This was for several reasons:
- We wanted to preserve the integrity of the game. If players who use exploits can jump to the head of the pack, then this encourages players to continually seek and exploit such weaknesses.
- We wanted to protect the time and effort invested by players who did not exploit. If players who exploit can leapfrog players who are playing legitimately, this encourages legitimate players to exploit as well.
- We wanted to send a message that exploiting will not be tolerated. While our other goals could have been accomplished by merely removing the "excess" Prestige, that does not deter future exploiters. We wanted players to know that exploiting will have consequences.
Now, many people have raised the objection that "we never declared this was an exploit" but we believe that common sense dictates that sending troops to their death repeatedly should raise red flags in a player's mind that "hey, this might not be an intended feature." We want players to think about their actions and inform us if there are exploits instead of abusing them.
Bear in mind that we, as a company, do not gain anything from this action. We don't stand to make any additional profits (in fact, we'll probably lose some) and this has certainly created some negative backlash.
We did this to protect our players and preserve the legitimacy of the game. We don't want players to exploit and we certainly don't want players to feel that they
need to exploit to "keep up with the Joneses."
Our goal was, and still is, to make Evony a fun, exciting and fair game in the long-term. Sometimes we have to make decisions in the short term which will be unpopular and financially negative to get the game moving back in the direction we want it to go.