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.
One of the major alliances in eRepublik, PEACE, decided to start a massive offensive yesterday to hunt down former members of Atlantis (a dying alliance which is falling apart). 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. Atlantis may be ripping apart 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 you can see, countries from all continents are involved - this is a true world war.
The battle for Nova Scotia started with PEACE countries hitting hard, so that after just a few hours the defending troops found themselves pushed way back. Given the impressive march of the attackers against nine countries, it looked like everything was lost for the defenders, but no! Slowly but surely the defending countries recovered lost ground and after a heroic conquer of “No Man’s Land” they swept away PEACE armies. But the balance soon started oscillating back and forth, with nine hours to go it was clear that this battle would be decided in the last minute. You’ll want to have your eyes on eRepublik starting at 10.00 (eRepublik time), day 602, to see the final efforts put in this epic battle!
This battle might be the beginning of a long war which, once again, will reshape the New World.
Another new addition has made an appearance in eRepublik - the personal invitation link. Located on the “Invite friends” page, you can obtain a unique code which is used by the system to identify people invited by you. This means more friends in the New World, and the ability to be rewarded with more Gold too. Friends can still be invited as in the past, but now with the personal link, all you need to do is 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. It can be used as a signature on the forums you visit, as well as your messenger status. 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. So far people say they are posting it “everywhere”…..where will you post it?
Two weeks ago, Paris hosted a French eRepublik “Elder’s Council” in the Klein Holland bar, very close to Île de la Cité. A total of 17 citizens participated - the majority of which included vetran players (five were ex-presidents and many others were important historical figures). However, the meeting was also directed to the newer generation. Citizens born during the “bébé” boom at the end of April were adopted by the versed veterans. The older players took pleasure in answering the questions of the next generation, who have already started holding great responsibilities in France. Many of them are congressmen or even party presidents.
The group had a discussion agenda that included plans on how to deal with citizenship, Spaniards and inappropriate comments, and on who should become the next French president (with Mavie75 and Papa Frantz being among the favorites). The most heated debate was around the French Constitution, its newest applications and controversial articles, with the already famous 40th article on top of the list. Also a preferred topic of discussion was that of the latest military actions of the French as they managed to border Hungary while bringing peace to Germany.
The citizens fantasized about becoming admins and showed their good knowledge of eRepublik laws (as seen in the pictures here), including an 11th which they added themselves: eFrance is the best country in the New World!
ph03n1x, Clow, Fleur de Lotus, num, Mavie75, Melkion, Guibrit, Leon Blum (though he stayed in a Chinese restaurant), meza, Azaret, Ginman, bolanwasright, aguellid, xa2008, Papa Frantz, Jebbidle (the citizen in charge of the French Conscription) and Hober all agreed they should see each other again in early August, but with Mavie75 as master of ceremonies!
Have you ever considered joining the eRepublik Team? Or do you know someone who might be? In order to increase our international team, we are looking for a highly motivated, organized Spanish speaking Community Moderator, with a strong desire for working collaboratively in a team, and able to complete tasks from start to finish with little supervision. It is a full-time position in Madrid, Spain.
Areas of responsibility include interacting with fan sites, supervising future eRepublik Game Moderators, and assisting in various other gaming events such as fan fairs and player gatherings. The ideal candidate would be an avid eRepublik fan with experience as a member or moderator of a forum-based community, a strong understanding of popular social networking trends on the Internet, as well as a desire to implement new projects.
To view the full job description, please visit our jobs page. As for CVs - please send them to hr@erepublik.com
So far we’ve created the official eRepublik tutorial in both English and Spanish - as those are the two languages in which eRepublik has so far been officially translated. However, one helpful citizen, Colansi, has gone the extra mile (or kilometer, if you will) to create his own French version of the existing tutorial. Plato obviously wasn’t free for the gig (he’s still taking French lessons), so Colansi took it upon himself to create the French version below. Once we have the site live in other language versions, and Plato finishes his studies, we’ll be making official versions in other languages, but for now, we hope this French version will be of assistance.
A special thank you to Colansi for his work (French speakers should be sure to visit his browser game site, jeux-alternatifs.com).
The Europas are all about celebrating the tech scene in Europe - and we couldn’t be more excited or honored to be a nominee for one of the Europa awards. eRepublik has been nominated for Best Entertainment Application or Service. The awards will be held on July 9th in London and will recognize and celebrate the most compelling technology startups, Internet and mobile innovations of the past year (Summer 08 - Summer 09).
So, if you’re a fan of eRepublik, please take a quick moment to vote for us!
A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since January. You remember Jan. don’t you - those dreaded days of complete and absolute downtime? An eery silence covered the New World that time. Under an invisible force, the New World surrendered to a deep deep freeze.
