Evony and Bruceongames

There is now a lot of interesting stuff about this Chinese browser game on this blog. Much of this has been contributed by readers with experience of the game, so I strongly suggest that you read the comments after every article, they contain some absolute gems.

The Chinese gold farmers came to my attention when they first started spamming the forums and blogs that I run. Gold farmers are part of the underbelly of the interweb alongside pornographers and fake Viagra sellers, so they use the same black hat marketing techniques that abuse the internet and its users and which are illegal in many countries, such as spamming everything they can spam. One of these gold farmers is an organisation with many names including Super Continental, UMGE and WoWMine. Article:

Making gold in China

Then earlier this year Bruceongames was comment spammed regularly by a Chinese MMO called Evony, which was publicising itself as being the product of UMGE. (They have since gone into denial and tried to remove all mention of this association from the internet, including deleting the whole website UMGE.com). Because of the spamming I recommended that people avoid Evony in this article:

Don’t play Evony

The response to this was so big that I found out a lot more about this game. And so on July the 15 this year I wrote the article More about Evony. On the same day The Guardian newspaper published an article: Has Evony become the most despised game on the web?

More about Evony

As a result of the feedback from this I got a lot of information from players of the game saying that it was causing problems with their computer, so I put this together as an article on July 16, specifically pointing out “I am not saying that Evony has a trojan in its client software”. This article attracted further comments from players with bad experiences:

Is Evony malware?

Evony were obviously unhappy with the truth about themselves reaching the light of day so they made a tactical change. On 22 July they incorporated Evony LLC, a Delaware company. They then tried to become American and removed all mention of their Chinese heritage from the internet. Evony LLC then started to act against me for what I had written before they even existed! I got a threatening letter from Dean Groundwater, a solicitor from the Australian small town firm Warren McKeon Dickson:

Evony want to sue me for telling the truth

At about the same time Valerie from Evony distributed an email that told a whole pile of easily demonstrable lies about Evony, the issues I had raised and about me. I reported this and rebutted the lies with this article:

Evony libel me

Then on September 14 Evony issued a press release saying that they were taking me to court for telling the truth. In the press release Dean Groundwater accuses me of fraud, a very serious allegation.

Evony press release

I then wrote an article explaining more about the people behind Evony:

Eric Lam, UMGE, WoWMine and Evony

I have also written a few background articles to try and put some of what is happening here into context.

The game mechanic and its subversion

A hidden danger of MMOs

How the internet is being censored

I also reported a few further bad things about Evony, brought to my attention by readers of Bruceongames. Racialism and the online gambling in the game:

Anti Semitism in Evony

Evony in big trouble

Along the way we have also had some fun:

Queen of Evony competition

Evony advert ridiculed by PopCap

I don’t like Evony, that much should be obvious. I don’t like their black hat marketing, spamming blogs and spamming Google adsense. And I don’t like the way they have put gold farming inside the game, subverting the game mechanic by the payment of money so as to extract the maximum wealth from the player. But most of all I don’t like the way they try and suppress freedom of speech by trying to censor the internet to prevent people knowing the truth about them.

