Oscar Wilde: Interview with the editor

Day 2,959, 07:00 • Published in India Croatia • by Anubis.3


Today, we bring you an interview with our editor-in chief, Harsha Jayanthi, by our special correspondent, Oscar Wilde. Up for discussion is a fair bit of history, politics and some journalism

Oscar: Greetings, Mr.Editor, It has been two years since you began your career here. Could you give our readers some insight into your first days in this game?

Harsha: Hello Oscar, yep. It’s been two years already!

I still remember my first days vividly. When I first appeared on the scene, all eIndia was under the control of an european country I had barely heard about. We had some guy called Windfall as our president. He looked something like this



I have to say I was pretty impressed. Having a viking guy as your president sounded like a better deal than a sleepy ecnomist 😛

Who were your strongest influences in those formative months?

There was a thing going on called the “babyroom” in IRC. Innocuous newbes were put in there to be trained about the importance of not fighting and the importance of windfall’s policies. There I met Vinayak, a guy who created accounts, gave them away when they got too big and started over. I lasted as long, in part due to his influence and this interview is dedicated to him.

Ashwameth as well, without doubt. He was incredibly enthusiastic and willing to go into depth about the intricate mechanics of the game. He was the one who could hand you the solution to extraordinary situations. Looking back, I realize that the attrition rate was pretty high. People would appear and disappear faster than quantum particles. From his perspective, I could be gone tomorrow or next week. Yet, he cheerfully took the time to give out advice.

Tell us a bit about your pre-erepublik years

I was involved in another game, let us call it “TW”. Every player would start off with one village and spent their time trying to take other people’s villages. You needed to be preputually on the look-out for attacks. Have a cold? – too bad, you got to farm for the day. Got someplace to go? – look for someone to babysit your account for you. Long story short, it was a pretty demanding game. You could wake up one day to find that you’ve lost everything

Seeing it that way, erep was perfect. You could do “2-clicking” whenever busy and take up interesting roles during the holidays. So, I signed up

Among the first things you did was start The Giza Gazette. From that, it can be easily gathered that Journalism is your core interest in this game.

Oh yes, definitely. It’s the beginning and end of the game for me. Every aspect of this newspaper reflects my passions in life, from science to satire, foreign policy to education. The eIndian community is a great audience and I love writing for the people here.

Please tell us about your best moments as an editor, don’t be afraid to include the flip side as well.


By far, I’ll say my Paradox of Pakistan article was the best of the lot. More than the upvotes and endorsements garnered, it was the discussion that made it special. People from both sides – india and Pakistan took the time to write and debate in the comments and it was a good feeling.

Writing an article - good ones - can be demanding. Sometimes I write even more slowly than George Martin! even then, mistakes occasionally happen. On one occasion, I mixed up Romania and Latvia, and it was embarrassing. But, we have to acknowledge them and move on.

You had a relatively late beginning in politics. Why was this the case?

Typically, I hate joining established organizations; you can call me the perennial underdog. After a bit of waiting, I got drafted into a new party ran by a personality called Pomsta, who was endowed with the unfortunate attributes of being a foreigner and a female. Brave and new, Pomsta ran for president in her first month and people freaked out. After receiving a few shirtless pictures, Pomsta left the country and was never heard from again.

I was quiet for a pretty long while, until a guy called Bombay Bomb found me, in the marketplace of all places and made me join his party 🙂

Finally, to conclude this interview, what have the two years taught you that you would like to pass on to the latest generation of newbes?

Getting a big account is not the only way to get up there. Great strength and all is lucrative, but growing from scratch teaches you patience and, more importantly, you can play on your own terms.

We also tend to forget that building relationships is very important. A handful of good, strong friendships will serve you better than a loose group of acquantiances in the long run.