I know, because even though eRepublik was inaccessible to the rest of the world I could still login from our internal network. I diligently did so each morning. I went to work, trained, read the same newspaper every day, scrummaged for food in the once bustling marketplace and in the late evening looked on as the sun set over the New World.
The same deafening silence echoed throughout the entire network. There was still ringing in my years from the day before. You could hear processors thundering furiously, disks spinning like tornados and an entire Universe of photons and electrons being shoved through optic and ethernet pipes. Indeed, a symphony of creation - an orchestra that tirelessly played on, with no intermission, no encore and now … with no spectators.
If that sounds dramatic to you it very well should because, for us, the architects of the New World, there’s no other way to better summarize it’s beauty using mere words. The eAlpha and eOmega - we set the rules and establish what’s wrong and right, where down and up are, where the Sun rises and sets.
But why has everything gone quiet? Where is everybody? Why couldn’t the symphony play on?
The very next day everybody dug into their figurative trenches and prepared for the long battle ahead. Blasting away at their keyboards around the clock, feverishly fighting an enemy force they could not see or comprehend: the embodiment, as it were, of their own success.
Volumes of computer code to sift through in one sitting - they make their stand, facing their own creation. Many bottles of cola fell that day and hot coffee stained the land while the fight raged on through the night. Close to a million lines of code and comments not counting frameworks. What took thousands of man hours to put together now had to be unraveled and reassembled in less than a day.
I can’t even begin to overstate the sheer grunt and effort, blood, sweat and tears that went into this massive undertaking: hour after passing hour galloping ahead of deadlines until the wee hours of the morning.
That night, the foundations for what has grown into today’s New World were laid down. And that night, the New World came back to life but at a cost. For you see, what seems like a faceless collective of “we” everybody lovingly refers to as “Admin” is comprised of individuals like you and me, with their good and their bad, real characters.
Friendships were tested that night: some of them survived and bonds strengthened but some didn’t make it. It’s important to bring that up. It’s technology with a human touch. It’s technology with a soul and passion. It’s the difference between the inanimate and the divine breath that brings it to life.
Bill McKenna, famous motorcycle racer, once said: “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, totally worn out and proclaiming, WOW, WHAT A RIDE!”
Fast forwards six months later: bruised, battered, mistakes made, lessons learned and far more to experience still, the New World is blossoming and the Sun has yet to set again.
We are very happy to announce that we have closed our Series A round of funding, raising 2 million € from AGF Private Equity, and also that Guillaume Lautour, who is a partner at AGF PE, is joining our board.
We will be using these funds to hire more talent to the existing eRepublik Labs team of 30 in order to further develop our first strategy MMOG www.erepublik.com and prepare new ones.
You can find more details in our press releases below, and also in the the video interview I did with Guillaume yesterday evening in the Dublin airport, as well as the video of George and myself (guess where we shot the video…).
A big thank you to all the people involved in making this happen and to our eRepublik community for supporting us and helping us build www.erepublik.com. This is just the beginning…
We will be making many new updates and additions to the eRepublik site this week, but there is one that we are particularly excited about - the new eRepublik video tutorial. The aim of this new tutorial is to make new citizens’ first steps in the New World just that much easier. Given that Plato has been each new citizen’s primary mentor, he is actually the one walking people through their new experiences - thus Plato comes to life in the video.
We are so enthused about the new addition of this tutorial, that we wanted to give you all a sneak peak at it (both English and Spanish versions below). Take a look…..and remember, the future is in your hands!
This week marks a pretty important one for many Spanish-speaking citizens of eRepublik. The first exciting news is the addition of the Spanish language version of the site. The new language makes the site available for the many already existing Spanish-speaking citizens in the New World (who largely reside in one of the current 10 official Spanish-speaking eRepublik nations), in addition to those that have yet to join.
Dishmcds, a very active and prominent eRepublik citizen, who has Mexican heritage and speaks Spanish fluently but lives in the US, says, “Adding the Spanish user interface will allow the Hispanic community to really gain on countries like the United Kingdom, United States….Overall, it will make it much more exciting because there will be other challenges to face. Over time, with more increases in language, the eWorld will become as diverse as the real world, which is where the real fun lies.”
To add to this exciting news, we have also just added five new Spanish-speaking countries to eRepublik - Bolivia, Columbia, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. Mauricio López, a Colombian in real life, says “it’s a dream come true….with the arrival of five new Spanish-speaking countries to join Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Chile, in addition to the Spanish version of the game, there is no doubt that the Spanish-speaking community has a great potential to grow and be a great power in eWorld.”
We are eager to see eRepublik take new shape with these most recent additions and look forward to launching more languages and countries in the future!
