EI July 2009

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Our journey so far in 2009

Published on 31 July 2009 - Day 619 of the New World

Dear citizens,

In an Insider article at the beginning of 2009, we shared with you some of our summer deadlines, which included our plans and challenges regarding game improvements. Now it's time to see what we have accomplished.

• New citizen laws. ✓ Done.
  The previous set of laws has been replaced with a better one earlier this year. Of course, just like in real life, laws need constant improvements and modifications to keep up with the realities of the New World.
• eRepublik shop. ✓ Done.
  Different types of T-shirts, passports, are available. Other eRepublik branded souvenirs will come soon.
• Translation in other languages. ✓ Done.
  First steps are always the hardest, and we have done that with the Spanish version of eRepublik. More translations will follow.
• Adviser system. ✓ Done.
  Plato is ready to guide all citizens through the New World. He also loves to advise newly born citizens. But he's most proud because he became an actor in the eRepublik video tutorials
• API system.
  This application offers many opportunities to citizens willing to develop various eRepublik-related applications. These applications have their dedicated server ready to supply them with the desired information, and their purpose is to make the life of each citizen easier by providing different game related stats. The eRepublik API system will be improved throughout the entire year, with many features coming soon.
• Add new countries. ✓ Done.
  In the past months fifteen countries have joined us: Chile, Serbia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, North Korea, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
• Moderator module. ✓ Done.
  Our team grew considerably by recruiting moderators from within the community, which has helped us a lot in our moderation efforts. For citizens, the moderators' module means much faster answers to your problems concerning inappropriate content you encounter in eRepublik articles, comments, etc. The moderators' program is a success, and we would like to thank all the participants.
• Citizen ads. ✓ Done.
  Citizens have a powerful tool available to advertise their ideas, articles, products, parties, and so much more. The excellent targeting options assure a well-balanced costs-benefit ratio.
• Citizenship.
  This feature wasn't on our to-do list six months ago, but our team focused on it and brought citizenship to the New World due to a large number of requests from within the community. Our goal is to improve the citizens' experience, so we carefully listened to your request, and will continue to do so.

The poll system, visual improvements and customization – were either postponed or partially done, like some visual improvements. We'll keep working on it, and we will let you know about our progress.

The list also contained three more things, that are also highly requested by the community: a new map, a new war module, and general manager's tools. All of them are “in production.” The reason for the delay is their complexity and also work done for other unplanned features, like citizenship.

In the near future, the new eRepublik map will be the first to arrive, in about two weeks. Details and a sneak preview can be found in one of our previous Insiders

Company's tools will also be implemented in September, offering managers a much more professional way of managing their business.

The new war module is also in production, but the complete redesign of it asks for a tremendous amount of work, and we can't provide a certain time frame for its implementation. Anyway, we'll need several months more to finish this new war module.

As you can see, pretty soon (within just weeks), only the war module will be left on our to-do list from that insider related to major features that need to be added in eRepublik. We have come a long way from the V1 launch, but we are sure that there are many other features that would improve your eRepublik experience. Listening to the citizens' requests is incredibly important to us, and because of this, the top three requirements from the community (citizenship, company tools and the world map) that were extracted from the survey a couple of months ago, have now been implemented or are down the pipe with the 'soon to come' status.

Of course, we are planning to make many further improvements and we will be sharing these with you for feedback progressively.

Thanks for your support and feel free to express your thoughts regarding our journey so far in a comment to this article.

The eRepublik Team

The new request appeal module

Published on 29 July 2009 - Day 617 of the New World

Dear citizens,

In the last Insider, announcing the soon-to-be-implemented citizenship, the first comment was posted by citizen Van Raus, expressing his hopes: “Fingers crossed. I hope it will go smooth, without bugs.“ Well, thanks for all your crossed fingers, it went smoothly! We all stepped into a new era of the New World, an era of true citizens of their countries, besides just that of “citizens of eRepublik.”

Citizenship opened a new page in eRepublik history, but we have so many other projects in development. We would like to announce the new request appeal module, which also went live today.

Every punishment applied in eRepublik, regardless of its nature, will have a unique ID. This will be used to track punishments and appeals submitted for those specific punishments.

