EI October 2009

From eRepublik Official Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Languages: 
EnglishIcon-English.png
FrançaisIcon-France.png
DeutschIcon-Germany.png
ItalianoIcon-Italy.png
PortuguêsIcon-Portugal.png
РусскийIcon-Russia.png
EspañolIcon-Spain.png

Some eRepublik updates

Published on October 27 - Day 707 of the New World

Dear citizens,

Today we are going to zoom through the eRepublik world, and let you know about some updates. We won't do the mistake of starting with the not-so-exciting things, like a maintenance announcement, so...

Have you noticed Tall_niki's interesting newspaper? Here you can find the greatest concentration of beautiful eRepublik women per square centimeter of paper. And presumably, given the political- economical-[..]-simulator label of eRepublik, here you have one of the few places where you can admire and vote on beautiful girls without having to worry about your girlfriend's reaction :)

Western Siberia Region,the richest eRepublik region was conquered by Icon-Russia.png Russia after a successful resistance war. It's been almost a year since Russians lost this valuable region, which returned to them today. Hey, are you watching who's the battle hero in WSR, or still navigating Tall_niki's newspaper? :D

One important community request was to annihilate companies that resemble “baby traps,” that is companies which attract hundreds of newly born citizens by posting huge wage offers. Once hired, citizens can not work, due to lack of either money or raw materials, and they are “trapped” there because they don't know the mechanics of the game, like the resign option, and ultimately leave the game. A fix for this issue will go live very soon- if a citizen tries to work and is unable to do so due to lack of money/raw materials in the company, all posted job offers are automatically removed and a message is sent to the General Manager.

Have you accessed the eRepublik Wiki page lately? Especially if you are a new citizen, you definitely should do so, because here you can find very valuable pages, like this well-done FAQ. On this page you can learn about many important eRepublik concepts, and also you are provided with links to read more complex individual explanations. You can also read this Tutorial, or if you prefer eRepublik media, this excellent one.

Another thing that we would like to announce, is that starting with day 714 of the New World, the price of signing an Alliance will increase from Icon - Gold.gif 30 GOLD to Icon - Gold.gif 100 GOLD. The Alliances signed until then will remain active. We do this modification because right now it is too easy to have 20, or even 30 allied countries (half of the eRepublik countries), which is unrealistic and leaves no space for surprises. Presidents will have to choose allies more carefully and prioritize them.

Also, we are currently looking for a Community Officer to join our Bucharest office. More info can be found here. If you know somebody that might be interested, please let him/her know about this. Thank you.

Maintenance Announcement

Tomorrow, day 708 of the New World, eRepublik servers will be taken off-line for approximately 30 minutes, starting with 05.00 AM (eRepublik time), for scheduled maintenance.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Manitoba aftermath

Published on October 22 - Day 702 of the New World

Dear citizens,

After a pretty long sleep, yesterday the God of War unleashed his fury upon the eRepublik world. More precisely, upon the Canadian regions of Manitoba and Nunavut. It's been a while since Icon-Canada.png Canada was erased from the map, and the Icon-USA.png US only held two of their original regions. The US managed to stay on the map, and the long war for reclaiming their homeland began. And by “long” there is no exaggeration, given the fact that 100 days have passed (that is 12 years in RL time measurement) since the start of the North-American wars.

In the past weeks, many citizens asked for a truly epic battle. The lack of such battles gave birth to countless funny articles in which Icon-Romania.png Romanians and Icon-Hungary.png Hungarians invited each other to “push the button,” to bring back the joy on eRepublik battlefields. Well, neither the Romanian, nor the Hungarian President did it. But Canada together with the US pushed the button yesterday, in a simultaneously attack over Nunavut and Manitoba.

