The eWorld - Simple as That -

Day 674, 00:33 • Published in Romania Romania • by sebahmah

Last article 15 days ago... damn i never thought i can resist not writing an article for 3 days, 15?? that's incredible..

Prepare for a wall of text, bring a cookie, a coffee, some soda maybe, bookmark this if you are not sure you will have the time to read it now.. but give it a try.

Although not very active, i still stayed close, following all events and happenings in erep. Also i'd say i can better understand the dynamics and perception of the normal casual user not involved in irc, forums, day-to-day chats with friends (although i did plenty of that).


The eWorld is simple.

1. It's all about passion

This game has as an engine passion, and commitment. In my opinion for a 2 year project MMOG the active user base is rather low, and this happens mainly because like it or not this game is not casual. I know it says, only 2 clicks per day, quality free entertainment blah blah.. but in fact this game is quite demanding, and for those who deliver can be quite rewarding. It requires passion, and all the time investment that comes with it. Passionate people will build the ecommunity, will drag other users, will role-play and will add sprks to the game and the lore that is built up. And this is a cycle, as feherlo gets more passionate, it makes me involve even more, if Hungarians play the game more determined this will force romanians and poles to step up also... and so on. Also the game thrives on passion, it needs constant fresh passionate people to resuscitate the old ones that get bored with the repetitive cycle.

2. The game has some high entry-barrier filters

I'd say the biggest problem for the game is the entry-barrier. 80% of the users are filtered by the first 5 absolutelly boring first days. That's huge, drop the percentage to 50% and u get probably 50.000 users that could have been saved, and 50% is nothing near "GOOD". For God's sake, that guy made an account, you got his interest, you made him to commit some time.. how hard can it be? Well, apparently very. And without fresh passionate people the game is hardly improving.

Practically for each old user, you need atleast 2 new ones to make things work, but all i can see is that joining rates stalled, and peaking at the activity level it wanders around 2000-2500, which is the number was on in late april.

3. The game exploits nationalism

If passion is gass, nationalism is the catalyst or the ignition. As an economic simulator, social game, or political sim this game is rather mediocre.. and it should be like this. Adding the military and strategic modules the mix gets great. An entire society simulated from the most mundane actions to huge decisions affecting thousands of users.

War is literally the thing that ignites economy, social activity, joining rates, media. And war always because of a number of reasons: a. for the lolz (good old days justinous), b. logical rational need to improve arguments (resources, strategic positions), c. nationalism, and pure hate.

I'd say that taking all wars into account that happened in the eWorld we have 5% a., 35% b and 60% c. Also some of the b.s are in fact c.s, need for resources is a good cover reason for spanking your neighbor's ass.

Also there is an interesting mechanic here, nationalism augments passion, and does it rather easy. If it's hard to atract a casual user with the be president and push the buttons idea, fighting against the evil barabrians who killed your grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-grand-fath er 500 years ago defently takes care of the business.

Ironically or not, this game runs on hate, like it or not.

4. This game cannot be won

Nobody wins. And here i must say "chapeau" to the game designers. The balance between power and underpower is absolutely PHD thesis material. Whenever a power will rise in erepublik, a tic-tac clock covering its imminent destruction is triggered. Being the underdog activates even more nationalism -> more passion -> advantage in activy -> WIN.

It's human nature to be compasionate or to feel empathic with the one that is abused or hurt. This is why the non-powers will unite and eventually stand against the aggresor. At this point game mechanics help alot, the defender has huge advantages taking into account the MPP rules and how regaining territory gives so many tools for the underdog, RW guerilla, constant blocking and so on.

Practically it is almost imposible to hold on to a region as an aggresor.

And the best part now: the aggresor will soon become the victim and the underdog the barabrian that but***s the other guy with the reason: "they shall pay for the atrocities done in the past". In no time, this pay for the past will just turn the table, the mechanism starting again.

And this is just great for the game, and game owners, the game can;t be won, the game gets constant nationalism bursts, passion, activity, new people, all with a basic cycle that gets done without outside involvement.

5. Power corrupts

Power corrupts, as soon as EDEN/FORTIS will strip indo and hungary of all their possessions they will seize the opportunity to make some "order" and take what they "rightfully own". And this is very interesting from a psychological point of view, being abused for let's say 4-6 months starts some kind of need to succeed and payback urge, that can only feed itself with becoming a super-power or a dominator over the past aggressor. Also its easy to see this as legitimate if you think how much the underdog endured all this time. For him, abusing now the ex-imperialists is more then right and fair.

In the end its the same shit over and over.

And another irony: this is how it should be, otherwise in a few months we will all quit the brand new incredibly boring erepublik. Imagine, someone brakes the loop and says, let's all treat our enemies right, and spread love and happiness, peace at home! everyone, peace in the world (hmm.. this sounds familiar). If this would happen, nationalism would go down, people will get off-guard, passion will lower, activity will be at a lowest and so on, we would live in e-nothing-happens-republik. This sounds quite awfull, the good news is this is very unlikly to happen, if let's say romania and hungary decide to bee best friends and indonesia with USA, Iran or Russia will seize the moment and aim for glory, medium or emerging countries that never tasted world-domination will get their game on.

6. Sometimes quitting is best

And i'm no talking about quitting because the game is biased or bugged and so on. I'm talking about the old users, the sages. Their know-how sometimes is bad, their experience might slow-down the loop, the been there it was awfull advices are good for a country or for a group but overall they are slowing the pace of the game. Imagine how awesome it would be to have a group of rookies in charge of Hungary that feel like: WTF we are totally awesome, we kick ass, let's burn Poland. This would bring another conflict, and another spark that will bring passion,activity and so on. Unfortuantlly there are old grannies who understand how much FAIL would this bring on the short term, on the long term its debatable.

If old users don't quit, or don't let the new ones make mistakes we are slowing getting to a status quo that hurts the game overall.


Conclusion:

Sorry for the awful writing and the wall-text overall.
PEACE sucks, and im not talking about the alliance, i'm talking about the disease that hurts our game. Good news Australia seems to have got the cure, and hopefully ignite a new spark.


All the best,
Sa ne auzim invingatori intr-un joc ce nu poate fi castigat!