We have two situations:

• if you log into your eRepublik account, on your profile page you will have a list of all your punishments in the “Law infringements” section, just below your Forfeit Points. From that list, you may choose the punishment you would like to appeal by pressing the “appeal” button;
• if your account is suspended temporarily or permanently, when you try to log in you will see listed your punishments. Again, you may submit your appeal by pushing the “appeal” button for the punishment you would like to appeal.

Once an appeal has been submitted for any given punishment, the “appeal” button deactivates for that punishment. A second appeal for the same punishment is not available anymore. So, after you have appealed each one of your punishments individually, no more appeals can be submitted from your account or by any other citizen.

We created this new tool, especially for citizens who deserve a fast and professional communication channel with us when they need to appeal a punishment. Now that we have this great tool implemented, we will stop tolerating public appeals in the forum, in the eRepublik media, multiple appeals from citizens appealing punishments of their friends.

Just like Forfeit points, after two months punishments are automatically deleted from the list. So, you have two months available to appeal a decision. Also, in the same area where you have your punishments listed, you also can see the answer from admins regarding your appeal.

We are hopeful that the new request appeal module will improve response time from our team, trying to solve your problems as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your support,
The eRepublik Team

Citizenship in less than 24 hours

Published on 28 July 2009 - Day 616 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We would like to remind you that tomorrow's citizenship module will be implemented. Once again, be sure to be located in your home country by the end of day 616 of the New World, in order to receive the proper citizenship.

The servers will be taken offline for about two hours, starting at 1 AM on day 617 (eRepublik time), in order to offer each and every one of you the long desired citizenship.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Battles of day 614

Published on 27 July 2009 - Day 615 of the New World

Dear citizens,

The massive World War that has shaken the New World for two weeks is growing larger and larger it seems. More and more countries are joining the great “dance,” trying to help their friends or bust up enemies' plans, in a frenzy of attacks.

For now, it seems that PEACE has an advantage on the battlefields, despite fighting more countries. The strong relations developed inside the oldest, yet still active alliance, PEACE, play an important role when it comes to strategy, common goals, and sacrifice availability. The net result after these two weeks consists of several original Canadian and US regions being conquered by enemies. It's often said that the eagerness to conquer will never be as strong as the desire to defend the homeland. For the attackers, the region is just a jewel for their crown. For the defender, the region is everything. It's home.

Today we witnessed a PEACE victory on all fronts. Romania lost the highly important region of Podolia. Canada lost Alberta. And the US lost California, all this in just two hours. By far the most impressive battle was the one for California, where Indonesia fought alone against the US plus 14 allies. Indonesia managed to keep the wall at a “conquerable” level for 23 hours, which is impressive, but they conquered California with the help of the strongest soldiers of the PEACE alliance, in the last hour of battle. The final moments' effort was really impressive, Indonesia knew that they wouldn't win if the battle didn't stop soon. So, the strongest soldiers of PEACE (aka "tanks") fought for their friends admirably, making an incredible “damage per second” on the Indonesian side, which led to the victory. This only proves how important friendships are. Even though admirable people fought from all over the world to defend US soil, they just couldn't do anything against such a big “damage per second.”

But let's see the numbers:

1. Battle for Podolia: 29.176 fights, 6.651 soldiers, 1.346.298 total damage;
2. Battle for Alberta: 29.731 fights, 6.833 soldiers, 1.020.965 total damage;
3. Battle for California: 52.018 fights, 9.415 soldiers, 3.707.264 total damage.

A total of 6.074.527 damage was inflicted in three battles finishing virtually simultaneously, all this while another 11 battles are still waiting to end! If we add them up, the damage inflicted in the last 24 hours has turned eRepublik into a genuine battlefield.

Pretty amazing! We also can see improvements on the server side, sustaining huge amounts of soldiers fighting at once without collapsing like in the battle for Nova Scotia. We would like to congratulate all soldiers for providing us with these memorable moments in eRepublik. As for the war, it is far from over, actually, we can see it growing larger and larger. A lost battle never means capitulating, but fighting back with even more force and ambition. We will see how former Atlantis members will react to these successes of PEACE. Because, as the elders say, only the dead see the end of the war.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Announcement: Tomorrow, day 616 starting with 3 AM (eRepublik time) eRepublik Adviser will be inaccessible for two hours in order to conduct some server performance tests.

