Org Destruction: A Necessary Evil?

Day 1,144, 05:05 • Published in Canada Australia • by McMatty


Organization Destruction: A Necessary Evil?

Before I even write a word of this article, I can already see the rage coming at me. All I ask is that before you flame on, read the article and form a legible opinion. Don’t forget to vote and subscribe so you can rage on my next article 😉 Speaking of flames.



Here is a quick recap for those who don’t waste the same amount of time that I do, looking through the eRep forums. Admin has informed us that all organizations will be destroyed and each player will have the chance to migrate their companies to their player accounts. The reason given was to implement the citizenship bonus for each company located within your home country. Since this announcement, admin have done a follow up and allowed the in-game presidents to provide a list detailing government orgs with the assumption being that these will be immune to mass org destruction. No official date has been given for this Armageddon; however, players no longer have the ability to create new orgs. Obviously this has lead to pages and pages asking that orgs not be deleted. That is the nutshell of it.

When I first heard that the orgs were being deleted, I, like so many others, were furious at this. I had big plans to start up a major conglomerate, investment firm, charity and even a militia. My ears steamed for hours as I contemplated leaving the game. I decided to sleep it off and think about it. The next morning I realized to myself, this may not be as bad as I thought.



It would be safe to assume that when orgs were originally implemented, players were not intended to have dozens and dozens of them. Why else would they force you to use a different email address instead of just making it apart of your account? Now, orgs are used for a multitude of ways that differ from the original purpose of organizations. Take storage for example. Players were using multiple orgs as a way to ignore their individual account storage. In theory, this is not a bad thing, however, it was a major contributor to the trade routes that players were using to find the best foreign prices and avoid paying taxes. It also had the extra side effect of flooding the economy module with many more companies instead of the purchase of export licenses.
Orgs have also been used and are still being used for vote and sub selling which have allowed players to literally buy votes for their articles. This problem has been getting a lot of press recently (pardon the pun) and many are using it as a way to get their mogul medal and treasure map. More free gold coming into the game by eluding game mechanics.



The mass amounts of orgs that have been created are strongly contributing to multi creation and money laundering. By using the monetary market, you can log on with your account and with your org and transfer the money without it being traced or show up on the donation lists, virtually leaving no proof that any money has changed hands. Sure you can say that this method is still possible using two player accounts. However, without orgs, this would now link the two player accounts with the same IP and make it somewhat easier for the admin to track. Also the age old excuse of “we are sharing the org” is no longer valid. I can’t even count the number of forum posts using this excuse for their org being accused of not respecting the rules. And let’s not forget the amount of times you see a post claiming their shared org have had everything stolen. (How many times do you hear on a daily basis in RL not to share passwords?)



It may be inconvenient to us to no longer be able to share a company, it may be inconvenient to no longer have the extra storage space, and it may be inconvenient that we can no longer role play as a corporation. But we need to take a step back and think about it for a second. How many of us actually share companies. Now that government orgs are exempt from deletion, I would imagine this number is extremely small. Extra storage may hit some people at first, but do you really think the developers will not realize that they can make some extra gold by allowing the purchase of extra storage for players. Just look at the holiday missions; they have already started to allow the extra storage. And lastly, the role playing of a corporation is still there, you just no longer have a “corporate name”. If anything, having companies directly associated with players will cease the faceless trolling and the stealing of companies will be greatly reduced.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to keep orgs. However, if the deletion of orgs helps to prevent multi accounting and the illegal exchange of in-game money, I am all for deletion and I am willing to change some of my long term thinking and adapt. If you want to keep receiving your free gold with our maps, than there are always players out there trying to take advantage of this and cheat the system. The extra gold that eRep are illegally being forced to inject into the game, is a loss of potential revenue they would be otherwise be receiving. The same revenue that pays for servers, employees and other operating costs that keep this game we love running. If eRep needs to delete orgs in order to take away a valuable resource that is used for cheating, than it is a necessary evil to ensure that this game has a future and to ensure that we have a game to log in to tomorrow.


If you don’t have the option, how can you cheat?

As for how the org deletion will be implemented and players be compensated for their orgs, well, that is for another discussion.