Congrats to the winners of World 2

[DeletedUser]

Congratulations to the winners of World 2, The Game Staff! For four months we have begged and pleaded for you to please give us some kind of hint that you're potentially considering looking into the possibility of setting some win conditions, giving us the cheap nobles that we'd earned by every single objective measure that's possible in this game, or closing the world's registrations.

You told us "make people quit and get the server population down and we'll look into things". We did. We knocked the server's population down to the mid 600s. You then closed World 1's registrations, sat and watched World 2 shoot back up to nearly 1000, and said "world 2 isn't half as many players as world 1 and registration closing is based on time anyway". Then you said "i'll look into it and get back to you" last Friday. It's now Tuesday, and the entire implied job of a community manager is "person who looks into things for the community", so I can only conclude that I was either being lied to again, or you're really bad at managing a community, or the people higher up than you are frighteningly bad at "looking into things", whatever that means.

You've made it 100% clear to me that you're not interested in letting us have any possibility of winning, and I'm not interested in playing a game that's rigged to keep me playing for no reason. I stop playing games when they're not fun, and being lied to repeatedly by two "community managers" and their "staff" of unpaid high school students isn't fun. We've all been mostly checked out of this game waiting for you to give us some kind of indication that you would let the game actually progress toward an ending, instead of just lying to us. You chose the second option so we're going to go ahead and make that checkout formal now.

 

[DeletedUser]

From a player's pov, all games short of second life should have an end that is both understood by the players and obtainable. The bar should be set and with it goals that can be met and that bar shouldn't constantly be in flux.

First we're told to look at .net as an example, then when the pop drops to almost half of .net's requirements we're told that the server is in it's infancy and .net rules don't really apply. Ok fine, then give us a guideline for .us. Benchmarks for players should be clearly understood by the staff before the world even starts. The fact that this world has been going on for a year and there's not a single person on staff that can in any way, shape or form give us any kind of guideline to go by should be an embarassment.

Added on top of that the attitude we receive when we DO post on these forums from certain forum moderators that lack the ability to moderate impartially and it's really a horrible environment all around.

And before anyone comes in posting that even if they did have an answer the world wouldn't be entering end game today or tomorrow just because we demanded that, we understand that, that's never what we wanted to begin with. All we've asked for for the last four months is some vague outline that we can use as a guide while we continue pushing forward even if it's something crazy like 250 players left on the server registrations close, at least that gives us something to work with and there's no way that that's too much to ask.

Mostly I'm just ashamed I gave innogames money for the last year to be treated like this.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'd like to second what Destroyman expressed. TW, as a game, is frankly pretty terrible to begin with. When you add an unresponsive and generally worthless game staff to it, it becomes unplayably bad. We have been talking about doing this for several months now -- about as long as we have been unable to get an answer from staff.

The fact that even though w1 is closed, they still can't give us an answer is frankly embarrassing. If I were on the staff here -- and I'm thankful they're not, because most of the moderators are abysmal -- I would quit because of how poorly this reflects on the organization. If you've already started closing worlds, how can you not know what the criteria are and be able to express it?

In the future, when you hire moderators, you should ensure that they are actually capable of behaving in an impartial manner, and when they aren't (as SmashNasty demonstrated early in w2, with community managers having to come in and delete his posts), they should lose that authority.

In the future, you should have standards for how the endgame is going to work as worlds get there -- not try to come up with it after worlds are already way past where the endgame begins on .net and just continually put it off without any real explanation or word from those running the game. We shouldn't have to get reported in order to get an answer. Or a non-answer, in the case of what we actually got.

Congratulations, game staff -- you managed what all the PROs couldn't and got us to quit with your sheer incompetence.

 

[DeletedUser]

/signed Hoppus

 

[DeletedUser]

Agreed.

 

[DeletedUser]

I wanna also agree to everything my fellow tribemates have said. We noble someone, they restart and build right back up. Not really fun if you ask me!

 

[DeletedUser329]

I understand you are frustrated. However I can only reiterate what I said in this thread.

I understand this has built up and you are getting impatient . However I am in comparison only recently reading it and need to take advice on how to proceed. This isn't going to happen overnight. That would be nice However not realistic.

I will do my utmost to reply with something solid by the end of next week at the very latest..