Who owns Evony

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Official Evony Wiki

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Evonypedia The complete Evony wiki EVONY Buildings City Buildings Academy Barracks Beacon Tower Cottage Embassy Feasting Hall Forge Inn Marketplace Rally Spot Relief Station Stable Town Hall Walls Warehouse Workshop Resource Buildings Farm Ironmine Quarry Sawmill Calculators Attacking City Walls Hero Experience Calculator TNBC - Tivie's NPC Battle Calculator Cities Building Prestige Guide City Creation City Defenses Abatis Archer's Tower Defensive Trebuchet Rolling Log Traps City Rank Construction Guide Secondary Academies Secondary Cities The Perfect City The Perfect War City + The Perfect Holding City Troop Defense What to and what not to build in secondary cities Combat Aiding Alliance Members Under Attack Army of Scouts Attacking Guide Attacking NPCs Attacking Players Attacking Valleys Ballistae vs Archers Battle Data Collection Building a War City Conquering and Being Conquered Determining if Gates are Open or Shut Diplomacy through Defense Distance Warfare: The Hub and Spoke Heal the Wounded Keeping a Massive Army Only Archers Plundering Range Super Archers Swordsmen vs Warriors for Fodder The Art of War Commerce A Changing World Economy Maximizing Gold While Not Playing Taxes, Loyalty and Gold FAQ Suggestions Gameplay Account Deletion Glossary NPC Scout Adjectives Wheel of Fortune Getting Started Beginner's Guide Beginner's Protection Quick-Start Guide Startup Guide The Art of the Start Town Halls Level 1 to 4 Guides Items Advanced City Teleporter Advanced Quarrying Tools Advanced Tax Policy Anabasis Archimedes Notes Arch Saw Aries Amulet Beginners Guidelines Blast Furnace Blower City Teleporter Civil Code Corselet Double Saw Dynamite Epitome of Military Science Excalibur Hero Hunting Hero Package Holy Helm of Mars Holy Water Intermediate Guidelines Iron Rake Items List Ivory Horn Junior Battalion Junior Medal Box Leather Helm of Robin Hood Master Guidelines Mechanics Battalion Medium Battalion Medium Medal Box Merchant Fleet Michelangelo's Script Secret Weapons and Tactics: Michelangelo's Script Napolean's Diary National Flag New ID On War Penicillin Plowshares Primary Guidelines Quarrying Tools Ritual of Pact Senior Battalion Senior Guidelines Senior Medal Box Speaker Speech Text Tax Policy The Art of War The Wealth of Nations Truce Agreement Ultimate Guidelines Ultra Corselet Veteran Battalion War Ensign War Horn Links Alliances NghtMare Talionis Blogs Evony Community Info Blog Evonyfreeforever Evony Blog Evonyguide Evony Blog Evonymasters Evony Blog Guildielocks Hods Realm of Evony PAGANS Evony Blog Ranakire Evony Blog Communities Evonies Evony Community Evony Forums EvonyHQ EvonyInteractive Evony Community EvonyTutorials Evony Videos GamerGamut Evony Community Gears of Gaming God of War Evony Alliance The Evony Wiki EVONY iEvony UMGE EvonyNet AskEvony EvonyAlerts EvonyMap EvonyNet Toolbar Evonypedia EvonyPress EvonySocial Tools Evolliance Evony Tools Evony Toolbar Maps Medals Courage Medal Cross Medal Freedom Medal Honor Medal Justice Medal Lion Medal Nation Medal Rose Medal Wisdom Medal News NPC Build Your Own NPC City Conquering Level 10 NPC Cities Everything About NPC Farming Farming NPC Cities NPC Ballistae Farming Archery and HBR Levels NPC Cities NPCs vs Ballistae NPCs vs Warriors Officers Packages Compensate pack 09/08/23 Package for Lords Reference Technologies Agriculture Archery Compass Construction Engineering Horseback Riding Informatics Iron Working Logistics Lumbering Machinery Masonry Medicine Metal Casting Military Science Military Tradition Mining Privateering Stockpile Theory Crafting 10 Easy Steps to Become Uber Alliances Comforting Food Get the Best Hero Heroes Heroes Advanced Honor How to Avoid Hero Hunting Loyalty Marketplace Guide Maximizing Resource Production Mayors Medal Drop Rates Population Prestige Secret Weapons and Tactics: Prestige Promotion Titles Public Grievance Reinforcements Rose and Lion Medals Scouting Adjectives Scouting Guide Summary Notes Tax Rate Vacation When a City is Full Units Archer Ballista Battering Ram Cataphract Catapult Cavalry Pikeman Scout Swordsman Transporter Warrior Worker Valleys Videos Combat Attacking Valleys Video Conquering a Level 10 Barbarian City Military Domination Video, Part 1 Military Domination Video, Part 2 Military Domination Video, Part 3 Gameplay Advanced Basics Video Alliances Video Basics Video Building New Cities Video Economy Video Evony Honor Video Farming NPC's Video Forsaken Cities Video Honor June 1st - Update Video Mayors Video Prestige Video Promotions and Medals Video Resource Millionaire and Beginners Protection Video Units Archer Video Ballista Video Battering Rams Video Cataphract Video Catapults Video Cavalry Video Pikeman Video Scout Video Swordsman Video Transporters Video Warrior Video Worker Video Affiliates Coupon Geek Ebook Evony Apparel Evonypedia Store Websites fromAnywhere Evony Wiki About Advertisers Contact Contribute Editing Guidelines Editors Evony Guide Media Kits Powered by Google Files Banners Buttons Icons Logos Map Screenshots Text Games Aion Networks Corg THEGAMENET Sitemap THEGAMENET We create communities

