Evony

They are obviously just on the cutting edge of the industry - the input from marketing is only going to get more important...
Maybe someone at Evony could write up a gamasutra article on their radical new approach?

 

Curiously that is about the same number of spam threads you have started here.


Thank you thank you! You are a great audience! I am here all week!

 

You have a funny idea of what constitutes spam.
Apparently, to you, it is any post that I make.

Whereas if you followed the evidence of your own eyes you would see that I start and contribute to popular threads with interesting discussions on pertinent topics. Exactly what a forum is about.

Whereas what you do is definitely spam. Repeatedly making pretty much the same post completely out of context, whatever the threat topic.

 

You miss us, don't you...It's ok to admit it. You just want back in, we get it. Nothing wrong with that.

 

That sort of like claiming that Hitler is popular guy because so many books are written about him.

 

The people behind Evony.
This article explains that Evony and Wowmine are the same people: http://mu.ranter.net/civony/civony-...thousands-of-stupid-world-of-warcraft-players

And this article tells you lots about them: http://www.wowgoldfacts.com/?p=825

Here is a bit from this article:

Here is a list of domains related to WoWMine in some way or another. Let’s run through the "important" ones in the list first:
WoWMine.com - The original, pioneering granddaddy of WoW gold spam sites - over 1 billion spam served since 2005.
Wowspa.com - Brother site of WoWMine.com. Known to spam.. a LOT
MMOgap.com - Another spammy selling site.
MMOInn.com - Yet another brand to try and fool people with copious amounts of spam
MMOMaven.com - A sucky site synonymous with WoWMine. If you see a link to MMOMaven.com on a website, you are probably on a WoWMine site.
Beenut.com - A crappy multi-protocol messenger program that looks to be a complete waste of resources. I hope they send me an email to explain this crap.
Accountsale.com - WoWMine’s latest foray into the accounts business, complete with spam, BS, and lies.
Wowpifa.com - WoWMine’s #1 China site, used to purchase currency from the Chinese. Rumor has it that they pay too little, spam too much, and even make the Chinese cautious in their presence.
umge.com - In an attempt to distance themselves from their tarnished brands, WoWMine created "umge", a corporation that includes WoWMine in their portfolio.
And here’s the rest of the foul litter:
WoWRex.com
WoWGH.com.tw
wowgh.com
wow711.com
wow520.com
uegsp.com
ue711.com
Terrarpg.com
TerraBlast.com
RS2mine.com
rpgus.com
RPGRex.com
RPGMine.com
mmous.com
mmorpgus.com
mmorpgeu.com
MMOPick.com
MMOIS.com
mmoeu.com
mmoera.com
mmobuck.com
mmo4fun.com
MCTPlay.com
LNMine.com
L2Mine.com
KiMiss.com
GWMine.com
GameADT.com
FFMine.com
EurPG.com
DDOMine.com
cgs.name
Whew!
Now WHO are the PEOPLE behind WoWMine and its one gazillion reincarnations?
One of my Informants, who goes by the pseudonym Sherlock Holmes (how original!) emailed me his findings:
Dear EGF,
Wowmine has several people under their payroll, listed below. I will put a 1-line description below their name to decribe what I think they do:
Hui Hao Hsueh (Zhang Yao Hui) - breewong@gmail.com - 302 295 6316
Hui/Bree is most likely a recent player in the wowmine group. He/she operates several WoW Gold websites, and an up and coming Chinese website called KiMiss.com
Gordon Lam - gordon@wowmine.com - 800-976-6745
Gordon is one of the original wowmine crew. He is probably one of the masterminds behind the spam and lies, along with Eric.
Eric Lam - amonic@gmail.com - 604-270-6160
Eric may be Gordons brother. However you look at it, he is one of the owners of wowmine, the founder and creator of lies, spam, and dishonesty.
Zhu Kefeng - zhukefeng@umge.com - +86.02088506697
Zhu is plays a minor role in Runescape currency and other currency from his home in China.
Robert Lv - lvguangbao@umge.com - +86.02038319416
Robert helps operate wowmine’s relatively new sourcing platform in China, most likely because no one trusts WoWPifa.com. He also is part of UMGE, Wowmine’s "new" umbrella corporation.
Cui "Jacky" Weijie - jackyelf@hotmail.com - 86.2031652013
Jacky sits at home in China trying to buy gold from farmers. He operates WoWPifa, wowmine’s largest site used to buy currency from. The Chinese are even tired of their spam.
Guo "David" Chunjiang - davidguo163@21cn.com - 86.13602782062
David is a minor player in the China sourcing area, but he exists… to spam.
"Grace" Xiaoyong Guo - grace@cgs.name - 442089239426
Grace is an innocent bystander caught up in the wowmine plot. She works for the umbrella corporation UMGE, and is probably shielded from the upset wowmine customers.
Isaac Chan - lynn-isaac@hotmail.com - 215-1697771
Isaac is a relatively new addition to the wowmine spam team. He operates MMOPick and has been sending spam emails every day since starting.
Melanie Suen - melanie@cgs.name - 604-270-6160
Melanie has been around with WoWMine since the beginning. She is the wife/girlfriend of Eric, Gordon, or both. Don’t let a nice name like Melanie fool you, she WILL fill you inbox with spam and not shed a tear.
Jiang Shengle - sljiang922@hotmail.com - +86.1085570456
Jiang is one of those guys that got a lucky shot. He is working to help buy more wow gold to improve wowmine deliveries. Seeing that wowmine ratings are at an all time low, I venture to say he isn’t doing a good job.

