[FoW] Last call, Plato!

Day 4,269, 05:12 • Published in Ireland Serbia • by Don Croata.



Hello everyone


Regardless of your nationality, citizenship, MU or a party if you’re still here and playing this game it means you’re around because of one of three reasons. Either you met too many nice people you don’t wanna leave or it became such a huge habit you don’t wanna get rid of because it gives you some ‘other life’ where you can do some other things. Third reason are the rarest one, it’s only few players around here that wants to compete, plan, organize and work by game mechanics in order to achieve some goals. There’s probably not more than 20 players who are here for this reason.

When I joined Erepublik it was the opposite. Most of the players joined & stayed here in order to organize into groups, plan on the ways of fighting, compete with their friends and do things as a community. It was the original reason to stay for almost everyone who played v1. Why is that so? What changed so much over all these years? I’m not sure if I have the answer on that question, but I’ll try.




What kept nations active?


This game used to be a strategy game. It had you thinking about things. You had much more options and you could focus on many other things than simply fighting in a battle. For example, you could play with monetary market with more than 2 currencies. You would need to look into how specific countries are doing and predict more than one thing to make an informative decision on what to buy & what to sell. Then, if you’d make some money by trading you could’ve spend hours and hours thinking about where to invest the money because there were so many options. You had to think about the game and your own decisions were something that’d give you the advantage over the other players.

Back then MPP’s, alliances and other stuff were worthy. No matter what you do, unless you’d tank tons and tons of gold you could only fight once or twice a day. You had to think about where to use one of those fights. Imagine if you’d have to fight only once a day now? What would you do for the rest of the playing day? That fight was worthy and each fight was much more valuable to your country or an ally. Fighter’s strength and rank wasn’t that important as game was focused more on communities instead of individuals. Few new players would easily outplay the strongest tank of the country. Communities were forced to work on their population. Nowadays game isn’t forcing communities to do anything except the useless TW’s that serves no other purpose than gold farming. That gold will be used in a battle in which you’ll take some region without causing any significant damage because only 10 players will suffer from no production after you’d take that region. All we’re doing here, at this moment is for nothing. There’s no greater purpose, there are no big goals. There’s no available long term strategy or community projects. Sure, the players also stopped caring that much after so many years, but the main reason lies somewhere else. Plato turned the community game into the individuals game.

An individual used to invest its time and make decisions in order to gain more money, gold and expand its economy first, employ other people and then repeat the process, but in a totally different way. Wars used to be significant, economies could been devastated after some big battles and each battle was important. Resources and bonuses meant 10 times more than they mean now when everyone can simply sell a pack or earn the money by fighting in a useless TP battle with no other meaning except the fighting itself.




What changed the game we all fell in love with?


The moment when new players became irrelevant this game has been doomed to fall. Parties, organizations, projects, individuals and whole economies used to rely on new players. Since new players used to be highly important in every segment of the game communities were kinda forced to bring them to the game. Some individuals would pay large amounts of RL money, not to the game, but to the RL newspapers, portals and forums in order to promote the game and its communities. New players always brought new ideas, fresh blood and finally much more reasons to play. Imagine sticking 10 years in this game simply because of the same people you’ve met such a long time ago. Now imagine the joy of communities getting new players who are joining that community and enriching it.

If you’d write an article over 2000 players would read it. The feedback you’ve been receiving, the comment wars, debates and discussions were spectacular. Getting among the 40 people in the Congress was a great honour so every congressmen tried hard to stay in, to contribute, give ideas and advices. Some individuals would spend hours on the forums, debating on how to make the country better. Parties had over 1000 members, I remember the Polish political party that had more members than there are active players in the game today. Yeah, those were the good times when you’d meet a nice new person every day. When new players fought for the power and when Governments could choose many different things.

I even forgot to mention that alliances would last for a long time. You would never be able to meet everyone in your country, imagine how hard it would be to meet everyone in opposed alliances or countries. It was a much bigger joy to fight them, now its weird to fight against people who are or were your friends. Battles had more strategic options, now its just about opening the battle on time.





Is there any hope for our beloved game?


I’m not sure. Each one of us still finds something to keep him around, some small community, few people he likes to spend his time with. I’m the type of a person that always tries to animate others, develop the projects and make some mark in the community. Those things are getting harder and harder. Take my MU for example. We’ve gathered over 40 active people in a short time. We organized ourselves, we’re having a great fun in the channel, we’re joking with each other and follow the priorities. But when the day ends new one starts. Everything you do isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. So what if we conquered Belgrade. So what if we attacked UK for the 1000th time. Nothing will change. It probably won’t be much fun because all the resources, accounts and people are already well known. Not a single new player will be able to change the fate of those wars or contribute more than making a few thousands in the air round. Which is nothing really. There are still the other three ground rounds where everything is already well known.

We’re meant to buy packs in order to have more energy and compete with having less people than the other side. Then again, the other side has like 500 active players. We have 400. Maybe I even said too much. It’s not the game in which you have the chance to change your own destiny or a destiny of your country. Personally that’s what kept me hooked. The MU, country and friends only kept me here after the game has changed.

In conclusion, there’s only one thing Plato and game developers are able to do in order to change things, attract new people and create some new sparks. Create the NEW eWORLD of Erepublik. Let’s start from the beginning when the new players will be meaningful again. Just copy the game we had in v1, its game mechanics and much needed collectivism was what made this game great. You’ll still make some incomes, your business will still have profits, you’ll promote and gain players again. You’ll make less, but you’ll have a long term strategy. Just gives us few more years of that old passion we used to have. Maybe it’s just me, I was 17 years old when I registered, maybe I was easier to be impressed with back then. But apparently I’m not alone considering such a few people are sticking here with me. Not a single copy of this game will ever reach Erepublik, it’s only Erepublik that’s able to give us that old feeling. In the name of all players that left this game after loving it once - let’s have some fun again.








Yours,
Don Croata