badidol Hera and all other admins, moderators, and game ops.
I am merely one person. 1 player in a browser game.
I have played ikariam since nearly the beginning. I remember seeing the notice about it coming up and created an account on the en server way back when. I remember back when the game was so busy they would lock worlds from being able to create new accounts. I remember when the us servers were created and there was some confusion because internet search engines at the time didn't make the difference clear that alpha en was different than alpha us.
And all the changes since then. adding things removing things restoring things changing things, and on and on,
I understand that a video game may feel that it needs to change and evolve, and that is going to involve trial and error. Some things succeed better than others and some are "good enough", and some are fails.
I have no doubt from comments I have seen from you all that you are aware of the issues concerning multi accounting, as well as general banks.
I just wanted to let you know, in case you were not aware - long time players are leaving. it's not the merge. It's this.
Most people can accept a touch of "pay to win" in an online game, after all, the company needs to make money to survive. But usually these things are restricted to cosmetic things, passive things, restorative things, low end development things.
That's long no longer been the case.
not only can one use ambrosia to buy military, which itself is a problem, but with the black market and multi accounting (allowed and disallowed), this really has become a pay to win game.
I mentioned in another thread that the ability to purchase military (a fully developed object) is similar to the ability to buy a fully levelled up building, like a level 32 academy. From a game design perspective, there really is no difference.
And further, since military actively interacts with other players, and actively can remove/destroy objects created by other players (their fully developed troops) this is actually more of an issue.
There was a thread that the black market needs to go away, and that's true. But that's only part of this problem. The ability to buy troops with ambrosia needs to go away as well. And so does the ability to buy gold with ambrosia.
Now if you all feel that "pay to win" is ok, then please feel free to let us know that, so that players can make the discerning life choices as they feel appropriate.
But I honestly don't think pay-to-win was the intention.
So I say this to you because the only way this will change is if YOU take action. I can't do anything. Only you can pass these concerns to game forge. Only you can make the difference whether this game is pay to win or not.
Is this the only issue? Of course not. Is it the biggest one? Yes. It's actually worse than multi-accounting, and that's saying something, because the current abuses of multi-accounting are very bad.
I believe you care about these things, or you would not volunteer your own time in support of Ikariam.
So I am asking please. Please resolve this.
Thank you for your time.