The game is all about people, whereas alliances, all alliances in fact, are an artificial construct of the game. This is because they are prosumer driven. Namely all alliance leaders, core player, and moderators, are prosumers. A prosumer is someone who produces and consumes at the same time. In fact prosumers often pay for the privilege to make money for the company. So for instance, if making burgers were enjoyable then we would all be paying for the privilege to work in a fast-food establishment rather than playing here.
The only difference between alliance leaders, core players and moderators is that alliance leaders and core players do no receive any gold for their undertaking. But many work harder than moderators in truth and the people who I am talking about already know this. To me this makes the alliance leaders and core players hard done by. But what everyone may find interesting is that this type of MMO was originally designed this way. So all alliance leaders and all core players are actually the company’s first-line level of, well customer service. So whether or not alliance leaders and core players understand this, their primary role here is to serve the company (Insert preferred comment here).
Whether alliance leaders or core player like it or not, we help to keep players in the game and this keeps earning money for the company. If more people stepped back and viewed MMOs like this then things would become much clearer to understand. So perhaps you can now all see why alliances were invented in the first place. They were invented to help companies make revenue. That is the only role of an alliance. The reason why this MMO model tends to work is because alliance makes players excited and encourages them to play more.
Now the construct of MMO games varies. Some allow you to see what everyone is doing and at the same time prohibit personal communications. In these MMO models no one can deceive anyone else because all information is listed and on the forum for people to see. Later MMO models, like Tribal Wars and Grepolis (Which is based on the TW model) elected to obscure this information to encourage uncertainty because this drives their prosumer model. I suspect this is because it makes more revenue in truth. This breeds hyperbole that sometimes manifest itself in extreme viewpoints, rage and people leaving the game, often over misrepresentation. The reality is that communications between players rarely reflect the facts. In this respect facts are very hard to find. So to compensate an MMO like this offers a good platform to observe human behavior in ways that other online products do not. This gives people that are trained in doing this a distinct advantage over those that are not.
People play here for a number of reasons, but the real way to guarantee winning is to make friends, because the core game is actually a social network. Making too many friends however stops the company from making revenue, hence again as to why the company artificially tries to stop this with alliances. Until people understand that alliances are really artificial, they will fail to see the real life benefits one can actually obtain from a MMO. This is because some very interesting people tend to play these games as I well know. Meeting these people can change your life. So it is infinitely more rewarding to use your mind rather than using a mouse button.
While the quote offered about me by Goins is correct, it is taken out of context. This of course does not mean that this was deliberately done by Goins either, indeed any observation of my wider posts would show that I am a community player. So I am happy to help anyone irrespective of sides. So I help a number of people with things in the game from time to time, including perceived enemies, but only with understanding the game. In this case it was a new alliance leader looking for some assistance to judge a unilateral action. Many new players have no idea about Grepolis Stats and other tools available, so once again this is a prosumer driven post. Only when one sees it like this does it make perfect sense.
Where Goins is quite correct is in his summary of Epist. Like Goins I was fully aware that Epist was considering joining TE and as such was made aware of how he planned and compromised SF, especially leading up to the Adrenaline merger issue. Epist essentially tipped off Goins about a potential SF and Adrenaline merger by betraying the SF Council by offering information before it would have been appropriate to share, so one cannot blame Goins or any TE member for this, even if they recruited Epist to act covertly for them as that is between them and Epist. TE merely took advantage of the information that was freely given to them from Epist and then acted on it, as indeed I would have done as it was a critical move, but only in terms of V2, which was just about to be forced upon everyone here. TE then gave notice to Adrenaline that they were going to attack them after a particular time period. In the meantime a merge was agreed, despite Epist refusing to participate in it, which for now should be obvious as to why. Any informed former member of SF will remember that Epist stated that he would not be involved in any discussion over Adrenaline. Then, when it suited him, he would intervene. This resulted in both TE and SF members being misled. Once again supporting Goins claim that he was seeking to serve TE from within SF. So the issue that clouds this matter is Epist. Not TE, not the former members of SF, not Goins, not me. Epist. This is the problem when people elect to serve two alliances and believe that diplomacy counts for anything in a victory game like V2. In reality the real issue was brought on by the introduction of V2 because it changed the entire dynamics of the game and Epist failed to understand that it would play completely differently. Once both TE and the former SF members look at this more clearly they will see this for what it is. V2 has confused many players in the game so some decided to hedge their bets in order to win. I believe Epist was one such player. So when he could see that TE had the advantage he gravitated towards them rather than SF. Just as Goins has stated, he felt uneasy about attacking SF members. So he became like a double agent liking people on both sides and at the same time seeing promises made to him from both perspectives being broken. In this respect claims from both TE and SF were correct. But Epist was new to being a type of double agent. He simply placed too much faith in some people, when in reality; he should just have relaxed, enjoyed the game, joined whatever alliance he wanted and not waste time being manipulated by people because some people use the message system as weapon. I learnt a long time ago there really is no point talking to any player unless they can show they can be trusted, and those that share messages never can. In this respect I trust no one. Sadly he never quite grasped what I meant.
V1 is a tame animal compared with V2. Anyone here that is an established player of other victory games will know this all too well. This is why I was opposed to V2. Victory games actually can make people very nasty to each other and in reality InnoGames is very new to managing this type of MMO and lacks a great deal of experience here. This is why unification makes perfect sense. Victory games rarely end well and in time you will learn why. So the only thing you can really do is observe trends and conflicting patterns of behaviour to judge results. The bottom line is all issues in MMO games are caused through the company that create them.
When people are unhappy they move to play on other worlds or leave. It really is that simple. This is why those that rely on diplomacy end up playing a fools errand. There is absolutely no value of diplomacy in V2 unless unification is the key goal and as the game goes on this will become more and more apparent to everyone. So I think I can add another point to Goins finally sentence if I may. Namely TE will win as the maths currently stand and it has been that way for many months now, this is why I was surprised to see some TE members drifting to other worlds, but that is their choice. Everyone in truth is facing the same issue here, namely players are leaving but still want a free meal ticket. This is why booting tends to transpire before unification and unification is the most logical choice as it generally brings the real player together. Some worlds unify and some don’t. In truth it is the only way to beat the V2 prosumer alliance model given to us by InnoGames. Namely the game ends quicker, it saves everyone here more time and the score is 7 wonders rather than 4.
Thank you to anyone that has taken the time to read this. This is why all people need to step back and think for themselves and see all communications outside of the context of a prosumer driven victory game. In the end the only skill you can acquire in a victory MMO is how to spot people that are attempting to deceive and manipulate people. All too often those that want to win at any price end up being deceived themselves.
Hope this may help to put this in context. Enjoy your conversation here, but one tends to need a tablet before coming to the main forum because in truth it serves no purpose when a MMO design conceals facts from players. One reason many players rarely post anything or even visit for that matter – chuckle.
Cyrus