Citizenship FAQ and launch date

Published on 24 July 2009 - Day 612 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We have promised to answer your most pertinent questions of yours regarding the citizenship module in a new Insider. The subject was too complicated to be clarified in just one Insider, so, here we go:

1. Will it be necessary that ALL Congress members accept a citizenship request, in some sort of law voting for citizenship? Isn't that going to flood Congress activity? No, citizenship is offered personally and manually by a Congress member. There is no law, just a list from which Congress members can choose to whom to give citizenship by simply accepting his/her application.

2. A maximum of 10 % of a country's population possibly being offered citizenship, means a lot. With just one infiltrated congressman, citizenship can be granted to hundreds for a PTO attempt, right? Actually, this is not true. This is because each congress member can only grant citizenship to a maximum number of people out of the total number possible (total number = 10 % of country's population). So, in a country with 10.000 citizens, and 40 congressmen, it turns out that an “infiltrated” spy could offer citizenship to a maximum of 25 people. No congressman can grant 26 in a mandate of one month, regardless of how many citizenships are still available out of the initial 1000.

3. Will it be possible to see which congressman has accepted a specific citizenship application via the citizenship module? Yes, the citizenship application list is divided into two areas: pending applications and accepted applications. The accepted applications list shows all the citizens that received citizenship in the last 10 days and also the congressman that pushed the “Yes” button.

4. Is there some sort of “letter of intention” which citizens can fill in when they apply for citizenship? Yes, citizens are requested to write a message explaining why they want citizenship, which will be visible to Congress Members reading their applications. This will be your opportunity to persuade Congress members to accept your application!

5. Are you a citizen of your region as well? Or, say, can you still move to vote for someone else in another region of your same country in congressional elections? Citizenship refers to countries, not regions. When you move to another region of your citizenship country, you gain all the rights in that region - for example, you vote in that region for congressional elections. Only when you move to another country will you be politically “tied” to the last region you have lived back home.

6. Is it still necessary to resign from a party before leaving the country? Yes, you still have to resign from your party prior to moving to another country.

7. How about the moving industry? You doomed oil/tickets! We are considering some improvements to the economic system in the future, so the moving industry will be closely analyzed. Until then, as any market, it will automatically adjust based on offer/demand law.

8. What happens if the region you live in is conquered? Will I get automatically citizenship of the conquering country, or will I retain my original citizenship? For citizens having citizenship in the losing country, their citizenship will not be affected. They will be considered to be living in a foreign country therefore they will be able to apply for citizenship in the winning country, if they desire. If they chose to keep their original citizenship, during congressional elections they will vote in the capital of their citizenship country (losing country). Normally, citizens in the diaspora vote in the last region they have lived back home. But if that region is conquered, they are automatically switched as they would have lived in the capital region of the country last time.

9. What happens if my entire country is conquered? Just like in the conquered-region case, your citizenship remains unchanged if your country is completely conquered. But in this case, you will not be able to vote anywhere. However, you can ask for citizenship in another country. Or you can start a resistance war to liberate your country.

10.What happens if a resistance war succeeds and a country re-appears on the map? The newly liberated country will have no Congress at the moment of the liberation. Until a Congress is formed, the citizenship requests in this country will be automatically accepted.

11. How about the countries that do not exist right now? Any new country appearing on the map will automatically accept citizenship requests, until the first Congress is elected. After that, only new citizens registering in the game will receive their citizenship automatically.

12.How about if I live in a region which in RL belongs to my country, but in eRepublik belongs to another country? Which one's citizenship will I be offered? When the citizenship module comes live, everybody will be offered citizenship of the country that owns the region in which they live. In this case, you will be given citizenship in a foreign country. In order to avoid that, you should move to a region that still belongs to your country prior to citizenship implementation.

Another modification that might interest you: the new countries to be added to eRepublik will receive only national currency and no GOLD, and also their protection against attacks has been extended from 45 days to 60 days. So, no GOLD for new countries and no attacks allowed in the first 60 days.

Well, these would be the main ideas, we hope we have answered most of your questions. We would like to emphasize that such a complex feature like the citizenship module has no “perfect solution,” that could be both realistic and technically possible. One way or another there will still be citizens that are not 100 % satisfied. Our team carefully analyzed all your feedback, suggestions, and proposed solutions (we thank you one more time for helping us) until we finally decided to come up with this concept. And we are hopeful that the new citizenship module will bring us one step closer to our goal, to provide you a richer experience in eRepublik.

