Nyeh, played that game for awhile, but ended up leaving with a bad taste in my mouth. x.X While there were some interesting pseudo-political undertones in terms of the factions and major players in my server world, (rivalries, alliances, etc, etc,) and the use of server vs. server events DID bring some interesting results, (off the top of my head, our opposing server in the first event actually had over half of its playerbase HELPING us, because they hated the faction in power so much,) the use of 'pay to win' is just legitimately obscene over there. o.o I know it's part and parcel with free to play titles, but this game just felt even more shameless about it.
It wasn't simply stuff like speeding up troop training/building stuff, etc, although it's safe to say that the biggest spenders had armies of truly immense size. There is this one particular tactic in the game that involves using Advanced Teleports (which cost premium currency, of course,) to teleport literally RIGHT beside a target city. You attack (troop travel time at that proximity often being less than thirty seconds, meaning that even if the person is literally online at that exact moment, they might not react in time,) shatter the defenses, attack a bunch more times to mop up any resources you might have missed, and then teleport back to your original spot, without so much as leaving a trail to your new hideout. However, the BIGGER spenders would also spam troop travel speedups on those marches, meaning their army would often hit you before the game even notified you that you were under attack. =P It was like fighting against black magic.
The top players, naturally, spent thousands (actually, probably tens of thousands,) of dollars to get there, with armies so massive and unsustainable that if they actually did get overpowered and raided, it would cost hundreds or thousands of more dollars just to recover from the damage. =P The kicker was, BEING overpowered didn't actually happen a lot to those massive players at first, as within a server most of them avoided fighting one another on equal ground, army against army- both sides stood to lose a lot- but once the server vs server events started... man, a lot of those top players ended up burning, and spending God knows how much extra money to try and bounce back from the beating. x.X
Zanten, Doer Of The Things
Unless He Forgets In Which Case Zanten, Forgetter Of The Things
Or He Procrascinates, In Which Case Zanten, Doer Of The Things Later
Or It Involves Moving Furniture, in Which Case Zanten, F*** You.
