THIS IS A REALLY OLD POST, BUT THIS IS STILL TRUE ABOUT THEIR HISTORY. NEW LINKS ON THE BOTTOM.

http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/15/more-about-evony/

This is a massive story, so I thought that I would expand on the original article. If it was in the automobile industry or the banking industry it would be front page headlines. But the old people who are in charge of the media don’t understand games. So firstly I will do some explaining.

Gold farming I have written about before. It is the practice of playing games to generate valuable in game items which are then sold in the real world to lazy Western players who can’t be bothered playing the game properly themselves. It is a massive industry employing around 400,000 people in asia, mainly in China. Gold farmers are often on the edge of legality and they use every underhand internet technique to market themselves. They generate mountains of spam as they attack blogs and forums with their advertising. They are amongst the bad boys of the internet.

Free MMO (Massive, Multiplayer, Online) games are known as persistent world games because they are always running and provide an alternative reality. The big names are Runescape, Habbo, Club Pernguin, Maple Story and Free Realms. They have many millions of players each, all around the world. Whilst the game is free to play they have revenue models based on purchasing in game items, playing an enhanced version of the game, carrying advertising etc. They are a huge phenomenon of our times and many people you know play them.

Eric Lam is a Chinese businessman who owns or is associated with a whole cloud of companies and websites. He was sued by Microsoft for online advertising click fraud. It is thought that Lam owns the gold farming company Wowmine and that he could be earning as much as half a million dollars a day from this alone.

Now it looks like Lam has decided to go first party with his own MMO, thus cutting out the middleman. That game is Evony. And its heritage shows. When you play the game, just about everything in the game can be obtained by paying instead of playing. A blatantly exploitative business model never seen before.

The game itself is a rip off of some very well known games. The game mechanic and some in game content comes from Sid Meier’s highly successful Civilisation series. Much of the graphics came from Age of Empires.

The game itself is so flaky and bugged that it is very easy for things you have paid good money for to just disappear. Lots of people are losing money this way. And, surprise, surprise, Evony never give a refund.

Something very devious is iEvony. This is an application that you download into your PC to invite your friends to join the game in exchange for in game rewards. This could very well be a Trojan designed to harvest email addresses messenger passwords and much else. Would you trust a Chinese gold farmer inside your computer? Many gullible people are.

The advertising for Evony consists of fairly lurid female imagery. These images were mostly lifted from lingerie catalogues and, amazingly, have zero relevance whatsoever to the game. Evony are carpetbombing game websites with these adverts using multiple accounts of Google AdWords. When website owners block one source of these adverts another appears. Site owners have complained repeatedly to Google, but to no avail.

But advertising isn’t the only marketing going on. Evony are using automated spam programmes to add comments to articles on blog sites. Not once or twice. No, they are blanketing game related blogs with comments that advertise the game. Exactly what you would expect of a Chinese gold farmer.

This article just skims over what is going on here. There is enough to write a whole series of articles or even a book. What is for sure is that Evony is best avoided by everyone. Go and play Runescape, Habbo or Free Realms instead.

Short and sweet:

Basically the creator of Evony is a scam artist/ all around MMO douchebag, the assets in the game are stolen straght from Age Of Empires 2 (used to be)and CiV III and IV. And now they are tricking stupid people into buying their fake coins, then the people don't get them. Some get their accounts erased entirely.. And the babe in the ad is a model for halloween costumes.. They didn't even hire their own models.. And their ievony invite progam is a suspected spam machine.

(evony horror story)

http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=29887

(games evony rips off of)

http://www.arksark.org/blog/2009/07/05/evony-a-patchwork-of-stolen-parts/

Just give this a thought before you click on one of THEIR ads. I thought this was interesting though.

NEW STUFF:

http://negativegamer.com/2009/11/08/evony-girls-as-seen-in-porn/

http://kotaku.com/5407060/evony-ads-go-from-bad-to-worse-to-awesome

http://www.lazygamer.co.za/general-news/a-history-of-evony-ads-the-insanity-continues/

Thanks for the notice, but you should e-mail ioi about it so he can get the scam ad removed. I saw the ad and tried to look it up on wiki, but it didn't have any information.

Nice article.

The ads for Evony are more pervasive than the magic fat pill ads. Worse yet, they run in Flash so they can't be source blocked through your browser.

Very interesting read.

It was initially named Civony. But I wonder if Sid Meijer sued over that.

Oh my, doucheon- er, bruceongames writing a worthwhile article with a real message? Maybe he isn't so bad after all.

buttt butt butttttt my ffriends play the GAME and they say its fun

Good luck gold/item buying on Runescape.....

Hmm. After playing evony for a few months(I find it pretty fun), I completely agree with this article. Although I didn't know the history of the person who made the game, the whole buying in-game coins thing and iEvony were obvious rip-offs as soon as I saw them.

I agree it's a big deal but comparing it to the banks and automobile industry is ludicrous.