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Thread: Dear UMGE Staff....

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  1. #1

    Default Dear UMGE Staff....

    Dear UMGE Staff,

    Maybe you read here, maybe you don't, I hope that someone does though
    because I want to tell you some very important things. In the Game Industry
    you get few chances to make it "work". By that I mean to keep customers,
    game players, happy and telling others that your game is something that
    they should try. This does not mean the game is working 100% with zero
    flaws and no lag, this means you are keeping them informed of problems
    and that you are working to solve them. One of the greatest examples of this
    was the launch of a game called "WWII On-line" on June 6th, 2001, it had the
    worst launch day in the history of on-line games.
    However, with rapid tech fixes and a lot of cominucation from Cornered Rat Software (CRS), the developer, to the players, they pulled it out of the fire and have been going strong ever since.
    Right now you're at a critical point in any on-line games life, you went "live". The fact that you misinformed the players that CIVONY was the "live" version so they would spend real money on the game, is in the past and we'll all forgive it for one simple reason: we want to play this game.
    Now think about that for a moment, here are players/customers,
    who have been lied to, who have put up with Beta "growing pains",
    who still get Network Issues when they try to log in, have thier game-mails wiped, friends lists disapear and yet they are still comming back. At least a fair percentage of them are, you've lost quite a few of the "casual players" but they wouldn't be the ones who would have paid for coins anyways, so not a great finacial loss. They will ride out a lot of
    these problems for one simple reason: we want to play this game.
    However, there is a fine line between "I'll put up with this" and "They are never
    going to make it work". You're fast nearing the second and if you continue to
    have the attitude that I have seen by your actions, the game is done and
    you all have invested time, money and effort into a failure.

    Now that I've hit you over the head with a bat, here's the carrot:
    Think of the entire comunity of players like we are all the population
    in one of EVONY's Castles. You have to keep our Loyalty up and make sure
    Grev is down. You can't Tax us (force us to buy game coins) to death or we
    all leave and you have no production (game). So, you have to use Disaster Relief
    a few times to keep us happy, or...

    Comunicate with the players. A simple mail with "Hey everyone, we know there
    have been network problems, we're working on it. Here's a free Amulet." would
    help.

    Provide better service. A person who has problems buying game coins should
    be treated exactly the same as a person who needs tech help. Even a "we
    understand your problem and will get someone to help" insta-reply goes miles
    to keep people happy.

    Get involved with the comunity. The serious gamers would like to talk to the
    Devs, express ideas and maybe even help. You have a HUGE resource here
    that you just have to tap into. With todays language translation software, this
    shouldn't be a problem at all.

    There are more and I'm sure others will post them folowing this message.
    If anything, remember this one simple thing from this entire post:

    We want to play this game.

  2. #2

    Default

    UMGE is based in (PRC) China, right? That may expalin why UMGE owners from mainland China, being ruled by the one Communist Party, are so comfortable lying. Isn't that how governments without free press (censorship) and state controlled media operates -- that's how they're socialized -- communicating by controlling information and being deceptive. So, UMGE owners might not even understand how being lied to bugs people from countries with competitive governments and free media.

    Kudos for the UMGE owners in creating a fun, addictive, and EXPENSIVE game in a short time.
    Last edited by Naraquend; 05-13-2009 at 03:31 PM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    California
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    sadly, i agree w/Naraquend. I doubt that UMGE givs a sh--- "poo" about how the gamers feel. They know that we will keep coming back because the fact that we are playing this still after all the crap means that we have no life. Plus they hired Hulu to eat our brains so we will NEVER stop playing.

  4. #4

    Default

    Someone is reading, understanding and now doing something. You just made it worth staying UMGE. This from todays in-game mail box...

    Dear Evony Players,
    When Evony was released, the demand for the game far exceeded our expectations. Our servers and network were designed with a moderate size player base in mind, and the number of Evony players now exceeds 500,000. While we were thrilled with the response to the game, we were also overwhelmed.
    We were basically left with two options: scale up our infrastructure to meet demand, or forgo the “Free Forever” theme and convert to a subscription system, which would reduce the number of users.
    We decided that because “Free Forever” is what inspired players to come to Evony in the first place, we would stick with it and do our best to support all our paid and unpaid players, rather than changing the business model to subscription-based. Since that time, our team has been getting very little sleep, often working 20 hours per day on Evony to make the game better, more stable and error-free. We believe that while the game is far from perfect,our efforts have yielded results. Evony servers are more stable than ever before. In addition, we have ramped up our capacity, including adding a new server, and we will continue to increase our capacity to keep up with demand.
    We're also working on bug fixes, based on feedback from all of you. Many bugs have been fixed, but we realize more still exist. We are doing our best to stay on top of them.
    A major point of controversy came when we attempted to fix the “Scout spam” medal exploit issue. Our goal was to fix the exploit, but in doing so we had the unintended side effect of dramatically lowering the medal drop rate.
    We initially tried to fix this by artificially increasing the drop rate, but we eventually decided to redesign the medal system entirely. Now medals drop based on the level of the barbarian city or valley attacked. Higher level valleys drop higher level medals, and the drop rate is much more predictable and even.
    Our intention was never to force players to buy Evony Cents to get medals through purchased medal boxes. We are committed to a real Free Forever approach. We want players to be able to gain promotion and have success in the game without ever paying any money. Evony Cent items are designed to help players do things faster and easier, and are supposed to be completely optional.
    However, much of the time these goals were not communicated, both because we are on a different continent and because we are so busy with efforts to correct issues and increase capacity. That was a mistake on our part and certainly conveyed the wrong message to you, the player. For this reason, we have now hired an English Liaison to help aid in communication with the community and are in the process of hiring additional liaisons, moderators and customer service representatives to help address player concerns and keep the lines of communication open.
    After all of this, we want to let the players know that we are still enthusiastically committed to continuing to improve Evony. The new medal system will reward players according to the difficulty of their battles. Tougher battles are more likely to yield better medals. As Evony moves forward, we are working on some exciting developments. We're going to continue to fix bugs and exploits as they crop up. We're going to listen to the voice of our community through our liaisons and customer service team. We're in the process of building and strengthening our customer service team. We'll balance combat and the game economy by hiring game data spe******ts and economists. We're building better graphics, animations and in-game videos and adding music and sound into Evony. We're continuing to increase server capacity and performance, increasing server stability and reliability. We're adding new moderators in-game and on the forums.
    And we are still developing Age Two, which will add a historical perspective and new combat mechanics to the game, among many other things. Players have responded in huge numbers to our employment postings.
    We're excited to have so many of the people working on Evony also be players of Evony. In this way, we can continue to mold the game to be what players want.
    We are all very excited about the future of Evony, and we hope you are too!
    The heart of Evony is our community and we are honored and thrilled to have such an involved, thoughtful and enthusiastic player base. Thank you for your continued support of Evony.
    Sincerely,
    The Evony Team

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