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English only on this one. And it is a long one 🙂

For a long time, i was thinking about writing a review about V2. I was among the first beta testers to play. I could have written about defeating Alex Craciun in my very first fight, about how i think the military should organize, post some theories about the girl at the residential area and the 12 gold bed and how this fits with a game 14 year olds can play. I never found the time sadly, and quite frankly, a few words are enough to describe it: i don't like V2.
V2 is a bad game. Way too complicated and time consuming for the average user, way too much gold to spend everywhere. Hell, my home PC doesn't even fit the minimum system requirements to play it. Yep, my PC is not good enough to play a browser game anymore.

The whole problem started already in V1. V1 stopped being good for me, the average Joe, somewhere after the PEACE campaign in Northern America. The problem was that from that point off, we had 2 alliances racing for a better organization, and reaching the point where the average user's decision didn't really count anymore. Most battles were won by gold spending fests alone. The times where countries would send in their armies all over the 24hs was gone, basically all the big fighting was done in the last minutes. On top of that, the admins made some decision i don't like. I didn't like Lana, i didn't like the treasure maps, the anti-cheating system is too little and too late. Important things as the resource distribution, the bad economic and political modules weren't really touched. And this doesn't change in V2 either.
Basically, i as many others, have stayed for the community in bigger parts. I love the guys in the Black Army. I enjoy the RL meetings, even though i could get to Romanian meetings only so far. (yep, some Romanians have the direct responsibility of keeping me in this game)

All of this kind of reminded me about a game i used to play a while back. I am not sure if i can name it, so i won't, let's just say it is an online football manager. At one point, it was preparing to reach 1 million users (they were a few thousand short), though it never did. Some bad decisions were made, people were leaving, so did I, of the people i knew in RL playing it nobody does anymore. Community was the sole thing people keeping there, but soon that wasn't enough either.
In the 12th hour, they did manage to save it, but they are down to 875k players (they were even lower), only a little above their main rivals, who back a few years was at only about 200k users.

Long story short, in said game there was a forum post i loved very much. Reading it through the other day, i realized that 90% of it were so true to eRepublik as well. So i cut the inadequate parts out, (a part about surveys) and here is the rest of the story. All credits go to the original poster, a guy/girl using the nick elkabong back there. Who knows, maybe he is playing here too.


The Little Red Engine

A Parable in Several Parts

Chapter the First
Once upon a time, there was a Little Red Engine. The engine had a simple job: he was to take his passengers from Littleton to Sunnyville. The engine loved his job, and the people who rode upon the little engine had nothing but good to say about their ride every day. They loved the smooth ride; they loved the countryside; they loved the mountainous view. Things were very idllyic indeed, between Littleton and Sunnyville.

Except that after a while, the passengers became bored of their pastoral daily commute. It began as quite undertones, but soon the Little Engine could hear very clearly that his passengers were no longer unwaveringly happy, as he had come to expect. So the Engine spoke to his engineer, for everyone knows that an Engine DOES the work, but an Engineer is the one that must first APPROVE the work.

The Engine relayed his passengers' unhappiness to his engineer, with the suggestion that they take another route from Littleton to Sunnyville. The engineer disagreed, maintaining instead that the passengers were not unhappy about the route they took daily, but were actually stricken with a sort of malaise. And thus the engineer decided that he would strike the train's passengers out of their boredom by carrying animals from the zoo to the beach every day.


Chapter the Second

The Little Red Engine couldn't see how this would help his passengers at all, but as the Engineer had the final say, he was bound to carry both his normal passengers, and the zoo animals on the same train every day.

At first, the passengers liked the animals, and some even loved the experience. But, much more quickly than they had tired of the same scenery, they tired of the zoo animals, for some of the animals stank, and almost all of the animals were an impedence to reading the morning paper. And in short order, the passengers were as bored as they had been originally, and a bit unhappy to have the zoo animals foisted upon them.

Which led the Engineer and the Little Red Engine to talk of changes again. The Little Engine suggested that they ditch the zoo animals, and just take a different path two or three times a week, but once again, the Engineer, who, as we have said, has the final word, thought otherwise.


Chapter the Third
The Engineer remembered how happy the passengers had been when they first rode with the animals. The happy children's faces were really all he could remember of the whole experiment, and the uglier side of the adventure, with animals eating children's lunches at 9:00 AM, and some ruder animals leaving dirty messes on other childrens' seats, the engineer seemed oblivious to.

The engineer decided that the passengers needed music to calm their rattled nerves, and he had soothing music piped in. Which really did calm the passengers nerves, for a short while. But sooner than the animals had bothered them, the passengers were bothered by the din of the music AND the animals, and were again unhappy.

Chapter the Fourth

Well, in what has become a familiar story, the Engine and the Engineer argued through the night about what changes would make their passengers happiest. It was a long and tedious verbal joust. But in the end, the Engine again had to admit defeat. The animals would stay, and the music would stay, and the route would stay the same. They would raise ticket prices slightly, and hand out free candy to the children, and free snacks to all.

The Little Engine could hardly argue about this! He was just worried that people might not ENJOY their food, or their trip, while the train was full of animals, with loud blaring music. And he was right about that. The food was eaten without complaint, and for a very short while the passengers seemed happy. But there was still the whisper of discontent, and now it had almost risen to a roar.

Passengers talked of taking a plane from Littleton to Sunnyville. Some passengers talked of riding bicycles, or even walking. Some small number even stopped riding the train altogether.

Which led the Little Red Engine and the Engineer to one final discussion.


Chapter the Fifth
They argued through the night. The Little Engine arguing that the passengers just needed a nice transport from Littleton to Sunnyville, with a little change in scenery. The Engineer argued over and over again that they should give the passengers more and more things. Candy, beads, baubles, free magazine !!, a bright new bell that would ring in Big Ben tones every 1/4 hour. The Little Engine became exhausted.

He could not win the argument against the Engineer - the engineer had the final word in how the passengers would be treated. If the engineer decided to keep adding and adding more and more things to the simple train ride, all of it's simple charms would be lost. Soon the Little Red Engine lay silent. He was discoursed-out. And the engineer proceeded to cheer his passengers up with more and more gifts. Soon, the idyllic little train ride had become a complicated, mixed-up jumble of gifts, add-ons and merchandising.

The train ran on for several more years, but each year a small number of passengers left the route. It was so hard on the Little Engine, who had never, in his whole life, lost a passenger, that each time one didn't return, he chugged a little bit slower. After a number of years the Little Red Engine was moving so slowly, and his passenger list had run so short, that his route was silently closed up.

And the worst part of it was - no one even noticed, and no one even cared.