More feedback.
I apologize for the mild profanity in my earlier post, though it accurately described my level of agitation. More constructively: we all understand the fact that gold users make the game available for everyone, so that's not an issue. But what is, is the arbitrary use of gold incentives without consideration of its effect on the game. After all, what holidays there are in a given time frame is a pure accident that has nothing to do with the stage a server is at. The effect of these intrusions is always distorting to normal strategy, but it's MUCH worse when it's inserted into a world where everyone has one or two cities with a minimal number of troops, as in Helike. If there must be events, I have two suggestions: make the presence and timing of events a feature of the world, having nothing to do with external holidays, and make sure that the rewards are balanced between offense and defense; e.g. that you can buy enough archers and chars to defend against Manti's for the same price as the latter. And in the spirit of one of the earlier contributors, let me urge your marketers to think out of the box how to make the game more attractive to the online gaming community, rather than how to exploit the lust for power of those who are already hooked on it. After all, income from the game is #of players x income per player, so concentrating on just the second variable is short sighted.
