EI May 2010

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New Community Department Manager

Published May 31st, 2010 (Day 923 of the New World)

Dear citizens,

A couple of months ago, our former community manager, whom we would like to thank for all the hard work and passion invested to help the community grow, moved to another position in the eRepublik team. Of course, the search for a new person able to handle such a highly important position, began shortly after. The entire Community Department (excepting Xtasia, who whispered something about diesel, Vin Diesel...something like that) voted unanimously for a young sexy bossy, as we've seen in movies. Unfortunately, democracy is not always working, so our request was denied. The ideal candidate was to be a very passionate eRepublik player, with a strong background experience in marketing, communication, projects management and so on. Oh well, no short skirts for us this summer.

And we got our man, the_mihai. A highly experienced citizen, who ruled one of the biggest parties in the world (back then) for six months and led his nation as a president twice. Journalist, Congressman, soldier and businessman, he knows everything about eRepublik, being ranked the second in his country by experience points. Before joining us, he coordinated several teams as a Marketing Manager and Research Manager, helping with the growth of some important brands of real-life media.

His job ain't gonna be easy. I mean, we are talking about the Community Department here. You may not know this, but eRepublik is developed, or rather “created”, by a team of more than 50 people who come to the office every morning, ready to work for eRepublik. The guys from Testing, Development, Marketing, Technical, Design and so on, are the ones actually making the New World possible. But chances are that if you have ever heard about an “admin”, it was one of the guys from the Community Department. This department has always been, and always will be in front of all your bullets. We answer your angry tickets, we are the ones asked for explanations and we try to solve your problems.We are the department communicating with the players, remaining in touch with the game as we are the bridge between you and the rest of the team. Of course, as the eRepublik population grew larger, we would have been doomed without the helping hand of our Game Moderators (thanks!)

One of the first projects coordinated by our new Community Manager was the anti-cheating project. As a player, he always wanted to have the opportunity to fight against cheating, and he already got his chance. eRepublik turns dreams into reality, doesn't it? :)

One thing is certain: without your help, we can't improve this game. We constantly check your feedback, because we need it. Please remember to use the official channels (ticketing system or special section in the forum). You can guess that it is impossible for us to check the vast media module of eRepublik, with hundreds of articles being published every day.

Talking about his future strategy, the new Community Manager said: "Given my background as a Marketing Manager, I am encouraging my small team to actually play eRepublik, to interact as often as possible with the game. They have to work, to train and even to fight, but only 5 fights/day. I cannot accept that an admin should be just an outside observer, I think that admins must perfectly understand every feature of the game, and experience all its good and bad parts on their own. And I assure you that with those 5 fights, one can't inflict more than 0,01% out of the total battle damage, so please don't come up with articles about the handful of admins influencing the final result. The benefits of being present in the game are far greater. And by the way, we have admins living in PHOENIX and EDEN countries as well, so the effect is neutral overall.”

So, we welcome our new Community Manager, and wish him good luck on the hard mission of improving the customer support quality, communication channels, and the overall creation of a better climate within the eRepublik community.

The mihai searching for cheaters.jpg

Regards,
The eRepublik team

Anti-cheating project updates

Published May 26th, 2010 (Day 918 of the New World)

Dear citizens,

Starting last week, the new anti-cheating system is active. As a direct consequence of this project, from now on we will reward quality and not brute quantity. As time will pass, the benefits for the community will become visible, in terms of users' activity.

As a reminder, here are the new rules:

  • when you invite somebody to eRepublik you will get a 10% Gold bonus from all the Gold your friend finds with a treasure map and also 10% out of their Gold purchases. Remember, that it is a bonus, an addition. Your bonus is not subtracted from your friend's Gold, as we have seen suggested in some comments. Also, after analyzing your feedback we decided to make the 10% bonus active for older invites as well, for which you've already been rewarded. If your invited friends are still active, you will get 10% out of their new achievements or Gold purchases (from now on, not retroactive);
  • citizens below level 12 cannot sell Gold on Monetary market or donate money. If the citizen buys Gold from eRepublik, this restriction is removed;
  • After election days on the 6th, 16th and 26th there will be a six-hour delay between the end of the voting period and the results becoming final. During these hours the winners might change if illegal accounts were involved;
  • The old “Track Invites” page was removed. Instead, you now have the new Gold bonus page, where you can track invites and also collect your Gold bonuses. The tracking is now easier, listing only the citizens who actually registered. In order to make space for the Gold Bonus page (in “Gold and Extras” section), we have removed the “Wellness Box” tab. You can still reach the “Get Wellness” option in your profile page (Bio tab), or, even easier, when you are fighting.

