I can't take it anymore: going into long-term 2-click mode

Day 2,187, 07:46 • Published in Netherlands USA • by Yfke van de Zand

I have been playing this game for 16 months already. I quickly find the game to be entertaining, if buggy sometimes, but more importantly I've found an awesome off-game activity related to it: forums, websites, tools etc.

I've seen several changes since I joined (by then, Divisions had just been introduced), some good, some not so good. Quickly I realized the business side of the game: it is a startup that needs to make a lot of RL money to made good on promise to investors, not some established game house.

So I could put up with several aspects that were not so great about it, as any other game has. However, while I understand the logic of needing to sell Gold to players to pay for servers, staff and what not, after the recent changes on "Taxation of Occupied Countries" I decided I don't want to play it anymore.

For a while I had this unease feeling that those behind the game are not only wanting to make RL income, but also engaging in upsetting everyone but 5-6 major RL-country game communities in exchange for short-term gains.

The Occupied Country taxation is just the last straw: it makes it enormously attractive for big countries to hold as many regions as possible (even more than now), it makes it against the interest of big nations to negotiate any sort of deal with smaller ones, even if they don't need it for bonuses, it takes away 80% of income of smaller countries and gives it to those much bigger than them, and just make it impossible to play if you are not part of one of the few big countries (who know will just go on an expansion spree to take over more income, thus making themsleves impossible to defeat).

Before all that, I had already calculated that a standard anti-Polish RW where they didn't put much effort would have cost around CC 2.600 Gold (and that just to win a medium-importance RW, not to hold it subsequently). Now, they made it much worse.

Yet, this time more than gaming mechanics I'm upset by the feeling the developers of the game really don't care about the most interesting (to me) aspect of the game: the numerous online communities and nuances brought by the use of a RL-map.

There are dozens of online games where you can gain some territory/resource, establish alliances with other players (Travian, for instance, which I used to play). Yet, you don't see many communities forming around them, as soon as the server reset people disband and start again (or not). This game is different, it has a "persistent universe" which resemble the RL world, thus it allowed an amazing collection of in-game history and narratives to emerge, complex relationships to develop etc. Yet, I'm let with the sour taste of a team that seems not to care about it a little.

They have an amazing "ecosystem" of players who stick around, many spending RL money on it (myself included with the stash packs and war chests once in a while) and they are willing to throw everybody who is not part of the most large countries under the bus, damned be whatever forum, IRC, website, community you have. That would make the RL country associations pointless, everybody would just join one of the few 4-6 big ficticious countries with max bonus and many MUs and every other country would just die off. This puts me off, more than occasional bugs, lagging interface, the presence of Denfese Systems on the marketplace menus though they haven't ever been active since I joined etc.

Therefore, starting Nov. 26th, I'll go into a strict 2-click mode. I'll quite my job, my MU, party and will just come to train and work on my comps for 15 seconds, waiting to see whatever happens. If after a couple months my dire predictions come true, then I'll probably just quit altogether and get a red smilley emoticon next to my name.