It was clear from the beginning that these were going to be big battles. Hungary was alone against Canada in Nunavut, and against the US in Manitoba. “Alone” should be understood as “without MPPs activated.” But one of the most impressive aspects of these battles is the huge number of soldiers that moved from all over the world to take part. Mainly “big guns,” but also many smaller soldiers sacrificed themselves for the sake of their alliance. The hard job for Hungary was to guess in which of the two battles to concentrate most of their efforts, in the final moments. Probably that's why they fought all day in such a way that when the final hour arrived both walls stayed pretty equal (3-400k secured). The harder job for Hungarians and their allies was to bring up the Manitoba wall from -600k to +400k, but they did it.

And so arrived the last 30 minutes. As usual, when we talk about epic battles, big guns from all over the world rushed towards what was to become a genuine blood bath, in Manitoba. An incredible amount of fights per second was inflicted, as between three refreshes the wall jumped from 170k to 210k then back to 180k, this in a matter of just tens of seconds. The tension was growing. Then, in the last 4 minutes of the battle, the wall started to spiral down unstoppable, the allied forces of Eden/Brolliance (one of the two major alliances of eRepublik) proving to be more powerful. The manner of winning this battle, blasting away a 400.000 points wall in just 15 minutes, in spite of huge resistance, is indeed very impressive. But this does not lower the dignity and honor of PEACE forces. The flood of “epic fail, losers” articles does not honor the winners, as the opponents should always be shown respect, who knows what will happen in the next battle...

Now let us see some stats, which are really huge, especially if we consider the lack of MPPs:

Manitoba:

Total Damage: 8,714,666
Fighting Soldiers: 13,610
Total Fights: 99,529


Nunavut:

Total Damage: 899,400
Fighting Soldiers: 2,655
Total Fights: 14,334

We would like to congratulate all soldiers for providing us with such memorable moments.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Day 700 of the New World- Happy Birthday V1

Published on October 20 - Day 700 of the New World

Dear citizens,

Today we have some reasons to celebrate: 700 days of the New World and also one year of eRepublik V1. It feels like it was yesterday that the deploy announcement was made, announcing to the Beta World the imminent launch of V1. And what a different game emerged the next day! Concepts like raw materials and organizations were implemented, as well as a new war module and a completely new graphic layout. Exactly one year ago the New World was vibrating, the shock of the V1 launch splitting citizens into two sides: those that loved the new eRepublik, and those that didn't like it and wanted Beta back. Nevertheless, most developed an addiction feeling and actually, thousands of citizens who experienced that transition are still here today, so happy birthday to you too :)

V1 came as the result of almost a full year of Beta testing, and many months of pre-Beta coding. But it was far from being perfect- older citizens might recall problems, which needed to be solved in the first months. Now, one year later, we realize that we have come a long way since the V1 launch. And also that the V1 was not a terminus point, but a starting one. Month after month eRepublik engineers have solved many requests. Citizens` feedback filled a long list of wishes which our programmers fulfilled, from new countries to the eRepublik map, from citizenship to citizens ads and company tools. But also a lot of work was done “under the hood,” which didn't provide new, visible modules, but has still been absolutely necessary. Work for improving the code, to fix bugs, to keep the servers up and running with thousands of simultaneous online players, to develop a home-based moderators program which means faster answers to your tickets, and so on.

We are proud of our accomplishments this year, but of course, more can and will be done. That's why eRepublik engineers are working day after day to create new modules, which will add a whole new dimension to the eRepublik experience.

It might just be a coincidence, but the V1 anniversary unfortunately also came with a two-days attack, last week. In the first phase, some citizens' accounts were robbed. We patched the vulnerability and reverted most of the harmful actions the next day (we are still working on a few isolated cases). Then, another type of attack occurred in the same module, and we have uploaded another security patch on the server which fixed the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

Starting today eRepublik media module enriched with an option which offers you the possibility to share/tweet articles you like with just a few clicks. If you don't have one, you can create an account and keep in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter.