We said that the citizenship module will come live in about two weeks? We are sorry, we were wrong with our estimation...the citizenship module will be implemented sooner!

The big moment comes at 1 AM (eRepublik time) in day 617! So be sure to be home, in the country you want citizenship, preferably no later than day 616. You have four days left! It would be a good idea to spread this news and tell all your friends to move back home these days.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

The citizenship is on its way

Published on 20 July 2009 - Day 608 of the New World

Dear citizens,

One of the most awaited features in eRepublik, if not the most awaited, is citizenship. We can easily understand why, as citizenship is primarily just another word for nationality. Patriotism. This is the feeling that drives nations, and the feeling that has started wars throughout human history. The feeling that made you grab your friends and dance on the streets when your national football/soccer team won the World Cup, or the feeling that makes you proud when you answer the simple question “what country are you from?” Patriotism makes you put your country's flag on your avatar because you are proud of your nation. And you want everybody to know that.

eRepublik is about “personal winning,” but it's also about “national winning.” Would it feel so good to be a respectable, successful and appreciated character worldwide, all while your nation struggles in mediocrity? No, it wouldn't - you would do anything to help the rise of your entire nation. Many citizens have sacrificed themselves, and their social status, for the sake of their nations, which only proves how strong the love for the homeland is.

Our team has worked hard in the last months for the introduction of this vital feature, citizenship. Older citizens recall the existence of an incipient concept of having a nationality in Beta, when you had to live in a country for 10 days in order to have the right to vote. But this wasn't enough, that's why we worked hard to improve the concept.

So, let's start describing the citizenship module. If you open a citizen's profile, in addition to old information, you will also see his/her citizenship.

The citizenship will be offered as follows:

• for new citizens, after they have chosen the country and region, the citizenship will be granted automatically
• for registered citizens, the citizenship will be granted according to the country they live in at the moment of the citizenship module implementation. So make sure that you are living at home that day!
• if you wish to change your citizenship, you may do that by requesting new citizenship from another country.

A citizen can have one and only one citizenship. So, if you are let's say an Italian and want to become an American, you will have to move to the USA and request American citizenship. Your request will then be added to a list, along with those requests of others, which will then be at the disposal of Congress. There's a formula which limits the maximum number of granted citizenships to 10 % of country's population. So, in the USA each congressman can offer a maximum of around 35 citizenships/month, with the current population/regions configuration. Your request will be visible for five days to all the congressmen of America, in our example. If after five days no one has pushed the “Yes” button, your request will be automatically deleted. After five days you may post another citizenship request. A congressman can only accept a pending request, he can not cancel or delete it. Also, if you wish to leave the country for which you've requested citizenship, you will have to either cancel the request (you are “tied” to the country, like Congress Members are) or wait until you are offered citizenship.

With the introduction of the citizenship module, diaspora voting becomes reality. If you have citizenship and decide to move temporarily to another country for a better life, you will be voting for candidates back home, not the ones in your new country. In congressional elections, you will vote for candidates in the last region in which you lived before moving to the other country. In the country presidential election, you will have the same list like everybody back home. So, politically you are bonded by your citizenship to your home land. From now on, in which country you reside will have no importance - you will vote according to your citizenship.

The citizenship module is not aiming to completely stop takeovers, but to offer the possibility to fight back and protect from those political takeovers.

We'll be moving around some things on the profile page in order to accommodate the new information. During this evaluation of the home page, we spent time assessing what should go where in order to optimize the page's layout, and one of the changes we wanted to inform you about is the movement of the Ambassador achievement - which will now be considered a honor, and will live next to your citizen name. We thought this was a logical move, since it is not as in-game related as the other achievements - but still, a very important acknowledgement that many citizens deserve and are eager to obtain. And on that note, thanks to all of our current ambassadors - the program is a work in progress, so we thank you for your patience while we iron out the wrinkles and get everything up and running smoothly. For now, we will be moving the Ambassador icon from the achievement section and promise it will make its reappearance with the updated profile page in the coming month - being an Ambassador will proceed as usual.

