortunately, they have this mentality that holding onto this 10 resources is their priority and they created this empire so safe from the rest of the world that there was nothing for their countrymen to do, and slowly, people lose interest and left.

This is a principle that I think many countries do understand even if they dont say it out loud, there are more EDEN and ex-ONE countries neighbouring each other in Europe and the Americas than in this region, they dont go to war with each other at all time, and they certainly arent seeking to permanently occupy other countries all the time. In a recent war between Indonesia, US, Croatia and Romania. Indonesia was wiped, they talked, and they got their regions back shortly after.

Healthy competition generates interest, when you have one side tries to outdo the other side, and the other side tries to do even better, there is how progress is made. If one side holds the monopoly of power over others, the stability causes stagnation.

And the end result? people have more time complaining about Plato than getting angry with your natural enemies, it explains why so many more players leaving here than countries in other regions.