 

Ha ha. You Godwined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

 

.

 

I can't stop laughing...

 

Spot on!! The first step to a cure is to admit you have a problem.

 

don't worry the tears will flow soon...

 

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen that before. What a truly informative post, and one that serves to make your argument, irrefutable.

 

How ironic is this?
I get frequent consultancy requests and this one popped into my inbox today:

Hi Bruce,

I found your website at
http://www.bruceongames.com/services/


We are a Web 2.0 startup building a network of websites around the game Evony (url removed)



Our largest property (url removed), is getting 50,000 page views and 10,000 visitors a day.


We are looking to improve our Internet marketing and SEO and I would like to speak with you about your services.


My Skype ID is (removed) and I am in Vancouver, Canada GMT -7.


Regards,
(removed)

 

You're now forwarding us your spam? Seriously?

 

Evony/Civony certainly seems to be advertising everywhere lately.

Their change of advertising from a medieval knight guy to a close-up of a pair of boobies speaks volumes. Let alone the whole "Cents" thing, where as I understand it a Cent is actually a dollar in real monies. And each line of text chat costs you 30c!

Imagine if our good TCE admins decided to charge us per line. I'd be fucked.

 

This is the best Evony article I have found thus far. It briefly goes through all the elements of the scam and provides links for in depth revelations: http://mu.ranter.net/civony/is-this-really-subliminal#more-1301

This whole episode stinks and unfortunately some of the damage it does sticks to the whole industry.

 

I deleted all the information that made the potential customer identifyable when I C&Ped that email.

But that is pretty much how most consultancy requests come in. And interestingly they come from all over the world. I have done more work outside the UK than inside the UK. But then that may be a reflection on the fact that there isn't much British game industry left.

 

I don't think Bruce is far off base here and I think a lot of you are just arguing with him because you don't like him.

Evony and its ilk are not the kind of games I'd like to see proliferate (the more money you have, the better you perform at the game - yeah that's fair... anyone who supports that kind of game is a cunt imo), especially if it's run by the kind of people that it's being reported at the moment, which wouldn't surprise me given the biz model.

Additionally, you only have to look at their banner ads to see what kind of people are running the show. Despicable IMO.

 

I don't know. Who made us the arbiters of "acceptable game design and marketing"? It smells a little of the whining a lot of developers disgraced themselves with with "all the rubbish available on the iPhone drowning out our great products". It's a business model and if it works, it works. You may not like it, but it's not illegal and if people want to buy into this type of freemium service, then, well, they have a market.

As for the advertising, it's hilarious more than anything. Spamming the internet IS marketing, and a type of marketing Bruce himself is not averse to. Sex in advertising is also not new, and again, it wasn't a problem for Bruce when it was done for a Western game with a Western porn star.
I smell double standards, possibly with a whiff of racism and maybe a smattering of hypocrisy.

Far be it for me to ruin a good rage on but my advise is: calm the fuck down.

 

Yeah, right, they're obviously much worse than western developers.

We aren't arguing with him, we're just being cantankerous because he's not providing any other points other than 'look at those Chinamen, aren't they disgraceful. Trying to copy superior western game developers, but doing so in their devious oriental ways'.