InnoGames does it again – WestWars

The past year more and more player complaints arise how InnoGames operates, a lot of people liked InnoGames as they where different that GameForge which some players call GameFraud.

And InnoGames should know better as they got their tribalwars engine stolen …

Anyway, the free to play with premium options to not buy yourself to the top is finished at InnoGames games. It’s now cold hard cash needed and players respect doesn’t count anymore. And even having staff members compete vs paying customers so they spend more cash (see mass exodus on grepolis topic).

Here is a recent complaint about their game WestWars, taken from their forums (before it gets deleted)

I think it is time to be discussed at a critical point in the game … Skills / gold!
The price is quite a joke … example to purchase 10 skills, increase the price of 1 gold
Today I bought 30 skills, my price was high, starting at 10 gold for a skills .. results were as follows: 30 skills = 10×11 + 10×12 + 10×13 = 360 gold

At lvl 1420, 30 skills are of no help, if I want to raise my Intelligence 1% will cost 66 skills …
Who want to play, if your skills are getting worse, even if you use a crazy amount of money on the game..??

Consider this example:
If I want to maintain my Intelligence of xx% will cost me 1000 skills to move from lvl lvl 1400 to 2000 ….. Who will do it, I will not, nor Bjarne .. We are good customers in your store, but we are not idiots !!

We pay YOUR SALARY, and without mine, Bjarne’s and certainly others players pleasure to buy gold, you get problems … The game will die slowly but surely!!

It is obvious that I have no strategy and common sense .. people without such skills will be kicked out of my company!
Come straight into battle Inno Games, doing something about the problem, otherwise the players disappear… no players, no money and no West Wars!

Yours Jakob aka Gun Jake

I have a copy of Bjarne’s email to Peter here, which shows that I am not alone on this:

Bjarne Tidemand
2010-08-31 23:54:19
Peter, i have two take this question up again!

I just talked with my friend Jacob Nielsen (gun Jake, no two in the world)
He told me that now, the price on skills, raise one gold for each 10 buy …

Have you considered, that it is not good business for Inno Games, for one simple reason.

When things get to expensive, people dont want to use gold, and they stop buying it!

Jacob just told me, that he bought skills, 10 for 12 gold 10 for 13 gold and 10 to 14 gold.
Calculate that, its allmost 400 gold for 30 skills!

So he will not buy gold anymore, and he has also being a big spender.

Continue like this, and the gold players will stop.
I have seen it before.

Set the parameter’s two half of it, that will be better.

Just my five cents.

Yours Bjarne aka El Bismarco

The original forum post can be found at http://forum.westwars.com/showthread.php?617-WestWars-Problems-SKILLS-GOLD-not-a-BUG!!!!!!

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Grepolis – Beta Testers needed

Grepolis is in need of beta testers and is willing to pay premium coinage for their browsergame.

We need your help! We have had a small number of problems occuringafter our last update. As we hold the quality of our games to a very high standard we have decided to enact a number of measures that will improve the quality for our players.

As one of a number of these measures we are going to need testers on our Beta Server. All updates go through on this server well in advance of the actual game servers. We need you to sign up and play there. For this we will be paying each tester on the server 300 gold per month. The server is limited to five thousand players. We are advertising this on all language versions so we expect the numbers to fill up pretty soon.

In addition to this the players that put the most effort into reporting bugs on the forum and to the game administrators will receive a bonus payment of 50 gold. This is at the discretion of the Community Manager.

As this server is subject to reset we have decided to add a really great reward. When we reset we will be giving prizes to the winners! So please go and sign up. The first payments of gold will go through tomorrow so don’t miss out…

Sign up here

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Grepolis Tools of Trade

Usefull links of stats sites

http://www.grepostats.com/world/en1/index

http://en1.grepolismaps.org/

http://grepolis.gamestats.org/?lang=en

http://www.grepotools.co.uk/

http://www.grepo-world.com/index.php

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Lords of Ultima – multi use Closed Beta Key for 1000 Members

Hi,

as I our Beta slots, again, ran out quite quickly due to high demand I am happy to inform you
that we can offer you specific Closed Beta keys that ensure another 1000 players access to
EA’s Lord of Ultima.

· The key is not functional before Wednesday the 3rd of March 09:00 AM GMT +1.
· The key is a multiple use key that allows 1000 players to enter the Beta.
· After the number of usages has been consumed the key will stop functioning.
(make sure to sign up for our Twitter for the next round of keys http://twitter.com/OfficialLoU)

A34P-WTKE-BB5C-N7UN

Please feel free to make the key available to the visitors of your site together with the specifications on its usage
and information on the ongoing Beta.

