The biggest MMO, World of Warcraft, had 11 Million players last time I checked.
There are other MMOs with several Million more people between them, Runescape, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer and Everquest to name a few.
There are far more online games and players of other genres too, such as Counter Strike, Starcraft and Call of Duty.
The gamers of the Internet could populate a medium sized country.
So... why don't we do just that?
There is a MMOSSG (Massively Multiplayer Online Social Strategy game), called eRepublik with 133,000 players.
It is basically a politics, buisness and war simulator were the players work together to give their nations wealth, influence and vast empires.
Visually it's a fairly simple game and at the start it will only take you a few minutes per day to play it, as you train up your citizen.
At the higher levels you can manage a buisness empire employing other citizens, fight in wars and stand for election.
Where the game shines however is in the social aspect, as without cooperation, teamwork and organization, your nation will be attacked, robbed and destroyed.
Now most people join their real life nation, and run into a year's worth of forum politics and 'experienced' players running the nation. Some do well but most are a den of drama, infighting and flaming like you have never seen before
So I would like to get you guys into North Korea (a place devoid of internet access IRL), and create a brand new internet nation.
A small group of us from "The Fires of Heaven" MO Guild Forum managed to takeover North Korea when it was added to the game 2 months ago, and snatched it away from the crazy communist wannabes, Hungarians and Goons.
With the last of the communists evicted the other day, we have 96% control over the nation but lack one thing: NUMBERS! With your involvement we hope to get together enough people to Unify Korea (South Korea is currently occupied by Japan), and then perhaps even challenge the Iranian enclave in China.
I hope I have piqued your interest so please come take a look at
eRepublik and start your citizen in
North Korea - Hwangae Region!
I have written a
series of guides on the eRepublik wiki to help potential new players, and the game admins have written several of their own also (including a nice video tutorial).
Any other questions can be PM'ed to me in game (Goku Jones). We also have an
IRC Channel linked to our forums.
Together we can create a storm of drama and 'lulz' as we march over the eWorld and crush the nationalistic dreams of Indonesians, Hungarians and Romanians alike
To give you an idea of the kind of things that go on, here are some notable events from the past year:
*"The Theocratic Nation of /V/akistan" expanding Pakistan to include all of India and China before being driven back by Indonesia. Their leadership including the "God Emperor Dio Brando" were forced into exile in Switzerland which they now operate as a communist mercenary state.
*The epic war between the two largest nations in game, Romania and Indonesia. The war ended last month with Romania losing it's vast empire which stretched across Russia, Ukraine and Siberia.
*The rise of Hungary from a small broken shell of a nation, into the second largest in the game. The real life Hungarian President actually called for those with internet access to join the game and fight for Hungary!
*The eternal failure of a state that is Germany, which was recently annihilated by Sweden, only to be freed by Hungary who attacked in the opposite direction and now occupy Denmark (Sweden's route into Germany). Germany is now a feeding frenzy where the best regions are fought over by it's neighbors.
*The USA-Mexico war which ended when Portugal forced the USA out of Mexico. The USA is the most now the populated country after the fall of Romania with ~15,500 players, but they are also tactically retarded and have never managed to leave it's 51 states for long.
Here are the experiences of Hippos/"Afanasiy Drago" who was in the last wave of recruits and is now our President:
We participated in the great wars between Romania and Hungary/Indonesia for control of basically all of western-asia while we leveled up. Nothing big here as we were all low levels but it gave anyone involved a taste of what could happen down the road.
After North Korea launched, we all moved there in attempt to take-over a political party, but failed due to a bigger group from Hungary/Iran beating us our for the party presidency. We then banded together and pooled enough gold to form our own party, the City Party (South Park reference to City Wok), where we then went on to narrowly defeat that same Hungary/Iran group for the majority in Congress even though we had about 60 less votes. This was due to some great teamwork and dedication by people who stayed up until the last hour (erepublik time is the same as pacific time) to vote.
From there we basically have had control of the country, with some rough spots in between like losing the first Presidential elections (which meant losing out on a ton of in-game currency), only to turn around and impeach him and lift me into the seat and allow us to start getting the things the country needed to be successful.
There's been a lot of shit-talking, scamming, trolling, banned multi-accounts, an outright ego-maniac, and some idiots with armchair ideals that get shit on by the masses since we've started up, and it's been fun if you get involved in it. I should write up a real detailed story, but too many things have happened already and I can't even remember half of them anymore.
Thanks for reading
Posts
Must clicky.
Yeah it's quite interesting to see which nations are doing well.
A few months back Russia didn't exist for example, although the Indonesians have released parts of it now to act as a buffer against Romania.
Hopefully one day this bizarre new world will make a nice penny arcade comic :P