About the time-frame, our team is working on the final details, so we expect to have the new citizenship module implemented in the next two weeks. We hope you will like it!

Further details, and answers to some questions, will be available in future Insiders.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Community Officers wanted

Published on 17 July 2009 - Day 605 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We are currently looking to enlarge our team with two highly motivated, organized community officers. The ideal candidate would be an avid eRepublik fan, who is a team player, client orientated, with strong English written and communication skills, and the ability to complete specific tasks with a high level of detail. Experience in the customer service area, public relations, or community management, would be a plus. Also, being aware of the latest technologies and techniques used in the development of successful gaming communities would represent an advantage.

These are full-time positions, one in Bucharest office, Romania, and the other in Madrid, Spain.

Areas of responsibility include interacting with fan sites, solving various citizens problems (tickets), development and implementation of different projects, and assisting in various other tasks and gaming events which would allow the next community officer to interface between the eRepublik community and the development team.

If you seek challenge, creativity, a young and enthusiastic team, this is your chance to contribute to the New World as a team member.

We would like to announce that for a period of approximately one month, you may find a section of eRepublik untranslated in the [www.erepublik.es Spanish version]. That's because we are working to improve your gaming experience, which will include a fully 100 % translated eRepublik version, as well as support systems. That's why we are looking for a Spanish speaking citizen to join our Madrid center as a Community Officer, who will be in charge of the coordination of future Spanish Game Moderators, Forum Moderators and the Community Translation Team.

For any questions, do not hesitate to post a comment on this article. As for CVs - please send them to hr@erepublik.com. Also, if you know somebody that might be interested in such a position, please let him/her know.

Further details can be found here for the Bucharest office position, and here for the Madrid office position.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Citizen Ads Updates

Published on 16 July 2009 - Day 604 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We would like to provide you with a brief update concerning the latest addition to eRepublik, the citizen ads module. The new module is in its beta phase, which means we will constantly work to improve it so that we deliver a high quality feature.

Our team carefully listened to citizens' feedback and the general feeling was “very cool, but a bit expensive.” Indeed it was expensive due to the fast rate at which impressions were being consumed, giving rise to situations where 2 Gold and 2000 impressions were “eaten” in just a matter of minutes, in a big country. Well, looks like we have some traffic around here!

We decided to implement some changes, so here is the good news:

• the minimum campaign budget is now one Gold, instead of two;
• the maximum number of impressions was multiplied 10 times, for the same amount of Gold.

Based on the new rules, for two Gold you get a maximum of 20.000 impressions instead of 2.000 - so your ad could be “live” on site for approximately one hour, even in a big country, not just a couple of minutes.

If you chose to invest one Gold in your advertising campaign, you can get as many as 10.000 impressions, for five Gold 50.000 impressions, and so on.

Conclusion: Your ad could be displayed five times longer for half the price, or ten times longer for the same price as before!

Apart from these, all previous rules remain the same, the highest CPI has priority, etc. And don't forget to target your ad carefully!

You may ask yourself “what in the world does CPI mean?” If you do, don't worry, all you need to do is read our previous Insider dedicated to this subject, and you'll be guided step by step regarding how to create a successful ad.

But remember, always make sure that your ad respects the Citizen Advertisement Laws!

The new pricing rules are already implemented, so all we can say is: Happy advertising!

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

The battle for Nova Scotia, a record breaker

Published on 15 July 2009 - Day 603 of the New World

Dear citizens,

The last Insider ended with the suggestion to keep your eye on eRepublik, because great armies were to confront in the final hours of the battle for Nova Scotia. Our premonition was correct, we can say that yesterday we faced the biggest battle in eRepublik history! The one battle that by itself outnumbered other wars combined, in terms of fighting soldiers and inflicted damage. This was indeed the “mother of all battles,” which proves how much has eRepublik grown-up since last year.

Some of the citizens remember the wars from the beginning of the V1 version, when having a 200.000-300.000 damage point advantage would have meant sure victory. We remember epic battles that have their places in eRepublik history, like the battle for the Southern Great Plain or the battles for one of the richest regions in eRepublik: West Siberian Region.

