Quote Originally Posted by malaika View Post
If this is, in fact, the case, and hypothetically, is there anything terribly wrong with having a game that truly is survival of the fittest?
I'd say a more accurate phrase would be : survival of those-who-signed-up-earliest. A month from now, a new player who joins Server 3, for example, would be fish bait. He has no hope of ever being admitted into a strong alliance because he simply won't be needed coming out of newbie protection. He can survive...barely. He can make it not worth people's time to raid him. It means not building more than one city so it cannot be taken from him. It also means trying to establish a single fortified city, which severely limits his options and powers.

Those of us who are here early DO have a tremendous advantage, one that is extremely difficult, if not impossible to overcome the longer a server game goes on without resetting. As to whether it is wrong? No I don't suppose it is wrong, but it doesn't encourage new customer retention beyond 1 or 2 weeks of a server's start date. After that, specially beyond one month, a new player is essentially farming fodder. Thats probably not a very good business model in my book. But this is essentially the same dilemma faced by EVERY multiplayer pvp games in a persistent world. If you have a better solution you'd probably be really rich by now.