These being said, Happy Birthday V1! And thank you all for making the New World possible.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Security vulnerability patched

Published on October 13 - Day 693 of the New World

Dear citizens,

Yesterday a security vulnerability was discovered and exploited for a short while, before our engineers could fix it. By opening articles containing -comments, some citizens got their GOLD stolen and sent to some specific accounts.

The first measure was to "lock" the accounts receiving the GOLD, in order to prevent its spread across the world. Then, in a matter of hours, we fixed the vulnerability to prevent this from ever happening again.

Our investigation concluded that the following target-accounts receiving GOLD had nothing to do with the exploit: Emerick, borges16, UncleDed, Karolina Jesieniecka and MoredanKantose.

All other accounts involved in the exploit are permanently suspended, including some high-ranked citizens.

Thanks for your reports which helped us with this issue. Our team of engineers extracted the full list of affected accounts and reversed the transactions, so now everybody should have their GOLD back. In case you GOLD is still missing, please submit a ticket to Report a Bug department.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

[Citizens' Insiders] Faces in the Crowd

Published on October 12 - Day 692 of the New World
Article by Cody Franklin
Cody Franklin's Newspaper

Good day, eRepublik.

For the new ‘Citizens Insiders’ campaign, I thought I would take a few minutes out of your busy schedules to discuss exactly what ‘success’ means for you in this world. If you ask 9 people what ‘success’ means, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Some would say that success is winning the monthly presidential elections. Some would say that success is securing yourself a near-permanent foothold in Congress. Some would say that success is having a high-rolling company, or having the most currency, or the most gold, or achieving ‘Media Mogul’ status. One might even be inclined to say that success is getting one’s article posted as a citizen’s Insider; I’ll leave that part up to you.

As you’re all hopefully aware, eRepublik is a game. A digital world; however, this is not a game that can be ‘won’; our world is always progressing, developing, and moving forward, towards a brighter future. Success isn’t always winning an important battle, or having the most popular article, or being a high-ranking member in your home nation; I won’t feed you the cliché that “success is just playing the game, and having fun”. No. To succeed in this game, it’s all about connections.

I’m not implying that one has to have friends in high places, but friends are a necessity. The social networking aspect of eRepublik is one of the attributes that make the game as popular as it is. With sites like Facebook and MySpace, there is the social networking aspect; however, eRepublik puts a military and political spin on that, creating a whole new social paradigm: countries full of people are encouraged to work towards a common goal, and are encouraged to find allies in other nations, while engaging in “friendly” competition with other nations through war. Unlike many online games, eRepublik has things to teach us, not only about our world, but about ourselves.

While the game is intended for maximum enjoyment, we can begin to grasp the way the real world works, and our place in it. To be successful, one must rely not only upon their knowledge of politics, strategy, and diplomacy, but they must know how to apply it, as well; that is, one must have wisdom. To be successful, our ultimate goal must be to learn how to bring something unique to the table, but must be able to apply that in a group setting. We must all learn to cooperate with each other. True success in eRepublik is entirely dependent on how well we work with others, and how we construct long-lasting relationships, based upon trust and mutual understanding. We must learn how best to relate to our fellow man. Ironically, individual success comes from simply realizing that, as individuals, we cannot “do it all”.

I encourage you to begin building these bridges with those around you. Start creating a close social network, and find a way to apply your talents in a group setting. Join a political party; bring your productivity to a company in need; help new players to get along in the world, or seek out someone with experience if you are a new player.

The bottom line is, learn to work together to build a better tomorrow for eRepublik. Alone, it’s hard to change the world; together, we can move mountains. Shake this world to its foundation. Reach out to everyone you can, whether your countrymen, or your allies, or even your enemies; it’s a fact that, in this world, nothing is impossible if there are enough people willing to try. Don’t let borders get in the way of this reality, because remember: truth takes no sides.

We hope you have enjoyed this article as much as we did. The topic for the next Insider is "Beta giants. A tribute to personalities that shaped the New World."

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

We're back!