<3

 

[DeletedUser]

I understand you are frustrated. However I can only reiterate what I said in this thread.

I understand this has built up and you are getting impatient . However I am in comparison only recently reading it and need to take advice on how to proceed. This isn't going to happen overnight. That would be nice However not realistic.

I will do my utmost to reply with something solid by the end of next week at the very latest..

<3

Speaking for myself -- too little too late. You've been a moderator of these forums for over a year now. I have no idea when you were promoted to CM, but it doesn't really matter. In the thread you linked, you have a moderator (SmashNasty) telling us that moderators have a direct line to CMs, and thus influence and a say in game settings and world ends. This means that there have been past discussions about rules for ending worlds.

Okay -- I took a quick look at your staff thread. You were promoted over a month ago. You're telling me that in over a month as CM, it never occured to you to:
1) Check the w2 forums? (You would have seen our many threads about closing the world and starting the endgame). You said that you hadn't read the history because 'you hadn't had a need to'. Which, to me, means that you knew we felt it was time to begin the endgame and didn't care.
2) Look at TW-stats? (You would have seen that there were 600 or fewer active players on the server)
3) What about the other CMs? Why have they ignored w2?

Now you want us to give you another two weeks so that you can maybe, just maybe come back with win conditions for us? The reality is that win conditions should have already existed, and it shouldn't take you three weeks (one week from your first post to now) to come up with them. Win conditions that will probably involve us having to wait several more months for the influx of players from the w1 closure to get out of newbie protection so we can rim them again and they can restart because you still probably won't have closed our registration?

Not to mention the fact that it took us 4 months to get a response from a CM -- which we only got because we intentionally got a post reported?

I'm not interested. This is a discussion that should have taken place 4 months ago, when we initially asked about it. It's not like we haven't tried -- we've asked ingame and on the forums but been ignored. And when we finally do get a response, there's not even a hint of an apology, just 'give us another month'.

 

[DeletedUser2634]

Winners of w2??? u guys dont even control the 50% of the world and u believe that w2 is over?? If u ask me the game has just started...

 

[DeletedUser]

Winners of w2??? u guys dont even control the 50% of the world and u believe that w2 is over?? If u ask me the game has just started...

lol @ not even reading to the 7th word of the first post.

GG

 

[Dase]

It's funny how this forum has 99% SPERG members.BUT you guys are clearely the winners.I'm mad that RL got in my way but in the bottom of my heart I know that there was nothing left to do after AsAs made the foolish decision to merge with Ali's tribe ...


Congratulations to SPERG for winning this world(even if you guys had a lot of luck ...) !!!



Also,nice job Sara !
Will you guys join w5?It's quite clear that there's no way you're losing,so why don't you try to conquer another world?

 

[DeletedUser]

Lol, you guys clearly arent reading the posts above at all are you?

SPERG isnt claiming the win, The mods have won the world by refusing to set any end game conditions. Or even pay attention to the servers players over the last 4 or 5 months.

SPERG, or most of it, has already hit the delete button and will not be logging in again. On this world or any other.

I think at last count it's something like 3000 to 4000 villages that will be turning barb in the next week or so, with more coming before long.

To those who remain; Enjoy spending the next year of this world watching the barb noblers try to conquer the massive hole of barb villages left behind, while the world continues to not progress at all.

Its a shame, because the world should have long ago been in endgame, and could have actually been fun for people to fight it out to the finish.

I'll be hitting delete tonight as well, and wish the best to whoever it is that actually wants to stay and barb noble their way through the sad excuse for a world this one has become for another year or more.

<3 Suave

 

[DeletedUser]

Will you guys join w5?It's quite clear that there's no way you're losing,so why don't you try to conquer another world?

None of us will be playing TW again (at least, not until we forgot we swore that in 5 or 10 years and someone talks us into trying this out). We've been saying that for months; this world was it, we're sick and tired of it.

Also, I realize it's not apparent yet, but the top 7 players of w2 are gone. That's over 20 million points and around 2500 towns combined. GL whoever is left.

 

[DeletedUser]

It's funny how this forum has 99% SPERG members.BUT you guys are clearely the winners.I'm mad that RL got in my way but in the bottom of my heart I know that there was nothing left to do after AsAs made the foolish decision to merge with Ali's tribe ...


