A Year in eRep

Day 937, 05:15 • Published in USA USA • by Zheng He

The word of the day is Happy Birthday!



On June 14, 2009, I joined the eRepublik, knowing nothing except my RL brother said it was fun. For LULZ I started in China, and took the name of a famous Chinese explorer.

The first week was hard. I couldn't read the welcome message (no English translation). I got fired every other day but didn't know why (low wellness, doh!). Most papers were in Chinese.

When I reached level 5 there were no battles, and by the time I got 5 golds at level six my wellness was below 40 and things looked desperate. So I did what RL poor Chinese do: I spent gold for a moving ticket and moved to America!

I also spent 2 golds for a wellness pack so I could fight.

My teenage years were trial by fire: I arrived in the USA just as World War III swept through North America. My first battle was the opening attack in Nova Scotia. Alaska and Hawaii were soon taken and then California. I fought in Kansas, California, Kentucky, New Jersey ... dozens of states, thousands of small towns ... as PEACE rolled through our heartland. Times were bleak when we were down to NJ and FL, and finally just Florida.

Remember the effort to get people to evacuate to our fortresses in NJ and FL? Many did, but many didn't. Some evacuated to Europe and I bought 3 moving tickets just in case. When days were dark, we elected a new president, a joker named Emerick. That's when we started fighting together, following the DoD orders and coordinating with our allies. We regained the initiative and started liberating states. The southeast. The midwest. The northeast. Portugal withdrew. In a massive tank-fest, we failed to liberate California. Then in a massive 2-CLICKER fest, we DID LIBERATE California! Indonesia was gone. We turned on France in the east and liberated more. And finally we retook Nunavut and Alaska!

I made some good friends. I started my newspaper. Its purpose was to get 2-clickers the essential information they wanted without having to wade through the forums or longer, more in depth, analyses. I tried to get it out early in the morning (USA-time), which suits my schedule. I made more friends, and found my readers include non-USA citizens in our allied countries and some from PEACE countries.

I learned that clear, concise information is powerful and appreciated. I had fun, and tried to make my articles moderately funny but factual.

I also learned how easy it is for a game like this to interfere with real-life. Take care, all, the eRepublik is not real!!

I also learned many things about how the game works, and tried to pass them on in my paper with simple direct language. Terms like RL, 2-clicker, MPP, tanking, intiative, and game mechanics are confusing at first. War strategies are hard to understand, especially without seeing the big picture.

Big-head officer: Constant wars, plus spending all our money on weapons, helped many of us level up. I quickly ranked up from a useless Corporal to a stupid Private, then a dumbass Sergeant, later a dipshit Lieutenant, and as an asshole Captain saw the war turn in our favor and started fighting in Scandinavia. Then son-of-a-bitch Colonel in Saskatchewan, a Gerk General, and finally a Freekin' Field Marshal after joining the Army.



Army: Shortly after we cleaned the pests out of North America, my favorite newspaper writer, Aeros, wrote that most of the action would be moving overseas. Probably to Europe. I saw the Army was in Scandinavia. I was willing to self-fund travel and weapons, but didn't know where or when. So I applied to the Army (I was Colonel at the time). Didn't hear anything. A month or so later, after making Gemeral, I applied again and this time was accepted!!

The Army supplies guns and moving tickets. But the best thing is they tell me where the action is! Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Spain, Finland, Great Britain, Japan, Israel, Turkey, South Africa, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland, ... close to 30 different countries.

Sadly, the Army takes more time than 2-clicking and my writing really went down.

Army Officer: A few months into my Army career, my Sergeant, JerseyGirlDani, asked me if I would be interested in becoming a Sergeant. "No, I don't have the time. Well ... maybe ..." A few weeks later, General George Armstrong Custer asked me to join a new Army division as an officer. How could I say no? So I've been leading a small platoon of soldiers for several months. Fun and rewarding!

Yesterday I got the best birthday present! One of my articles went top 5 in the USA for the first time! (Also for a short time, pushed out by DoD orders.)

Anyway, that's it. So I started the game as a poor immigrant, became a journalist, then an Army officer. I doubt if anybody read this far, but I enjoyed writing it. And I'm still having fun with this nonsense!

See you next June 14 ...

Zheng He
Freekin' Field Marshal