Published on October 7 - Day 687 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We are as happy as you are to have the New World back online. As we have previously announced, the migration to a new cluster architecture has been scheduled for today.

But in the world of informatics often things don't work as planned. That's why we have backups. What happens when your backups get corrupted? We got to find out the hard way! Huge corrupt data set (over 2 TB) combined with corrupt backups make for a long long day!

Thankfully, our backups have backups, so our engineers managed to put everything back together.

The New World is on the move again, but we would like to ask you to report any problems you might encounter, by submitting a ticket to our Report a Bug department. We're watching and waiting to fix issues as they come in.

Thank you for your support, The eRepublik Team

eRepublik available in four more languages[UPDATED]

Published on October 6 - Day 686 of the New World

Dear citizens,

One of our biggest wishes is to offer eRepublik experience in as many languages as possible, and we constantly work for this achievement. As some of you might have noticed, starting a couple of days ago eRepublik is available in several new languages. On the upper right part of the eRepublik log-in page, you can choose between four new versions: German, French, Portuguese and Russian. If we add English and Spanish, currently eRepublik is available in six languages.

The new languages come with their own admin, as follows:

admin DE - for German version
admin FR - for French version
admin PT - for Portuguese version
admin RU - for Russian version

Each of them has a newspaper, where translated versions of the official eRepublik Insider articles will be published. For this reason we strongly encourage citizens to subscribe to their local admin newspaper in order to keep in touch with eRepublik world news and events.

We would be glad to listen to your feedback, so please feel free to send us a ticket through Contact Page, to the new department “ Feedback on Language Versions ”. Also, if you encounter any problem using any of the new language versions, please let us know.

We could not have achieved this without the hard work of some truly eRepublik passionate citizens, that helped us with all these translations:

PT - Cavalcanti, Henrique G. Pinheiro, Artiga, Raikael , acoutinho, Arthk
RU - Edward Edison, Adin Odmin, Eugene Rozov, RoDmiS-73, Karolina Jesieniecka
FR - marcchelala, Papa Frantz, Eldorino, Colansi, Christian Doe
DE - Chicco, Starkad Rorlikson, Franz Sigel, Isy, Markus Scierski, Herr Schmidt, Lucius Varenus

All of them are now eRepublik Ambassadors and should soon receive the honors and rewards.

We hope you'll enjoy the new versions available, and that your eRepublik experience will increase. Of course, we'll keep adding more and more language versions, so stay tuned!

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Reminder: We would like to remind you that on day 687 of the New World, eRepublik server will be taken offline starting 02.00 AM (eRepublik time) for about four hours, due to scheduled maintenance.

Migrating to a new cluster architecture

Published on October 2 - Day 682 of the New World

Dear citizens,

As you've probably read in one of the previous Insiders, the technical team here at eRepublik has been working hard to keep the game up and running. In fact, we're sure you've noticed some speed improvements in the past month or so. Ever since January this year, we've been continuously trying out some new things (and learned from our mistakes) thus at this point, we would like to tie up some loose ends and move to a new clustering architecture.

In spite of our best efforts to make this transition as painless as possible for everybody, some downtime will be needed in order to complete our setup. Therefore, on Wednesday, day 687 of the New World, the game will be offline for scheduled maintenance for about 4 hours starting 02:00 eRepublik time.

During this time, our team of engineers will rush to reinstall everything from load balancers, reverse proxies, web nodes, cache and database servers to accommodate the new setup.

The finished cluster will essentially mean better performance as new features and modules are coming online and more and more people are joining the New World.

In case you wonder what the new cluster looks like, here and here are some smug shots of 384GB RAM and 120CPU Cores Nehalem Xeons all ready to tackle the game :).

Regards,
The Tech Team

Update: Starting Monday, day 685 of the New World, by eating food citizens will no longer receive 1 XP. Instead, they'll receive 2 XP by "training," hence the total amount of received XP remains the same.