EVONY‎ > ‎Links‎ > ‎EVONY‎ > ‎ UMGE http://www.umge.com/ Evony is owned by UMGE (Universal Multiplayer Game Entertainment). Founded by a small group of avid Chinese game developers, UMGE is based in Guangzhou, China and develops online multiplayer games. Prior to Evony, UMGE released Leuric, a multiplayer role playing Flash browser game where members of the two factions, Viking and Atlantian, battle against each other. In parallel with Evony, UMGE is developing Surge of Valor, a Windows-based MMORPG. _displayNameOrEmail_ - _time_ - Remove _text_

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Is this the big News Corporation gaming move?

When I first started this blog Rupert Murdoch, via his mouthpieces like Fox News and The Times newspaper, was anti gaming. Some of the stories they came up with were ridiculous. You can understand why he was doing this, gaming represented a threat to most of what he owns. Movies, TV channels, newspapers, magazines etc. There is a lot of old media in his portfolio at News Corporation.

Then his media did a quick 180 on gaming and started taking a sensible stance. At around the same time Rupert dipped his toe in the gaming market with a casual gaming portal. I’m not saying that the two events were connected.

Now he appears to be making a big move. MySpace was a Murdoch purchase in 2005, for $580 million. Since which it has gone steadily downhill compared with Facebook and the new upstart, Twitter. You wonder why he bought MySpace in the first place, social networking sites are not exactly cash cows. Now it looks like he has come up with a plan that will get him a massive presence in gaming and a return on his investment in MySpace.

On this blog I have constantly written about the convergence of gaming and social networking. They are headed towards being the same thing. Which is obviously something Rupert also believes in because he is turning MySpace into a gaming platform. A clever move if he pulls it off.

MySpace is still massive, 125 million unique users a month is substantial. If he can capture this audience for gaming we will have something a lot bigger than Xbox Live or Steam or anything else in gaming for that matter. We will have a half billion dollar gaming monster.

Of course Rupert was forced into this. Old media is dying at some speed world wide whilst gaming is growing rapidly. Gaming has the three technology advantages of interactivity, connectivity and non linearity. Old media stands no chance against this. And gaming isn’t just for recreation. Already it has massive uses in education, business and the military. These will grow to be many times bigger than the recreational uses.

Stupid German politicians feel public wrath

I have written on here many times about how stupidly repressive and anti gaming German politicians are. It is as if they are all Keith Vaz! They blame all the troubles of the world on video games, especially when there is any violence in the news. Even though they have no evidence to base their suppositions on.

In fact they are exactly 180 degrees wrong. The playing of violent video games and real violence in society are inversely proportional. This is proven, with real evidence. The games act as a catharsis to get the aggression out of people’s systems. So the German politicians are taking the opposite action necessary to solve their problems. They need to read Grand Theft Childhood.

Thus far you have heard before. Now here is a lovely twist. In Germany if a petition gets more than 50,000 signatures the government is forced into a review. The government there is trying to ban violent video games. And now they are facing a petition with 68,000 signatures against this ban. Nice one.

If you like petitions here is my Stop Shark Slaughter petition with over 2,000 signatures.

Thanks to the Guardian for the original story.

Are home game consoles in danger?

I remember back in the late 1990s at Codemasters when as a publisher we had just two platforms we could develop for. The PC and the Playstation. By then Sega and Nintendo had both pretty much screwed up.