Of course we will keep you posted on any further developments on the Lord of Ultima Beta in the future
and will provide more material as soon as it can be made available.

Best regards and thank you for your cooperation.

Michael Krach
Producer

DICE
EA Digital Illusions CE AB
Katarinavägen 15
P.O. Box 20068
SE-104 60 Stockholm, Sweden
www.dice.se

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The validity of bots and scripts in kingsage… by Kappot

Let’s start with the following game rule as found here.

7. bots and scripts

Please obey the Terms and Conditions:
5. Special terms and conditions for the use of online games and all subsections from 5.1 to 5.7.

There are certain tools which are allowed. A list of permissible scripts can be found on the forum.

Should you be unsure whether a tool which you have is permissible or not, please contact Support and send them the script.
If you would like to write a script, please ask Game Support if your script is permissible before uploading it. ?

It references special Terms and Conditions as well as stating that:

• Certain tools are allowed;
• A list of these is available on the forum (never even seen such a section on the kingsage.org forum. I could be that these words are still part of a standard template that has remained unmodified…);
• If you are unsure whether a tool is allowed, to contact support and send them the script;
• If you’d like to write a script, to contact support first to obtain permission.

The terms and conditions can be found here.

Of interest are:

5.2.The user is prohibited from any form of manipulative interference in the online game. In particular, the user is not entitled to use measures, mechanisms or software that could interfere with the function or the course of the game. The user may not take measures that may cause an unreasonable or excessive burden on the technical capacity. The user is not allowed to block, to rewrite or to modify contents generated by the game administration or to interfere in any other manner with the game.

5.3.The user is also prohibited from running the online game (including all individual web pages) with other programs besides the Internet browser or the client program that has been provided. This refers in particular to so-called bots and other tools meant to replace or supplement the Web interface. Also prohibited are scripts and completely or partially automated programs that provide the user with an advantage over other users. This includes auto-refresh-functions and other integrated mechanisms of the Internet browser, if it includes automated operations.

5.4.    The user may under no circumstances
a) create or use cheats, mods and/or hacks, and any other third party software products that may change the result of the online games,
b) use software, that allows “data mining” or otherwise intercepts or collects information in connection with the online games,
c) use outside of online games, buy for “real” money or sell or swap virtual objects that are used in online games.
This includes all evasions, similar actions or actions that match in their effect the aforementioned bans.

5.5.    The application of advertising suppressing measures is prohibited. It is immaterial whether advertising is deliberately suppressed or generally blocked e .g. by so-called Pop-Up Blockers, or similar.

5.6.    Log-in is only permitted on the homepage of each online game and the Gameforge portal page. An automated opening of the user accounts, regardless of whether the home page is displayed or not, is not permitted.

Which brings me to my next thought: GreaseMonkey for Firefox, GreaseMetal for Chrome and GreaseKitfor Safari. We also have GreaseFire for Firefox in order to help us  find java-scripts for sites on userscripts.org. Wikipedia mentions:

For Internet Explorer, similar functionality is offered by IE7pro , Trixie (Internet Explorer) andiMacros.

As a side note, have a look at some 200 user scripts for another OG, Ikariam.

Running GreaseMonkey in Firefox does not break terms and conditions in section 5.2. or in any section at all. How could it? No one tells me how I use my browser… or that I’m tied to either Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, lynx or any other browser. I read the paper with FF, read my email, get the tv guide etc etc… I don’t just use it for one website… This is an excerpt fromdiveintogreasemonkey.org:

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. You can use it to make a web site more readable or more usable. You can fix rendering bugs that the site owner can’t be bothered to fix themselves. You can alter pages so they work better with assistive technologies that speak a web page out loud or convert it to Braille. You can even automatically retrieve data from other sites to make two sites more interconnected.

Greasemonkey by itself does none of these things. In fact, after you install it, you won’t notice any change at all… until you start installing what are called “user scripts”. A user script is just a chunk of Javascript code, with some additional information that tells Greasemonkey where and when it should be run. Each user script can target a specific page, a specific site, or a group of sites. A user script can do anything you can do in Javascript. In fact, it can do even more than that, because Greasemonkey provides special functions that are only available to user scripts.

Well then, I hear you say..What about this nifty user script called KingsAgeX of which I wrotepreviously. What does it do and more importantly, how does it work? How is it against the rules? How is it not against the rules? Does it break the terms and conditions you agreed to? Can OG actually uphold such terms and conditions in the first place?

