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Hello eWorld!

It feels like a long time since I last brought you an article and so I thought I would write one for you. This article took me 2 days to write (because I was constantly being distracted by other things) and so I hope you enjoy it. In the mean time, I feel I have earned myself some rest so I will be going to play on my beloved Xbox now 😛

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Treasure maps



I am sure that near enough every citizen in the eWorld knows what Treasure maps are. The concept is simple enough; you receive a treasure map as a reward for completing certain tasks and increasing level, then you can use the treasure map to get gold. What the newer players in this game might not know is that there was elife before treasure maps.

Treasure maps were brought into the game on 16th April 2010 to replace an existing system where instead of receiving a treasure map a citizen received 5 gold straight away. There has been much speculation since the introduction of treasure maps that eventually the average gold received would fall below 5g and so the citizens of the eWorld will be worse off in the long run than they would have been otherwise. The question: was the speculation correct?

There has been a thread running on the eUK forums since the day the treasure maps began to record the amount of gold people have received in their treasure maps. With 468 treasure maps recorded I believe that this thread has sufficient data to allow potential conclusions to be drawn from it (although what I say in this article is by no means a certainty)

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The statistics

Below is a graph showing the average gold received over the last 6 months. Every point on the line represents the average pay-out of 38 treasure maps and the graph is chronological so the furthest left shows the first ever treasure maps, while the right hand point is the most recent:



I imagine that the graph has surprised some people in that it seems that the average gold received is at the very least 5g for most of the early months. It will no doubt further shock people to find out that if the 468 treasure maps recorded had all been standard 5 gold then LESS gold would have been given out! Although it is close (with 16.78 gold more being given out) this seems to be evidence against the suggestion that treasure maps make people poorer.

The average gold received in the 468 maps recorded is another indication that treasure maps are not a bad thing, with the average coming in at 5.046. Although the increase to the average in negligible, the fact that the average has not gone down will no doubt encourage the idea that treasure maps are not a disadvantage on the members of the eWorld.

However, people against treasure maps would point to is that after the initially high value treasure maps, the results have been largely negative for a long time leading up to the present. This suggests that the average gold received is not below 5 gold and so people would have been better off receiving 5 gold per reward.

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Treasure of kings



It should be mentioned that three of the treasure maps which were recorded in the thread were the treasure of kings and amounted to about 120 gold. The treasure of kings was a special reward which citizens were occasionally lucky enough to find which gave to person around 40 gold. However, this feature has since been removed by the admins and is, in part the reason why some people dislike the treasure maps.

You see if you consider the impact which those three treasure of kings rewards made, without them the citizens would have lost just in excess in 100 gold thanks to the treasure maps. The fact that they have gone implies that this kind of loss will be caused in the future.

The other fact that people against treasure maps would point to is that after the initially high treasure maps, the results have been largely negative for a long time leading up to the present. This suggests that the average gold received is not below 5 gold and so people would have been better off receiving 5 gold per reward.

Like them or loath them, treasure maps look to be here for a long time to come. It certainly seems that the average is not below the 5 gold mark, however with the total average still above 5 gold, it would appear that there has not yet been any damage done by treasure maps.

Stay safe and play hard!

(Michael Crookes)

One time winner of the NNA bronze standard article award (somehow)