Comments on: Kingory, Nap War, Evony, Empire Craft, Lords Online. What is going on?

By: Mink

Mink — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:09:28 +0000

What’s going on is farily obvious. These companies have tapped into the fact that people LIKE playing these games and nobody is realistically gonna do it for free.

Accept it Bruce and quit moaning about it.

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:04:14 +0000

I play napwar and as an adult I am aware that the developers are out to make money. However the game has given me hours of enjoyment and I have made many friends via the alliance element.

I make the choice when or when not to spend money on the game in the same way I decide to download a song from itunes, buy a book from amazon or a bottle of wine from my supermarket.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:35:18 +0000

Good day people,

I can affirm one of the games, NapWar, is indeed an addition of the Evony makers due to the fact that I have played Evony since back when it was Civony. Also i have played Kingory and had to ask myself if it was a chinese dynasty edition of NapWar. But as for NapWar, i was one of the beta tester for the game and was given, i guess that “honor”, through “Evony” mailing me inviting me to play NapWar saying it was giving $100.00 worth item to guilds that switched over to them from evony and i had never heard of them before so they obviously got my email from Evony, NapWar does have the in-game battle simulator that Kingory does though they said they were the only ones. lol

By: Anita

Anita — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:45:32 +0000

Bruce,

You describe Google advertising as ‘high risk’. I would like to know why you see Google advertising like this and what do you think is the best way to market online games?

By: Israfel

Israfel — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:30:44 +0000

Two cents.

I am a recent fan of your website, and a longtime player of evony. I think that you do yourself a disservice underestimating this game. Reported membership is in the millions and many, many, of those players pay. Evony is big business.

I have not paid, and don’t really intend to. But then, I have several other more expensive real world hobbies.

I think it’s atrocious that they have attacked you legally the way they did, and I hope you win.

Suppose you are right in every single point you raise about this game. They are derivative, they have stolen content from other games, they are an opportunistic and shady business with questionable ethics. well yeah. Most of us who play know this, and have probably always known this. What needs acknowlegment, however, is that despite all this they have provided a standalone game that is not any of those other games. It has a complexity of depth and strategic thinking that is outstanding; I beat CivRev in 4 hours on deity setting. After a year I’m still learning evony.

The point I am drawn to making is that this game, despite or in line with the intent of it’s creators, is a device used by it’s players for whatever draws them there. Corporations are shady. I take this for granted. But really what does that matter so long as I get a product I admit to being quite addicted to at a price I am more than happy to pay?

Best of luck to you in your case.
-is

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:51:11 +0000

I’ve played Evony and Empire craft, and wanted to say that they’re also similir in more than just gameplay and business model.

Neither game seems to have even one person who speaks english to make announcements, work the forums, and such. I sometimes even wonder if they use web translators for it.

Neither really gives a squat to make sure you get what you paid for. They both even claim their systems work fine when every single person involved knows that they don’t. They’re very cavalier about all of it.

Neither seems to be worried about where the game will be in 6 months or a year. I’d bet money their long term plan is to make another game or some other investment, not try to keep their games going.

It has been mentioned that the business models are similar (or the same) but i’d like to point out that in both games their pricing on some things is completely ridiculous. There’s one thing in EC, level 10 union shop, that costs over $25,000 !

By: Dm

Dm — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:38:52 +0000

To all people making comments on adds on this site unless bruce owns the blog service or server adds put on blogs and forums are added by the people who run the servers not the person who is running the blog and btw only one of these mmorts browser games i truly like is Travian although its older and has no real graphics to speak of its gameplay far exceeds these and also although it has a pay service its not a game breaker for non pay players like the ones in the games mentioned above

By: Leftyizme

Leftyizme — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:30:03 +0000

Hello Bruce,
I play Evony. I also have looked at the other games and agree 100% that they are all basically the same game. However, I can’t see the “Mystery” of this the way you do.
1: A group of young, enterprising, and desperate game designers team up to both make games… but to hopefully make some serious money.
2: They either purposely, or accidentally stumble across a way to use the features, storylines,building models, and other items from Age of Empires, Sid Mier’s Civ series, and other legitimate and popular real time strategy games… and blend in the ability to sell virtual items and goods to a wealth of online players for real cash… all without getting creamed by Microsoft’s leauge of lawyers for what I see as blatant and obvious copyright infringements.
3: They then take that original formula for sucess, and with a little bit of re-modelling, such as different models for the buildings, a story line change, and other switches, and you have an almost endless list of possible game variations. This would appeal to a wide array of different potential players and customers. Due to it’s ability to offer “something for everybody”. Interested in WW-II? How about sub-marine warfare? Or, perhaps a carribean-themed pirates game would be a better fit? All these, and more, could be developed and written quickly once the original programming and gameplay features were developed and in place.
4: Develop as many different versions as your budget for websites and servers can allow, then sit back and collect the cash as it flows in. New games keep something fresh offerd to offset the ones you lose after boredom sets in. In actual practice, a game developer could expect a ratio of about 10,000 to 1 of free players who never purchase anything, vs. players who buy. And, the ones who do buy, on average, retire from playing within 4-6 months. A developer thus has a small window of time in which to keep a players interest in the game, before losing them to boredom.
6:Ride the formula as long as you can before it gets shut down. It’s no secret, or big suprise, to see that collecting any sort of claim against them in the event of credit card fraud or other issues would be difficult at best… and probably virtually hopeless. My thoughts are that the deep layers of shell companies and partnerships are specifically done to hamper or prevent any sort of efforts to trace the money back to the people bankrolling this effort. And, if I was them I’d be exactly the same. They are very smart and obviously know how to protect themselves. Thourough covering your ass is exactly the kind of mentality that a company of this sort would require.

But, as I said. No real mystery. Just a small group of people who have been very smart to develop as many versions of a single game formula, in order to mass produce it to a wide range of potential paying gamers.
And, theres still no requirement to ever spend a single penny on any of them. A person is quite capable of playing and enjoying the game for free if they wish.

By: Geo

Geo — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:25:00 +0000

@Daz/@Robin

After being intrigued by these blogs and web articles, I created accounts in all these “free brower games” using a dummy email address and junk passwords. (I know I still put my computer under risk of malware). I can honestly attest that these are the same game with a different skin, especially Kingory and NapWar. The only significant variation between Evony and Kingory/Napwar is the equipment for the hero that adds attribute bonuses. I have not tried Empire Craft yet because the site is registered under hithere.com and not a creative derivative of Empire Craft moniker.

The work Bruce and others have done to expose these gaming sites are helpful if not essential. However, we need better ways to differentiate “authentic, safe” versus “suspicious, malicious” websites beyond the services provided by our favorite anti-virus/internet security software. For instance, if Evony was a Microsoft web site or NapWar a Yahoo Games application, would we be having these conversations or at the least with the same undertones.

By: Geo

Geo — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:05:45 +0000

Those ads are just being displayed because of Google’s targeted ad engine, which essentially displays ads based on content/topic/subject of the web page. And since Evony/NapWar/Kingory/etc. have saturated (i.e. spammed) Google, their ads display on web pages that are critical of them.

Even though this is ironically amusing, it is proof of their unrelenting attack to draw in gullible internet users to their virtual, sinister lair. Forget about the potential malware that could be activated while playing, such as key logging and spam generators, users have unwittingly entrusted them with their email address and password, which for many dumb internet users is the same as the one used for their email accounts.