Some facts:

KingsAgeX collects and displays information in the same way it is displayed to the user. It does not alter or manipulate information which it retrieves for you. It is the same information and more of it. It does not play the game, you do. It does not auto-refresh. It does give you a menu option and buttons to click on which are not part of the game menu, it’s part of the HTML that is generated on YOUR BROWSER on YOUR COMPUTER. It does this in mid-air so to speak or on-the-fly. The important thing to note is that your browser still interfaces with the KingsAge server in exactly the same way!

It is partially automated in that it collects data you would otherwise have to click a thousand times for. You could call it a macro that you run on your computer. Normally, you click this much anyway, and that’s how you spend your time playing the game. The unfair advantage is gained because through KingsAgeX you use a considerable less amount of time to do your Intel. Thus, the remaining time you can then choose to spend in Planning or Operations. This speeds up decision making and makes it easier to manage your assets. However, the unfair advantage is lost when everyone uses it. Just like history teaches us, warfare is all about gaining and loosing edges – all the time. Can OG stipulate to you how you use your time playing their game? I think not.

In a sense, it can be detected, because it looks as if you’ve clicked (say for example) a thousand URL’s in a very short time span when you generate a server map. However, if I can manually stitch a map together in 35minutes (which I have done by taking ~16 screenshots and then using Microsoft’s free ICE) and KingsAgeX is made to do it in 35minutes, there’s no difference in web traffic. It’s exactly the same. Save for the interval between clicks. Mine would vary (I can get interrupted – I am human), KingsAgeX would always have the same interval..If KingsAgeX was made to do this with a random interval, it would be another matter again…

In conclusion,  a web browser displays information. GreaseMonkey enables you to load a userscript which can re-arrange this information and or add information from the same or other sources in mid air/on the fly and then display it in your browser. The manner in which this information and or other information is retrieved is through your browser and is the same should you have done so manually. OG can ask you to comply and you can choose to say yes, but these terms cannot be binding for using Greasemonkey userscripts as you are NOT:

…Guilty of manipulative interfering in the online game. (Whatever that may be. Do you mean gaining root access on the server and changing low level code? — Different story that, innit?)

…Interfering with the function or course of the game. (On a technical level you are interacting with it in exactly the same way)

…Blocking, rewriting or modifying content. The content from the server stays the same. If I have non exclusive use from my colleague at work to print out his email, overlay the email with my own thin plastic and highlight certain sections on the thin, plastic and see through layer with a yellow marker pen, it’s my prerogative. I can give his print-out back unmodified.

…Using cheats, mods or hacks. No parameters are changed and send back to the server. As stated before, Firefox remains Firefox. The browser remains the browser. This is the vehicle we speak through and it remains unaltered. Argue differently!

…Data mining. You are not sending data from the kingsage server to another third party server. This however is how kahelper.com works though.

Here we go:

Section 5.3 is absolute rubbish. Who is to stop me from compiling my own browser to access the internet? Everyone knows for example Firefox is open source right?

Section 5.5 is absolute rubbish. I use Adblock Plus for Firefox. You trying to tell me again how to use my browser and view the net? To disable it on kingsage.org or other OG sites? Rubbish.

Section 5.6 People…..

Log-in is only permitted on the homepage of each online game and the Gameforge portal page. An automated opening of the user accounts, regardless of whether the home page is displayed or not, is not permitted.

Well, what about the remember password for sites function found in every browser these days? For every time I logged in, I broke that section…and many with me. Are you telling me again how to use my browser and view the net?

My point: KingsAgeX ought to be endorsed by KingsAge as the experience everyone should share in. Make it so.

Cheers

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Tribal Wars goes 6.0

Hello,

Teamplaying and working together has just become even more important in this new version of Tribal Wars, and today is the big day: Tribal Wars 6.0 is online now!

With this huge update, we have plenty of great new features for you. By introducing army camps into the game, we make teamplay even more important for your tribe. As a tribe, you can create army camps in any empty space on the map to use as a base camp near your enemies for upcoming attacks. When the camp is attacked, you will automatically defend it side by side with your tribemates. So as a team you can use these mighty forts to bring victory to your tribe.

Besides this, you can gain achievements on your own. From now on, we will give you awards for several different achievements, which you can show off to other players in your personal profile. This may be a certain number of points or a great battle victory. Sometimes, you may even get an award if you were extremely lucky – or unlucky. It does not matter in which period of the game you play, you will always have the chance to gain awards.