Congratulations to SPERG for winning this world(even if you guys had a lot of luck ...) !!!



Also,nice job Sara !
Will you guys join w5?It's quite clear that there's no way you're losing,so why don't you try to conquer another world?

Congrats to you on also not managing to read past the 7th word of the first post.

 

[DeletedUser]

Now you want us to give you another two weeks so that you can maybe, just maybe come back with win conditions for us? The reality is that win conditions should have already existed, and it shouldn't take you three weeks (one week from your first post to now) to come up with them. Win conditions that will probably involve us having to wait several more months for the influx of players from the w1 closure to get out of newbie protection so we can rim them again and they can restart because you still probably won't have closed our registration?

Another thing that this inadvertently points out is that they haven't even begun to look into the possibility of considering win conditions for World 1, which is 560 days old. It's even more baffling that World 1's players would put up with this, but maybe they're just interested in playing forever (as opposed to actually having a goal) like most of the people on this server seem to be.

 

[DeletedUser]

I'm not a mod, just a W1 player.

And no, we don't want to play forever, we're just not obnoxious enough to constantly point out at every given moment that our world is getting closer to it's end and we deserve end-game settings. Something called patience (and as said, not being obnoxious).

Reminds me of a high-school student...yeah, I don't think that the "unpaid high school students" title really fits for the mods so much as some of these rants.

And this isn't .net. I don't know how many times it's been said, but .net end game policies don't really reflect .us policies to my understanding and reading.

Honestly, I'm surprised you guys haven't quit this game any sooner. Don't complain about the game's policies...if you don't like it, or if you think TW is a "terrible game", no one is forcing you to stay.

 

[DeletedUser]

Speaking for myself -- too little too late. You've been a moderator of these forums for over a year now. I have no idea when you were promoted to CM, but it doesn't really matter. In the thread you linked, you have a moderator (SmashNasty) telling us that moderators have a direct line to CMs, and thus influence and a say in game settings and world ends. This means that there have been past discussions about rules for ending worlds.

Quick clarification: Even if moderators had a direct line to CMs (which we do, through skype and obviously we can PM them, which is direct), that doesn't mean that they can influence game settings and world ends. Forum moderators moderate the forums; they don't run the server. Yes, we can suggest things, but that holds as much weight as the suggestion of any other player.

To add to that, not even CMs choose exactly when a world ends. In the same way that CMs don't choose when a world starts and sometimes don't even get to choose settings, the actual people who handle all of that are the Product Managers. From what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong if you know I'm wrong/have proof, CMs can suggest that things happen, not necessarily just do them, and even then Product Managers must approve them.

Okay -- I took a quick look at your staff thread. You were promoted over a month ago. You're telling me that in over a month as CM, it never occured to you to:
1) Check the w2 forums? (You would have seen our many threads about closing the world and starting the endgame). You said that you hadn't read the history because 'you hadn't had a need to'. Which, to me, means that you knew we felt it was time to begin the endgame and didn't care.
2) Look at TW-stats? (You would have seen that there were 600 or fewer active players on the server)
3) What about the other CMs? Why have they ignored w2?

1) There can be as many threads as possible, but she said she was "in comparison recently re-reading it". That doesn't say when she read it, how recently was the time before, etc. In a month, with the opening of a new world, transferring of power and ensuring that she is properly trained, it's a bit much to expect that she can also get the Product Manager to subsequently agree to end the world. Ultimately, it's their choice moreso than hers, and most of your post seems full of assumptions, like "which, to me, means that you knew we felt it was time to begin the endgame and didn't care." It's unfair to assume this, especially as it's her job to care. She's always expressed concern to me on how to get more players on the forums through competitions and proliferation, how to get more players to the server, and so on. Unfortunately, she can't satisfy everyone at once, it's difficult to handle everything while she is undergoing training, ensuring she is handling all worlds well, and opening a new world.
2) Read 1.
3) Other CMs? There are no other CMs on .us, though I presume you mean a previous CM such as OFLOW. I'm not sure how you can ask her to speak for another CM though .

Now you want us to give you another two weeks so that you can maybe, just maybe come back with win conditions for us? The reality is that win conditions should have already existed, and it shouldn't take you three weeks (one week from your first post to now) to come up with them. Win conditions that will probably involve us having to wait several more months for the influx of players from the w1 closure to get out of newbie protection so we can rim them again and they can restart because you still probably won't have closed our registration?

