A little piece of whatever I decide to talk about

Here we are a few weeks after my original post about the game that I have started playing online, Evony. There have been some ups and downs but I have come to the realization that the only way you will have a decent user experience is by paying a monthly service fee.

The negative experiences that I have had are not related to the game company themselves. They have experienced very little downtime, I am able to login on the first try 98% of the time that I have tried. The problem lies with the content and the other users. After you get to a certain point in the game, there is nothing to do. I have reached a point where the majority of my buildings and academy upgrades are done. I am left with 80+ hour wait times for items to be completed. That in itself is not a big deal, except I have nothing else to do during that waiting time. Our Alliance is not at war with anyone at the moment which leads to very boring stretches of time.

The Alliance brings up the next point. We had a very strong Alliance going. We were in the top 10 in prestige, the method that the game tracks your progress. We also had 20-25 very strong armies within the Alliance. We went to war with another Alliance that had provoked us. We were literally mopping the floor with them. We had over 15 pages of attacks on their cities and they came back at us by attacking a few of our inactive players. What a lame showing.

Out of the blue, our Alliance Host decided that we need to merge with the Alliance that we were warring with. WTF I ask? We’re murdering them like it’s our jobs and now we are gonna be friends? Whatever. I spent the majority of my weekend away from the computer so I did not see any other discussions about the merger.

I went to login and much to my dismay, over 30 of our members had left the Alliance, including the host. What a bunch of losers. At the first sign of being “#1″ they jumped ship. They left 2-3 of the big guys, including myself, without so much as a Dear John. Numerous contact with some of the members have left me with my hands empty. So here I am, about 40% of the remaining members are not active in any way shape or form, none of the old members are going to come back, we are not powerful enough to attack any other alliances, I’m left here with nothing to do.

That brings me to the point that you will need to pay to play a game like this. It will ensure that there are enough active members to go around. I have been spamming every player city that I can find to ask if they want to join us and have only received 3 responses. It’s unfortunate that people won’t take advantage of a free game. Sure it doesn’t have all the flashy graphics that newer games have, sure it is a slow process to take a commanding lead and dominate your surroundings, but c’mon, it’s free.

At least I have a little bit of happiness in this cloud of despair. About 24 hours after our Alliance members defected, they declared war on the the second largest Alliance on our server. I’m happy to report that they are being wiped on the floor by this Alliance. Our old Alliance Host has been completely demolished. The Host of the Alliance they merged with was completely demolished and quit the game. Overall I couldn’t be happier with that result. Serves ‘em right I think.