Passed, Unpleasant, Shrewder

Day 2,188, 09:58 • Published in South Africa South Africa • by Wilpanzer


Seeing the abysmal public opinion of new releases like Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty Ghosts made me doubt the integrity of the gaming industry's future. Like with BF4 EA Games completely rushed the release so that it could release before CoD Ghosts. Ghosts was a blunder and the early release of BF4 was riddled with bugs and glitches.

It looks like this is what gaming has come to. Looking at eRep over the last 12 months we've only seen one face, and that's greed. The divide has grown phenomenally and as RL citizen and resident of a 3rd world country I no longer feel compelled to buy gold or follow all the rules. I used to buy minute amounts of gold via mobile to keep up with the average player, but since the mobile service for SA was discontinued I can no longer get a fix of 6 gold for the month. Just completing a DO is expensive as hell.

I believe eRep has screwed itself for the future. It's ironic because eRep once had the best balance for a social browser game. One didn't really have to buy gold to make best use of the mechanics. Profit existed and a good businessman could make a good income if he worked daily. Today you have to invest hundreds of RL currency to make profit.

Elections used to be great fun. In congress elections people voted for you as a single representative with goals and dreams. There was nothing like a top 5 party full of multies. Now the cheaters run amok wherever they want. There's nothing we can do but hope they won't sit in our government for too long.

War used to be fun. With good tactics small nations could beat a superpower, but today occupied regions get taxed and the admins just serve nations like Poland and Serbia. Again, there's nothing we can do but "rent" our regions to bigger nations.

Earlier this year I quit Facebook and I've never logged in since. Knowing that I can easily abstain from playing erep again in my life makes me wonder, why am I taking so much kak? Why do I put up with a game where its admins completely stirred the balance? It's unfortunate that no clone would ever match erep in its golden years.

The only thing left in eRep that's not totally corrupted is its communities, but I suppose with the unfair game mechanics many more people will leave.

hierdie game is opgedonner.

I end this article with the following quote:
"There are dozens of online games where you can gain some territory/resource, establish alliances with other players (Travian, for instance, which I used to play). Yet, you don't see many communities forming around them, as soon as the server reset people disband and start again (or not). This game is different, it has a "persistent universe" which resemble the RL world, thus it allowed an amazing collection of in-game history and narratives to emerge, complex relationships to develop etc. Yet, I'm let with the sour taste of a team that seems not to care about it a little. "
- Yfke van de Zand (I can't take it anymore)