So, invite your friends in eRepublik, help them and guide their first steps. If they are helped to understand the game, changes are that they'll develop an addiction. And the longer they play, the more you are rewarded!

As a different topic, congrats everybody for the huge battle of Liaoning. It was impressive!

Regards,
The eRepublik team

Anti-cheating project

Published May 13th, 2010 (Day 905 of the New World)

Dear citizens,

A few days ago, we announced on the forum that we are going to turn eRepublik into a much more fair game, not only by making sure that cheaters have a short life, but also preventing cheating at all. The complaints were related to unfair elections and multiple accounts votes, but we decided to analyze the big picture and find solutions rather than solve the same issue over and over again. The new experience tunnel, which really helps newborn citizens, is also a strong temptation, or rather an invitation to cheat (to some citizens). This is because many illegal benefits can be obtained fast, very fast.

Not for long!

We start with the biggest change of all: the new invitations rewards system. Right now a citizen is rewarded with a treasure map for each citizen invited by them that reaches level 6. We have decided to reward the quality, not the quantity, and this is for everybody's benefit. After all, if a citizen invites 100 other citizens that suddenly die at level 6, they bring nothing to the community. But if you invite 5 citizens that are active and remain active, you deserve to be rewarded more.

The new reward system: instead of receiving a treasure map (say Icon - Gold.gif 5 GOLD) when your invited friends reach level 6, you will receive 10 % of all their future Gold rewards and Gold acquisitions. So, as long as your friends play eRepublik you will get Gold bonuses! They reached level 6 and used a treasure map? You get 10% of it. They just became a super-soldier? Another 10 %. Do they become a hard worker? You get your bonus. Did they buy a pack of Icon - Gold.gif 140 GOLD? You get Icon - Gold.gif 14 GOLD. And so on, as long as they're alive! You can easily see that in the long term you'll be rewarded with so much more than one current Treasure Map. Just to be clear, what you receive is a bonus: for the Icon - Gold.gif 5 GOLD reward of your friend, eRepublik will give you both a total of Icon - Gold.gif 5,5 GOLD.

If you have let's say 10 active invited friends, your eRepublik alerts inbox will be pretty “active”. But hey, that will be good news, announcing your latest Gold bonuses :D And you really deserve these bonuses simply because you took care of your friends on their first days and guided their first steps!

We now move to the next measure, because this project is larger. After a serious analysis we concluded that although there are some cases when honest citizens leave the game within a couple of days of registration and donate everything to somebody, the vast majority of real players have no reason to donate their money when they are still babies. Hence, we are disabling the option to donate money (both Gold and currency) for citizens below level 12. The first weeks in eRepublik should be used to learn the game and its concepts. A blind plunge into the black market is also very risky, so this new rule will keep babies from making big mistakes while they are very young.

The same goes for the monetary market: citizens below level 12 will not be able to exchange Gold for currency (e.g sell Icon - Gold.gif 5 GOLD for Flag-USA.jpgUSD). They still can exchange currency for Gold. We are confident that governments will take care of their (most likely now true players) babies, by increasing the new citizen fee, or through other methods. For obvious reasons, if a citizen below level 12 buys Gold from eRepublik it is their right to do whatever they want with it, so donations and the monetary market get completely unlocked.

“Great, but the multiple accounts can still vote!” you might say. Well, we have a countermeasure for that too: the election process will end as usual at 00:00 (eRepublik time), but for the next six hours the results will not be final. During this time we will analyze the votes, so the winners might easily change if there were fake accounts involved in the elections. As you know, if a citizen is banned after voting, the vote is also removed. That's why we need these hours of extra time before the results become final. During this time you can see how or if the votes decrease (votes can only decrease due to suspended accounts).

To summarize, these are the main changes: you'll get 10 % of all your invited friends' Gold rewards and acquisitions, citizens below level 12 cannot donate their money or sell Gold on the monetary market, and the election's final results will be on a 6-hour delay. When are we going live with these changes? Soon: next week. We will announce the final date on the forum or in a future Insider.

Regards,

The eRepublik team