But let's look at the numbers related to the battle for Nova Scotia:

• Fighting soldiers: 21.504
• Total fights: 129.205
• Total damage: 5.927.165

These numbers are huge! They almost doubled in all aspects, compared to the previous record holder. Furthermore, yesterday there were more than 2.500 citizens logged on constantly. If we compare this to six-months old epic battles that reported merely 600 online citizens, some 15.000 total fights and 3.500 soldiers, we realize that we've come a long way.

Yesterday some server issues took place, especially in the final moments of the battle for Nova Scotia, when hundreds of soldiers were rushing toward the battlefield simultaneously. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we want to assure you that our team is constantly working to improve this aspect. The millions of damage points and tens of thousands of fights were unthinkable just several months ago, when only a fraction of the number of soldiers caused severe problems with our servers.

We would like to congratulate both alliances of countries fighting heroically yesterday in the record-breaker battle. We are sure that many others will follow!

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

We have another World War?

Published on 14 July 2009 - Day 602 of the New World

Dear citizens,

Every once in a while the New World is shaken by a global, worldwide war. Every war is important, but very few are able to change destinies and the shape of the world. Epic battles ended with the rise of new empires, and the fall of others. Just as the winning of SGP (Southern Great Plain) meant that Hungary had cleared their path for growth, the same way the run aground of Romania in front of Karnataka ultimately led to a withdrawal back to its original regions.

After watching the former Atlantis alliance tearing apart, PEACE decided to start a massive offensive yesterday to hunt down former members of Atlantis. For now, Canada has been attacked, but rumors around the world speak of the wiping-out of the USA and Spain as an ultimate goal. The dying Atlantis has been ripped apart and broken into several smaller alliances, but the old friendships remain the same. In the battle for Nova Scotia, we have the attackers France, Italy, Portugal, Indonesia, Iran, Hungary, Argentina and Turkey. Defending the lands of Canada there are Sweden, Norway, Spain, USA, Malaysia, Romania, Germany, United Kingdom and Poland. As we can see, countries from all over the world are involved, this is a true world war. And of course, tactics are applied and resistance wars or adjacent battles are opened in order to split potential damages. But hey, in love and war, everything is permitted!

The passion on the battlefield is the same for everybody, but the reasons driving soldiers from all over the world are different. We have Hungary willing to prove its new power, and Indonesia willing to consolidate their position. We have wounded forces like Romania and Spain which fight to regain their influence. We have Sweden and Norway willing to remember everybody that they had always been true comrades, helping their allies as much as they can. We have Poland announcing their growth. We have other countries caught in the middle of the “big boys,” fighting for their honor.

The battle for Nova Scotia started with PEACE countries hitting hard, after just a few hours the wall was at more than - 440.000, despite fighting against nine countries. Slowly but surely, the defenders recovered control on the battlefield, getting the wall to 0, and then to +40.000, 14 hours after the battle started. Then again PEACE pushed back the defenders, the wall oscillated back and forth. With seven hours to go, the battlefield was controlled again by PEACE, having a slight – 50.000 advantage. We can say that this battle will be decided in the last hour of the battle - so today, day 602 of the New World, you'll want to have your eyes on eRepublik starting at 10.00 (eRepublik time), watching the impressive armies fighting for this region.

This battle might be the beginning of a long war which, once again, will reshape the New World.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

New module in eRepublik - Citizen Ads

Published on 13 July 2009 - Day 601 of the New World

Dear citizens,

There's an old saying:

“ Advertising - the heart and soul of commerce. ”

True words these are! And it is not us who discovered the tremendous power and importance of advertising, but our forefathers. In the ancient Sumerian Kingdom, red painted stones guided customers toward what could be called "stores," or "taverns." Buried in the deserts of pharaohs, we can still find advertising messages on papyrus or ceramic tablets, written down by some smart merchants long before the foundation of Rome. Speaking of Rome, messages written on the walls, like “Death to Nero,” were also a form of advertising. We can say that advertising accompanied the very birth of human civilization. Of course, 4000 years ago advertising was not the way it is today. Actually, people were not aware of what they are doing, conceptually speaking, but they were happy to see their products sold. Or ideas propagated. In this day and age, we call this advertising.

In our efforts to develop a New World which resembles reality as much as possible, the feature to advertise products or ideas, was a necessity. That is why our team created a new module for the citizens that understand, appreciate, or fear the immense power of advertising.

