in response to your reply to my review of your article.
I'm not saying "dishonest"... just that what I've always believed a review to be would outline the good, as well as the bad. Particularly for a game that is still in beta. A review helps the community and the developers see what is going good and what needs improvement - without the bad, is just a public relations piece at worst, or an evangelist's view at best.
I registered for CotG a while ago, but noticed it is just another strategy/alliance type of game so never really paid attention to it much. I don't like playing that genre for anyone I ever ally with winds up being in far different time zones - is rather hard to coordinate good strategy within an alliance if you never get with them and gets to be stressful. I've found that to be a huge issue with a lot of these types of games, and it makes it frustrating in the end. Right now am in, and everyone chatting are either in Australia or France. I did a poll... most play only for a couple of hours then head off to do whatever.. that is a rather slim window for a player like me.
What would be revolutionary would be one of these strategy games taking a player's location into consideration (is called Localization) and drop them into a zone with others up to 4 hours difference, +/-. Anything more than that and players feel hard pressed to finding others to associate to without having to drastically adjust their daily activities. Satellite delay only works on sports, but then I still have cousins in Vegas who will call me about their winning bets on the big games before I even see the final play on TV.
I'd like to log into a game that shows me a list of zones/servers/areas with activity close to my personal period of activity. The argument would be why should developers make adjustments for this speck of lava rock in the middle of the Pacific? *shrug* I can write a dissertation on why Hawaii is actually kinda important... but its been done before and still businesses and tech skip over us, categorizing this speck as a nice layover or vacation spot.
I digress, this is not about Hawaii.
Is good CotG is not going with the Pay-to-Win model - that is unique and what actually attracted me to it sometime last year (I believe was in May)... but again, am finding a lot of the people on are in far different time zones than I am - either east coast US or Europe or Aussieland.... good for the weekends but when it gets to organizing broad attacks or resource migrations that go into the week, it just don't work for me. If I play one of these games, I like to plan, strategize and coordinate with people in my alliance - not sit and be a farm for someone else because I'm never around to contribute live. Kinda frustrating and I cannot take the time out of work/school for games like this anymore - even mobile.
I've played the original Travian back in 2005 - 2010 (used to be travian.de - url is now
TRAVIAN - the online multiplayer strategy game and the game has changed much since then) - which is perhaps the more accurate predecessor of this game in function, format and features. During my first round in Travian, I was a banker (holder and mover of large quantity resources) for the alliance. The next round I was a troop generator. The last round I played in, the alliance I was part of decided to merge with the #2 alliance when all hell broke loose - resulting in the loss of the top 5 alliances, including us (something tech and someone cheated). It was most.... traumatic, and almost an entire year of hard work, timing, coordinating and such went to waste. I never paid anything into that game and had to log in for at minimum 8 hours throughout the day during work and everything to keep up with everyone else or get wasted - even though the entire map around my cities were allies. Getting banned for the rest of that round because of the actions of a few alliance members kinda made me sour.
I also played Dragons of Atlantis (via Facebook as well as Kabam) from about 2010 to 2012 and in this game, yes, I paid for rubies. And it was costly. Members of my family played, from here in Hawaii as well as on the mainland. I must say for those two years we all had a blast - until some people got a bit too addicted and drained bank accounts just to keep up with alliances on several servers. It wasn't me, and it wound up in a rather nasty divorce and splintered my entire family. I walked away from that game at my peak, I still get message from old alliance members who want me back. I saw what it did to my family - never again.
I played EA's Lords of Ultima simply because it was part of the franchise. It had good features that were based on Ultima, and actually did contribute a bit to the overall story arc started by RG. However, it still fell into an already established genre of mmo-strategy and didn't do much to really captivate the audience _unless_ that audience already knew of Garriott's worlds. I played LoU on my iPad. It wasn't the best interface, and it could have been developed better. After reading over the CotG's site, I see nothing that ties this game to LoU. Reading over the forums, I see players who used to play LoU and others who know UO.... but that is where the relationship ends. LoU was far from being a well formed mmo-strategy game, but it was fun while it lasted.
This genre of games are awesome if you can hook up with players who are in similar time zones so as to coordinate with and watch each other's backs - not just in the game but out of it as well. It is far too easy to want to keep up with the bigger dogs - is highly competitive and if the mechanics and community are there, it can and will suck a person in. Can be fun, but can also be stressful.