Then Microsoft arrived with the Xbox, which added 50% to our available platforms. Then Nintendo got their act together with the DS and Wii and Sony gave us the PSP. And then the smartphones arrived, firstly Apple with iPhone and the App Store business model, now followed by Android and a small gaggle of other standards.

So now we have platform proliferation. Which means that the public can vote with their feet by deciding which platform to play on. And game developers have to choose where to direct their efforts. Initially the public were choosing between the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 and fanboyism became rife. But now people are making far wider choices.

At the same time the PC came back to ascendancy as a gaming platform but with completely different kinds of games. In the late 90s the PC market was mainly boxed, retail, plastic and cardboard. These are all but gone now, wiped out by piracy. Instead the PC has emerged as a platform for online casual games and for MMOs. These have proliferated so that there are now hundreds of MMOs running, many with “free” business models. And they are being played by many tens of millions of people.

Meanwhile the mobile gaming and App Store model has come from nowhere and in a year has made the iPhone the most successful new gaming platform in history.

So any fool can see what is happening here. People are playing PC online and smartphone games in preference to console games. The PS3 and the Xbox 360 are probably selling at about half the rate that they should be at this stage in the cycle. The Wii has reached the inevitable point where its sales have collapsed and by not bringing the price down sooner Nintendo have lost impetus. Just at the same time that DS game sales have fallen off a cliff.

The 12 year old Runescape player I mentioned the other day, for £3.50 subscription is currently getting 200 hours play a month. When you compare this with a cardboard and plastic console game at say £40 there is just no competition. These console titles have become too expensive to make and too expensive to buy. The same applies with mobile gaming where 99c App Store games are competing against £25 DS games.

And there are more big threats on the horizon with Rupert Murdoch converting MySpace into a gaming portal.

So you can see what is going to happen here. The home console platform holders, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, have a business model that is rapidly becoming obsolete. They are being completely outflanked. So they have no option but to change their business model to match. They have to go to server based games and also to the App Store business model. If they don’t their customers will leave them in ever bigger numbers.

Of course if I know this then the platform holders know it too, so it is not a matter of if they do it, it is a matter of when. And they are already making small moves in the right direction, Free Realms coming to the PS3 and full games being sold for download on Xbox Live, for instance. Another thing is very much for sure, high street game retailing is now going to die off far faster than anyone was expecting.

Reputation management

The above image was posted onto Facebook by someone called Richard Kirby who lives near Farnborough and who doesn’t know me and who has never met me. What he has done is typical of the internet and I am in very good company, you don’t have to look far to find Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa of Calcutta also being vilified. It is now a fact of life that once your name is known much outside your circle of friends and family people will attack you on the internet, usually from a position of anonymity. It goes with the territory.

And it is not just individual people who are attacked in this way. Organisations like soccer clubs attract a constant tirade of the worst possible abuse. And, of course, so does your company and the products that it creates. You cannot escape it. In our industry the three platform holders, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo attract an astonishing amount of vicious abuse. And in the democracy of the internet the voice of the abuser has the same weight as the voice of the reasonable person.

So what can you do to protect your reputation? There seem to be three courses of action. The first is to litigate against your tormentors. For instance in posting the image above Richard Kirby has committed the civil offence of libel for which I could sue him. And I would win. However it really is not worth the time and the trouble, the damages awarded would be trifling and the number of people pouring out abuse on the internet is so great as to make litigating against all of them impossible.

The second is to generate, or have generated for you, a body of “good” content that outweighs the bad. There are actually a lot of mechanisms for this. Social networking sites like Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit. Knowledge repositories like Wikipedia and Knol. Blogs and forums. Reputation management sites like Naymz and Lookup Page. And even the act of issuing press releases which get C&Ped all over the internet. A lot of this is what community marketing is about these days.

The third option is to rely upon the intelligence and judgement of internet users. They are used to seeing all this abuse and so have learned to give it little or no credence. People quickly develop filters which allow them to get what they want out of the internet whilst ignoring the rubbish. So your tormentors are pretty much wasting their time.

We live in an age where the reality of the matter is that internet abuse is ubiquitous. It is an inevitability that comes just from being well known. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there is only one thing worse than being vilified on the internet and that is not being vilified on the internet.