Not to mention the fact that it took us 4 months to get a response from a CM -- which we only got because we intentionally got a post reported?

I'm not interested. This is a discussion that should have taken place 4 months ago, when we initially asked about it. It's not like we haven't tried -- we've asked ingame and on the forums but been ignored. And when we finally do get a response, there's not even a hint of an apology, just 'give us another month'.

Read above. I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's not nearly as easy as you think to get these things accomplished. If you want to take .net as an example (yes, it's different, but everyone seems intent on comparing them anyways), W12 was in a much more dominated state before it closed (the first world to do so).

Another thing that this inadvertently points out is that they haven't even begun to look into the possibility of considering win conditions for World 1, which is 560 days old. It's even more baffling that World 1's players would put up with this, but maybe they're just interested in playing forever (as opposed to actually having a goal) like most of the people on this server seem to be.

World 12 of .net, the first world to close, had no win conditions for over 3 years (possibly 4) while it was open and more dominated than W2. Just comparing it for all you who are so intent on comparisons to .net.

W1 of .net is over 5 years (possibly close to 6) old.

What's truly baffling is that players complain on the forums instead of contacting Innogames directly, circumventing the CM who doesn't actually have definite power over the world ending.

 

[DeletedUser]

To add to that, not even CMs choose exactly when a world ends. In the same way that CMs don't choose when a world starts and sometimes don't even get to choose settings.

Its not about demanding an instant end to the world. Its asking for basic GUIDLINES of when we will see endgame. Which this world should have been in for ages now.
When will registrations close?
When will cheap nobles come?
What conditions need to be met to actually win?

These questions have been asked repeatedly for months now.

What's truly baffling is that players complain on the forums instead of contacting Innogames directly, circumventing the CM who doesn't actually have definite power over the world ending.

Yes, how baffling that players would try to achieve resolution through the COMMUNITY MANAGER, whose job is presumably, to manage the community. The community manager is the 'highest power' in the totem pole that the players are able to contact.

If the manager of the server community in its entirety doesnt have the power to address these issues, its most certainly in their job description to bring them from the community they're managing to the higher powers.

However you want to rationalize things with the .net examples youre posting <such and such a server went 4 years without win conditions, etc> The point is we've been told for 5 months or so now to use .net guidlines, which have no bearing on the time a server has been open.

Theyre based solely on the server population and tribal dominance. By which this server has been more than eligible for ages.

And to the person suggesting patience and not to be obnoxious... We've been patient for nearly half an entire year. While being continuously lied to, fed misinformation, and jerked around by the people that are supposedly in charge of this server.

Thats beyond patience, thats absurdly poor customer service and embarssingly terrible management. Mcdonalds wouldnt hire you if you thought this was acceptable. And they hire crackheads.

No demands are being made, the time has passed, and even if they came out tommorow and told us what win conditions would be it is too late. The delete buttons have been pressed and Inno games has lost a fair chunk of customers.

 

[DeletedUser]

Having the worst moderator on the staff posting "oh yeah, well this other server took 4 years to get win conditions, what are you complaining about?" and "guys it's totally hard to make these decisions, it's just out of our hands" as a point is so laughably stupid on multiple levels that it really just illustrates the point I was trying to make with this thread even better than I did. It's really especially funny to me that you think there's some kind of deeply involved process in working out win conditions.

Here's a template for what we've been begging and pleading with you to answer for four straight months:

Registration/Restart Closing
When the server reaches ___ total players, or __% of total players above _______ points, new registrations and player restarts will be closed.
Noble Price Reductions
When the server reaches ___ total players, the price of minting gold coins will be reduced to __%.
When the server reaches ___ total players, the price of minting gold coins will be reduced to __%.
(You can copy and paste the second or third line again if you want to have more milestones for players to achieve. You would copy and paste it as many times as you wanted to set conditions. You could use this as incentive to keep players motivated by presenting them goals.)
Final Victory Condition
Once (a single tribe or alliance of tribes) has conquered __% of (all/player) villages, they will be awarded victory for the server and receive a prize of __________.