Now that we have talked about the “why,” let's discuss the “where” and “how”. The citizen ads are displayed on the far right portion of eRepublik pages, where in the past you've always seen skyscraper banners. The advertising box displays three ads, each one having a picture and a text body (150 characters). Also, by rolling the mouse over an ad and clicking it, you will follow the link (eRepublik internal) that the citizen specified when they created their ad. It might be a link to their profile, or possibly their company, or an article about them, or really anything they desire.

You might say “well, just three ads, for such a big world,” but you don't need to worry. We have carefully calculated it such that the new citizen ads will be productive and useful, not annoying. We know that each citizen also wishes to get the most benefits for the Gold he or she pays, that's why a powerful targeting tool is available. After you select an image, your body-text and your link, it will be advisable to target your ad carefully.

Location: Global, just one country, just one region of a country. Citizens: Everyone, Voters, Congressmen, General Managers, Employees, Party Members, Super Soldiers, Party Presidents.

So, it would not be advisable to leave the default values (global + everyone) and advertise your message to all 140.000 citizens of the New World, if instead you would just like some votes, from voters, residing in your region. You will understand why shortly.

The concepts at the heart of the technical side of citizen ads are Impressions and Cost per Impression (CPI). After you have targeted your ad, you will need to make an “offer,” in order to specify how much Gold you are willing to spend, in addition to the number of impressions you expect for your money. Impressions are a measure of how many pages containing your ad have been viewed by citizens.

If you divide the offered Gold by the impressions, you get a rate - the CPI. If your CPI is too low, there is a high possibility that your ad will not make any impression - so here you'll be testing your marketing skills.

Let's say you have offered 10 GOLD and asked for 5000 impressions - this means that your ad CPI would be 0.002. If another citizen offers 10 GOLD, but asks for 3000 impressions, his CPI would be 0.003. Every impression, that is a page viewed containing your ad, “eats” from your allocated Gold an amount equal to the CPI. When a vacant space in the ads box appears, the first one to get that space will be the ad belonging to the citizen with the 0.003 CPI (in our hypothetical situation). At this moment, you have two options: either you wait, or you edit your ad so that you have the higher CPI. You can do this by lowering the impressions or by adding Gold. The system updates real-time, so if after editing the ad your CPI is in the top three, your ad will appear immediately. Statistics are available for you, showing how many clicks your ad received, impressions consumed/total, and also consumed Gold out of the total allocated budget.

Now, it's clear why targeting your ad is an important step, which you should consider carefully. The larger your target audience, the faster your impressions are “eaten.” You want your ad to have as many impressions as possible, with the highest CPI, so choose wisely both where and to whom you advertise, in order to have success with your campaign.

The ads box contains three ads, but we can have hundreds of simultaneously well-targeted ads, all over the world, at any given moment.

So start testing your marketing skills but do not forget to read the Citizen Advertisement Laws to make sure that your ads respect the dignity and rights of other entities in eRepublik.

Good luck,
The eRepublik Team

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Published on 9 July 2009 - Day 597 of the New World

Dear citizens,

We would like to present you with the latest addition to eRepublik. It`s about the invitation system, which has been expanded, making it much easier to invite all your friends to eRepublik.

You can see that you now have a "personal link" displayed on the invite friends page. This link is a unique code which will be used by the system to identify people invited by you.

In addition to the old method, you can now send eRepublik invitations in this new way. All you need to do is to copy-paste your link and share it in any way you consider appropriate: by email, by posting it on your blog, by sending an IM, etc. You can use it as a signature on the forums you visit, as well as your messenger status. Only your creativity dictates how many people will click it. From this point on, everything is as it was before - once your friend follows the link, registers and reaches level 6, you will be awarded 5 gold. Inviting friends has never been so easy!

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

Maintenance Announcement (UPDATED)

Published on 6 July 2009 - Day 594 of the New World

Dear citizens,

eRepublik servers will be inaccessible on day 595 starting at 22:00 o`clock (eRepublik time) for about two hours, in order to implement the Citizen Ads module. Further details are to be included in a future Insider article.

Regards,
The eRepublik Team

LATER EDIT:

The planned downtime was rescheduled for day 600, starting 22:00 (eRepublik time)