Furthermore, we have a special addition for premium account users: You can now play Tribal Wars on your mobile phone with an improved user interface. This works on iPhones and mobile phones running Android. All you have to do is to start your mobile browser and visit the Tribal Wars page – as you will see, the whole design has been adjusted for mobile browsing. It works just like a special Tribal Wars app. But since you can run it with your browser, there is no need to buy special software.

This is not all: There are several other updates and new features being introduced in this exciting new version. You can see details of these on your Tribal Wars forum.

All these features can be tested on our new worlds that have started today. We hope to see you there!

Your Tribal Wars team

www.tribalwars.net

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Ruler of Zu

Title: Ruler Of Zu
Owner: Henna Boy Ltd
URL: http://www.rulerofzu.com

Theme: Ruler of zu is a free to play mmorpg based on times when mythical creatures lived, magic was rife and the brave undertook great quests to prove their worth.

Ruler of zu is a constantly expanding fantasy game where players can participate in an open ended game either as an individual or part of a gang.

Content is added on a weekly basis and the land of Zu currently stretches over 55 cities has over 400 items to gather and 300+ npcs to test your strength against.

Some of the features include:

Dragon ownership – Own, train and equip a dragon. Dragon play is a big part of Zu gameplay where you can train, equip, race and even fly with your dragon across the lands. Fight other players dragons to become the Ruler of Zu.

Commit crimes
Train in different statistics to increase your abilities and ensure your attacks are successful.
Find weapons and various types of armor to equip yourself and your dragon
Grow crops, rear animals and when they reach maturity crop/slaughter them for items.
Undertake quests that pit your wits against monsters and beings to receive rewards. Dont take them lightly some quests are more tricky than they seem.
Player markets
Organised inventory

Learn skills such as magic, healing, dragon flight and more to enable you to make better things for you and your dragon.

Crafting workshop where you can create new items or combine items into enhanced types.

This is just some of the gameplay available

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Nowhere Else and Beyond

Nowhere Else and Beyond (NEaB) is the first web based real multiplayer RPG and PBBG that allows players to explore exotic locations in 2D, interact with other players, collect and play our in game card game and build your own island and create quests within it.

The best part is it’s free, you play RIGHT AWAY (no need for registrations) and it runs within your browser and works on all platforms without any download. Firefox recommended as it provides better performances, but NEaB runs well on Internet Explorer too.

One of the unique traits of NEaB is that you can see and interact with other players directly on the maps, during combat, or in towns. Also our chat, one of the most fully featured of Ajax chats, will let you really enjoy the player community.

Main features:

Website: www.nowhere-else.org

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How to take a screenshot – Fireshot

This is a full featured screenshot capturing and editing client for your browser.

This can be installed for either firefox or internet explorer.
1. When taking a SS just click the S in the corner of your browser (top right). This will open the window shown below.
2. Some highlighted features you can do are in the image below (click to expand to full screen)

3. Select either upload or save, upload will host the image for free. Save will copy it to your Hard drive.
4. Copy link into your post.

Download FireShot for Firefox!

Download FireShot for Internet Explorer!

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EA jumps in the browser game world with Lord of Ultima

Electronic Arts has quietly resurrected one of the most highly regarded and important PC franchises of all time, releasing a beta version of a new Ultima game called Lords of Ultima.

Lord of Ultima is a free to play MMORTS developed by EA’s German-based browser game studios “EA Phenomic”.

Build your own individual and unique city in the harsh Middle Ages and build a mighty empire. You play with thousands of other players …

Lord of Ultima is a new browser game, which is offered by Electronic Arts. The strategy was developed with a medieval flair of EA Phenomic it has produced games such as the settlers, Battleforge and SpellForce.

At the moment the game is in the closed beta phase, so it can be tested only by a limited number of players. The Open Beta will have to wait, but probably not long in coming.

The Lord of Ultima, which is currently available only in English available, you will have the task of founding a medieval city, build a wall to provide security and to convert it to your little town in a thriving city.

You are responsible for the construction of defense facilities, including trade agreements with other players and you’re constantly looking at, of course, that sufficient resources available. Without resources you finally can build nothing.

Eventually, you’ll find that it too narrow in your city. Then you have to expand in Lord of Ultima luckily you will have the ability to integrate more areas in your kingdom. It is of advantage, of course, to have a powerful fighting forces, because not all areas can be conquered so easily. In Lord of Ultima you’ll get it done with other players who have only one goal: the most powerful Lord of all times.

Screenshots removed by request from Electroni Arts

Beta at https://www.lordofultima.com/en#

Discussion at http://www.makewebgames.com/general/31692-electronic-arts-jumps-on-the-browsergame-market/

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