That's all we've been asking for, for the last four straight months, through multiple posts on here, multiple PMs, and multiple support tickets, and you think it's some kind of Herculean task to fill in the blanks and choose to openly lie to us about it instead.

 

[DeletedUser]

Its not about demanding an instant end to the world. Its asking for basic GUIDLINES of when we will see endgame. Which this world should have been in for ages now.
When will registrations close?
When will cheap nobles come?
What conditions need to be met to actually win?

These questions have been asked repeatedly for months now.



Yes, how baffling that players would try to achieve resolution through the COMMUNITY MANAGER, whose job is presumably, to manage the community. The community manager is the 'highest power' in the totem pole that the players are able to contact.

So Innogames has lost their e-mail? Thank you for letting me know, I'll be sure to contact them through their e-mail to let them know that it doesn't exist...

You're repeatedly throwing accusations without acknowledging a few important facts:

1) You want guidelines when guidelines would only be complained about when introduced for being too far away.
2) There have been numerous comparisons to .net. Did you see a guideline posted until W12 was much farther along than W2 is? If you're comparing to .net, then be aware of that comparison.
3) I highly, highly doubt that OFLOW never approached the Innogames staff who are his superiors and would have the actual control about this. Even if he didn't, then this is a new CM. Your frustration is understandable, but taking it to the forums instead of Innogames, who can be easily contacted through a simple email. I even googled Innogames for you:

http://www.innogames.de/en

There's a "Contact Us" portion. Perhaps using it would benefit us all?

If the manager of the server community in its entirety doesnt have the power to address these issues, its most certainly in their job description to bring them from the community they're managing to the higher powers.

However you want to rationalize things with the .net examples youre posting <such and such a server went 4 years without win conditions, etc> The point is we've been told for 5 months or so now to use .net guidlines, which have no bearing on the time a server has been open.

Theyre based solely on the server population and tribal dominance. By which this server has been more than eligible for ages.

And to the person suggesting patience and not to be obnoxious... We've been patient for nearly half an entire year. While being continuously lied to, fed misinformation, and jerked around by the people that are supposedly in charge of this server.

Thats beyond patience, thats absurdly poor customer service and embarssingly terrible management. Mcdonalds wouldnt hire you if you thought this was acceptable. And they hire crackheads.

No demands are being made, the time has passed, and even if they came out tommorow and told us what win conditions would be it is too late. The delete buttons have been pressed and Inno games has lost a fair chunk of customers.

If you had read my post, you'd have realized a few things:

1) There is a new CM to address this. Obviously the old one stepped down for a reason. One of these may have been due to lack of time, which would explain this.
2) The new CM has been in place for a month, and after opening a new world, being trained, and all the other duties she went through, I'm extremely impressed at how quickly she's sunk into her job.
3) What's beyond patience is that:

A) You're comparing Innogames to crackheads, and saying they are worse.
B) You are seeing it solely from your point of view, not that of the Innogames staff.

I'm a simple volunteer, nothing more and nothing less. I could easily hold my piece on this issue, and not speak up, but I speak up because I believe you are simply being irrational. Understandable, given the amount of time this has taken, but on this particular issue you are not looking at things from the Innogames perspective. This server is relatively new, not even 2 years old, and a world is being requested to end or have guidelines made for it? There are statistics on profitability, player activity, communications within the Innogames structure, and many other factors that go into these guidelines, and you want it to happen despite there being a CM change and a lot of things going on. If you expect those to be done, approved, and announced in 4 months when there has already been a CM change due to a probable lack of time on the part of the previous CM, and one of those months has been devoted to a new world, training, and ensuring that things are kept in order for the rest of the worlds (as well as hiring new staff for scripts/GFX), then I'm sorry but I wouldn't expect the same. It's not nearly as easy as you make it out to be.

Yes, it could've probably been done under more favorable circumstances. Yes, it's difficult for players to handle as well.

But in the end, complaining here does little to nothing for anyone involved. Take it to the right people.

Of course, if you simply choose to delete and blame everyone but yourselves who didn't take the action to simply google Innogames and contact the people in charge of the CM (who you assert has been negligent, yet you still won't contact Innogames about to make the claim of negligence to her superios), then I suppose I can't stop you.

destroyman1, I'm flattered that you sunk to personal insults to attack me. I'm glad Suave can post in a fashion more suitable to the forums, at least.