Puh, dunno where to start, but I'll give it a try.
Hello everyone - old bone here that just got back after years of pause, by accident. First of all, since I haven'T been able to find out just yet, which universes merged into this v-mode/inactive mess and does anyone know about what age those universes were at the time of the merger? (Since my account is at least 5-6 years old now...)
In the last universe I played actively, there was a few of those perma online guys who also happened to be big spenders (I know since I was in close contact with the top cheating dog for a while). It took months of evidence gathering and tons of reports made until the guy got banned the 1st time. Less than a week he was back in - "cleared"/misunderstanding was the reason named. It was the first and last universe that I gave the farming bot a try [ogame automatics]. Since I have nothing but less than superficial coding "experience" (I feel I just ruined the word here, attributing it to myself in relation to coding/programming), it took me a while to get everything started and even longer to tweak the bots to do what I needed them to do (basically spy, farm, fleetsave if attack was launched upon). Needless to say I got banned, but not before proving that the piece of [censored] was cheating all along. It is the most frustrating thing, as an old ogame player, who always out-farmed, out-played universes merely by determination, time input and perseverance, to play vs DM-pushers and worst-of the worst, cheaters/pushers. I mean, I get it, there's no such thing as FREE, we wouldn'T be able to play if everything was free, someone has to pay for all the expenses and maybe even make some profits, the way DM has changed this game tho, was very unpleasant (and I don't think this is solely my oppinion).
So I've been back roughly 2 weeks, got my first expo fleet crashed after only 3 days while drunk and (big surprise - I even forgot I was playing again) roaming til early morning. Briefly talked to the guy who farmed me and told him he gave me a reason to finally quit, after which the guy was so surprised I wasn't a pushing account, that he even offered to give me back the resources, just not to quit =))
Somehow I decided to stay for a while longer and got hooked again - at the latest when twice in a row I got around 20kk res from 1h expo (both metal, but hey, friggin 20some mill metal is still a lot for a 1 hour run, even for this uni).
I'm now at almost double my points from when I picked up, less than 2 weeks ago, not taking into account I even lost around 400kk while gotten crashed. Right now there's almost 600kk res being shipped around, since I don't even have the infrastructure to spend them!
My point(s) here being (yes, all this time I was trying to get somehere, so here comes):
1) if you focus on your own game, you'll find pleasure in it again for what the hell it is (A GAME).
2) with computer tech 15-20ish, you can launch 6-7 expos (that's what I got) at once and with the rest you can easily farm 5-10 inactives and make enough activity for over 2 hours. It's not hard, even longer than that, we didn't need friggin bots and codes all those years to be able to create activity when there was no one behind the screen. What's annoying tho, is finding fat inactives and by the time u get there, even under 30 mins, they're emptied :))
3) The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I tried getting a sense out of who's who from rankings, military points built, lost and so on and it seems to me like the top 3 dogs in the uni (I figure it's the "chinese faction" ppl are talking about) have 1 thing in common: they're not hunting each other and they didn't get crashed [yet].
4) Main reason I decided to to post, was actually someone higher up in the comments mentioning 300-500 ranked accounts growing like crazy and I'm telling you I only re-installed antigame (had even forgotten the friggin name, had to look it up), I was farming without it with a sheet of paper, like the old days. If you wanna get ahead, YOU CAN, you just have to be determined to do so. If not and if just watching these three up there with their military points gets you frustrated, SCREW IT, there's plenty of new universes to play. (or you could take everything that is ogame, put a bag on it and aim for the trash can, hoping you don't miss )
There's still enough fleets and active players to make everything possible. Main problem I see, is the universe dying however. I think more than 80% are inactives (vmode or gone for good).
If there's something missing, it's a common goal, people pulling on the same end of the rope, solidarity and a strong community. But then again, ogame community was never strong when it came to holding together and following a common good; just too many egomaniacs, to many I-players, too many suffering from "I got the biggest .|."-syndrome. I should know, I was one of them. I'm rather leaning towards the idea that gameforge is desperately hoping this headache of creation to die by itself, even if it was their star horse at the vagon for many, many years. I mean, look at every other online game out there. ALL have a friggin mobile app, ALL of them - ogame doesn't (or not anymore, I remember there was a brief period I could play on ipad, but that's years ago, as well).
Anyhow, as long as time will allow me, I'll be here hustling to be able to spend more than what I make (which is a problem I encountered for the first time).
I'm annoyed by the redesign somewhat, but then again I was annoyed with the old one, after being implemented in god knows when (2007ish?)
you'll probably be able to tell I'm getting old, since I lost the thread there a few times while typing