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The admins have responded to the overwhelming criticism directed at the proposed MPP price change. If you have not read it, it can be found here. Several glaring assumptions were made by the admins that show that this change was completely ill-considered and the admins rationale for this change rests on extremely shaky foundations. I will address several of them:

1. To start from the beginning, eRepublik is a game. And games are meant to be fun. No matter what angle we look at it from , the history of the New World shows us that political/economic/media modules are, to some extent, vital tools for the war module...

Yes, they are right and all of those modules are in need of serious reform. Especially the econ mod. It follows that if you address the significant issues in each of those modules, the game will become more fun. Simply raising the price the MPPs won't create more fun. It just creates problems which I outlined in my earlier article.

2. Whatever the method, fewer alliances between the countries is what we are trying to achieve in order to have much more interesting wars and strategies. Not just “us (+15 allies) against them (+17 allies),” all the time. Let the smaller countries to have their chance to be a deciding factor, not just a loyal ally that's happy when the “big boys” are fighting.

There is a simple way to get fewer alliances, limit the total number that a country can have.Problem solved. The bigger, richer and more powerful countries will be able to afford more MPPs. Smaller and less rich countries won't. How does this help the poor countries? Places like Hungary will still be able to afford a large number of MPPs as will a few other large countries. The small countries will just get steamrolled more easily.

3. And we get to small countries, some are worried they will get destroyed. We believe that signing only 2-3 alliances instead of ten will not hurt them because other countries will have 2-3 alliances to, not ten. Not even medium-size countries will have ten alliances signed.

I don't quite get this. A country with fewer alliances is a bigger target for attack. If the country is small as well, for example, Austria, there is a pretty high likelihood that it could be wiped off the map. Not all countries will have just 2-3 alliances as stated above. Also, it is n't necessarily the number of countries that matters, it is which countires they are allied with. This reasoning makes little sense and simply ignores the reality of the game and that all countries are not equal.

4. History also shows that the biggest of today's empires were completely, or almost completely wiped out at some time and after that time, they began to grow. Take Russia, take Hungary, take USA, take Spain, and so on.

My favourite argument. Its complete lack of context and highly simplistic analysis makes it laughable. Hungary grew at a time when the game was fairly young and the gap between those with the highest and lowest strength was much lower. A baby boom meant more then because countries were alot weaker relative to today because strength overall was much lower. The US and Spain also were fairly powerful countries with relatively large active populations when they were invaded. Thus, they had built up over time and had a good set of experienced people to help supplement their growth.

The admins also ignore places like Germany, Israel, South Africa, India, Australia, China, North Korea, Greece, Switzerland, Pakistan and so on, to use the admins words. All of these countries were nearly or totally wiped out. No boom ensued. The most recent baby boom, France, ended in pretty much a baby bust. Part of that blame can be laid on the poor economy that resulted after the end of the most recent world war. Plus, the gap to get from weak to moderately strong is quite a big one, as the eUK has learned.

5. OK, so these are the reasons why we want more expensive and thus less alliances signe😛 to have more citizens excited about what's going on in their own country or region, not half the globe away, trough a cheap MPP signed. Because we want real and exciting wars, not just training ones.

If you want people to be more excited about their region, make regions be more than just a place where RM is located and where people decide to live. Give regions more independent meaning. Countries are built almost exclusively on military strength and RM. If you had an econ mod that allowed countries to become economic powers through means other than having a load of high RM regions, it might get people interested. If you could create the eRep equivalent of RL Singapore or something, then that might really get people excited.

The point is that the admins need to fix the foundational elements of the game. The political/economic/war and media mods have significant deficiencies. Telling us that raising the price of MPPs is going to generate untold excitement reveals the admins to be out of touch with the game that they created. Their explanations range from trite to divorced from reality. This game has much promise but the admins seem intent on destroying that promise at nearly every turn.