Go to Demeter

How honest do you want me to be?

The game has been winding down quite a bit since you last played. Several updates have been made, some good, some not so good.

Many of the new servers seem to lose steam shortly after they are created.

There are rumors that Game Forge will be merging servers some time this year, to hopefully increase the number of players per server. They really need to do something...

worth to try, who knows your towns might be still on the same island

Depends on the server you want to go in, first few are nearly dead, maybe Asklepios and Demeter are right choice.

Bob:) left when lied too
Bob:) wanted to play Star Trek
Bob:) has no regrets

The boards aren't nearly as active these days. and there isn't as much drama as there use to be. But there are still plenty of active players and alliances around.

Absolutely wrong.Old servers (Alpha and Beta) still offer enough action.If you want it, you will find it.

NY has died after censorship of free speech took place on boards.Newer servers still follow the same old concept; they are active for a few months and then they die. General conclusion is; set your expectations carefully, game is not what it used to be.

I support this statement. Give it a go if you have free time to spend, as in just start and see how the new atmosphere of the game suits you. If you find it enjoyable and rewarding, great. If you find it alienating or feel disinterest, also great, because you tried to see if the game fits you at your stage in life.

Ny isn't dead, there's a lot of stuff happening in the game that, like ever itw as over in Omikron and some of the other servers, never, ever, sees attention on the boards.

It's not just fighting though that happens there. Ny is home to the top donators on the domain, the highest crystal mine in the games history across every server ever created is there, and there has been some fierce competition and racing between 5 or so people to get to maxed research levels first (I totally just dropped like 46 futures all at once half an hour ago, blowing 355 million research points jumping from 50th in research levels to equal 1st (3rd to get there) and just pipping the other 2 that were neck and neck) and a few other odds and ends in terms of the score board (it was also extremely satisfying to jump from 9th to 4th in TS with a 7.1 million TS jump haha!, yeah i screenshotted it because some people wanted tos ee but that thread'll go up later - still abite xcited it ws a fun jump haha). A lot of people dismiss those aspects of the game as unworthy because it's not fighting but Ikariam has, and always will be, a long term multifaceted strategy wargame. There are games out there that are in the same genre that are just fighting, Ikariam isn't one of those, it can be but people can also ignore you entirely and focus on other aspects whilst you wail on them achieving absolutely nothing except wasting your time and not getting any kills at all.

The board censorship is sucktastic, and it's a huge reason why the Ny boards are dead. We had a major player get banned for illegal multiaccounting. His ban got lifted after a year and he was back and he promptly got banned again inside a few weeks,. We can't mention him by name and we can't discuss it at all. We can't talk freely about certain aspects of the game which should be allowed to be discussed and dear gods, we can't mention other companies games - but we're still here and still playing Ikariam, noty those other games so why we can't is beyond me. Anyways board censorship is a big deal and it is a huge negative.

BETA as a server is incredibly lively, much fighting and drama happening over there, lots of board drama too.

Spidey's humblebrag...

Although it is pretty cool to log in and see "you get 1776 research points" like forty times.

It's a fair brag (that and the 'I should probably do my research futures now, it's been like 5 years on military and sea futres 2 and 3 afterall, lets do them altogether to snipe the top spots haha!') especially when you consider I haven't donated properly in 1.5 years of game play now.

I'll tell you one thing though, the clicking through 46 or so futures all at once really fast felt pretty awesome. Also the 2,000+ experiments over the past several months, lol.

Beta probably does have the most consistent Board drama. I'll give you that.

The short answer is: it's as active as you make it. Obviously all of us are still here finding things to do. You can too.

Lets just say those are the rules of this play and I get that.Their place, their site, their rules.My problem is when practices take a long step from those rules.Go back to BXS vs GoCry threads and tell me how many of those bans are justified? It was an absolute circus... but anyways.



Well said.

would be something pretty cool if the game was to return to being really active again, remember when I'd come on the forum and it was booming with threads. People having fun and calling each other out. Heck looking thro the treads I haven't seen a decent war thread in awhile. Maybe time to do something about it

BUMP

A few of my alliance members in Boreas are leaving and I'm also playing less. There is action to be found, but there is no more alliance building which is one thing that makes the game more fun: people moving around and playing together.

So I want to know how your servers currently are doing? What is the active population? Who are the top 10 alliances and what are their numbers, and do these numbers actually mean anything, ie, are they full of multi-accounts or vacationers. Are players mainly playing on newer servers but checking into their older accounts to keep them alive? etc.

Additionally, since there is the (paid) feature to move your account to another server based on specific requirements, I think it would be more possible for Game Forge to set up a few international servers set at different Total Point tiers. I play in the USA servers, but players from EUR, ME, and Brazil have migrated over to ours. However, international servers (global versus continental), do very well in other games for activity and I think this would be a good outlet/overflow for players who get bored in their current servers to migrate up the tier.

In this, I would ask Game Forge to make it possible for once a player or alliance reaches a tier requirement, they can move to a new location on the map (and this location can be virgin, with the option for players to choose to join on the outside of the map or the middle of the map - depending on whether they want to play safe or not). Also these moves can be set at a specific time, every 3 to 6 months, and the period in between can be called "Tournaments," possibly with additional prizes or goals for war, to 1. grow your alliance to get access to the next tier, or 2. challenge new additions to the server / new alliances, to push them back down a tier.

These moves would be free, because I'm not a spender, but I do devote a lot of time into the game and lead my own alliance (who do spend for the benefit of the alliance). To make up the difference, Game Forge can sell items at a higher cost: higher premium cost, higher bonus costs, and also have some specific Tournament bonuses that can also bring in more money for the Forge.

I feel like this would be a strategic move by Game Forge to retain paying customers and also create new customers by giving them access to grandeur - especially when players move onto the highest tier where it will likely be a pay to play server with the concentration of multi-million point accounts, but atleast it will be something to shoot for. And possibly we could have 3 month exclusive passes to access the top tier server (in this case by paying a fee), so that players or alliances that can't get there themselves, can plan, invest in, and compete with the best for those 3 months as a sneak peak to what is possible if you pay to play on that server.

So, what do you say? Sounds interesting? Possible? When can we have it? Because we're dying here and we need something to look forward to if we are to continue playing.

I'd love to stick around and play this game with more alliance members.

The battle mechanics has a lot of potential with larger teams, unfortunately, we have small teams in our server so the potentiality of epic battles is lower.

Back to my idea (please add your own thoughts too)

Before inactives disappear on a server or if when they do disappear, they should appear at random on the international servers as pillage targets before they are removed. Just to add a little extra fun before they leave (and if they do pop up during that time), they can start playing in that server.

This way we can possibly retain more players just by the added access to resources or players that pop into the server almost unknowingly.

And then because older servers will drain of players, Game Forge can move the rest of the players over to the international servers or merge them on fewer servers so that they can open up new servers with the server space.

Note that many players would like to move their existing accounts to a war server, now that their accounts are better positioned for war and because war servers are a little faster, so this could be an option as well.

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Could even allow players who have multiple accounts across servers to consolidate them on the international servers - just with account sharing principles in play.

I suggest that you put that as a suggestion in the proper section of the forums, otherwise it won't be up for voting or any other form of review here.