LWD - Spam's Empire

Chapter 7 – In which we close the book on Oleg, and review his game too

By: EdisonRex

We've been meaning to publish this for a while. It looks like Oleg has continued to work on Stars' Empire, and it also looks like he continues to spam forums, although he doesn't spam us anymore.

We do know that Oleg has done periodic spam runs, and we also know that we don't receive them. This probably because of our active bans on the IP block ranges for most active forum spammers.

What follows now is from our own Agent Sully, who joined the game for a few weeks in the spring and wrote of his experience. Unless we have any more spam from these folks, which is unlikely, this is the last we will write about them, although we will continue the series.
Stars' Empire, the review

I’ll be the first to admit, my experience with this game has been limited. I’ve been playing for about two weeks now, and so far, I’ve not seen anything that puts this game over any number of other text-based MMOs. There’s a few pretty pictures here and there, you get your own planet (mine was Yorkie), and you get to choose one of four races (I chose humans).

I found the game to be similar in style to Sim City. You are given a budget to start with, and get an increased budget based on the number of people who are “born”. You tax citizens, and they decide to stay or not based on the health care you provide. Resources (money, materials, etc.) are earned by the hour real time. For example, if you are at a level where you receive $60 taxes per hour, you would receive $1 each minute of that hour. I did find the method used for distribution of resources (real time passage) to be much more inviting than other methods I’ve seen used, such as referral link clicks.

Gameplay is EXTREMELY slow, though I hear it picks up later on in the game. In two weeks’ time, I’ve yet to have any contact with other players (not much of a multiplayer game yet…). If things picked up, I might consider this somewhere around par with other games I’ve played online like this.

The game is free to play, but you have the ability to pay for more resources once you built a Galactic Trade Centre. Every member I’ve heard from on this issue has said that, while it is possible to play without paying (some of those are), the going is painfully slow and difficult. As of this point in my experiment, I’m able to build/learn something at most once a day, which takes me all of two minutes. Log in, click on “Construction” (or “Science”), then click “Build” or “Develop”. You then have to wait a period of time while this process takes place (so far, anywhere from five minutes to well over an hour). And then you’re out of resources. Time to find something else to do for 8+ hours while they build up again to the point where more development is possible. From what I’ve played, it’s just not possible to be at the site for more than five minutes at a time and actually have something to do. Unless, of course, you like watching paint dry (it’s about as exciting…).

The pre-requisites for developing new technology are very well explained. You know right from the beginning what you need to do in order to accomplish a certain goal. If, for example, you want to build a jet engine, it tells you that you first need to build an industrial complex (at level 1). So, you then look up the requirements for an industrial complex, and see “Construction Engineering (level 3) and Raw Materials Base (level 5). Both of these are available to learn/build immediately in the game (given you have the necessary resources). That’s basically the gist of it.

Game play isn’t explained very well in English, as the creators/operators are Russian. They do have someone on-board who speaks English, but it obviously isn’t his native tongue. Documentation in-game is not the best; you really have no idea what you’re doing until it’s done. While there is what appears to be a comprehensive list of pre-requisites for getting from point “A” to point “B,” you have no idea what each step actually does. You just know that you have to do this and that to get there. While we’re on the topic of support, the out-of-game support really isn’t the greatest either, at least for English speaking folk. The forum support appears to come from a couple of people who have been playing the game, basically saying, “I did this and it didn’t work,” or, “I did this and it did work.” There are a total of less than 200 topics in the forums, including everything unrelated to the game. As of now, there are 115 topics in game-related areas of the forums, many of which are repostings of the same questions, or not even related to game progress at all.
If you happen to speak Russian, though, things look a little different. The Russian forums are very active. With well over 10,000 topics, I imagine you can find information on just about anything game-related you would like (I speak zero Russian, therefore it’s difficult for me to know for sure, though Babelfish has helped me figure some things out).

Once you get to a certain point in the game, you need a currency other than your home planet’s in order to continue. This currency is known as IC (Imperial Credits). There are two ways of obtaining IC. One is by trying to sell items you have. Whether it be ships, supplies, engines, etc. This way can take a very long time to get anywhere, as there not only has to be a buyer who wants what you have to sell, but they also have to be close enough to your planet to be able to pick it up (or have you ship it) in any decent amount of time.

The alternative method of obtaining IC is, of course, buying it. With a cost of $1 per 1000IC, it seems reasonable, right? But take into consideration that the minimum purchase is $10/10,000IC, and that you could use that up in a matter of minutes when using it to buy that new ship you wanted, or that polymetal you didn’t make, and the cost starts adding up.

To make it absolutely clear, the admin as well as those in the game have assured everyone that it is indeed possible to play through the game as it is at this point without paying anything. It’ll just take a lot longer (and with the pace of things thus far, that seems more like a form of torture than a game…)

My overall ratings on the game thus far:

			Originality: 5/10 – Nothing to set this game apart from all the other 
				hordes of MMO’s out there…

			Looks: 5/10 – Would have been less, but the graphics were 
				recently changed to remove images taken from popular 
				movies/tv shows. All graphics are now original works of 
				art…

			Game play: 1/10 – It’s more exciting watching re-runs of Barney 
				than playing this game…

			Support: 4/10 – English support/documentation is almost non-
				existent.


Telling it like it is...