Greetings,

Some facts first:
Newbie Protection in RELOADED got increased to 200k a few weeks ago.
We decided that before we launch a new universe, we will advertise the game a bit more as it it.
Heavy advertising started in December, it continued in January and it will continue in February.

Some observations:
We see a lot of new players evolving at RELOADED right now. I have not checked the rest of the universes.
RELOADED is the best in terms of active players but still way lower than what I would consider a healthy number to continue strong for the years to come.
This is the main reason of the current advertising, we are trying to add a few extra core members to ensure its well being as much as possible.
It's hard though.

An answer:
Do you know why? Because some older players do not really seem to care about the development of newcomers.

Now some questions:
-Why do you need to crash the fleet of a player that jumps right out of protection? Before we raised the protection, some players at 25k were getting crashed by people with millions worth of fleet. What is the point doing this?
-Wouldn't it be better to send them a PM first?
-If you do not care, why should we care as admins and devs? I mention this because we support each universe for a long time. We have 5 universes here in 10 years of operation. We could have had 40 to 400 universes in the same period if we followed the practices of similar games.
-How do you expect us to keep advertising for a universe when you do nothing to help?

Some clearings up:
-Of course, there are some players that help. We all owe to them.
-Of course, there are some players that do not help but pay for rubies. We all owe to them.
-And finally, there are some players that do help and pay for rubies. We all owe to them.

One more clearance, as I have seen before people complaining about Imperial Support and Imperial Bonds:
-There was NEVER a player in entire ZE history that conquered the top because he paid. Anyone who did it, it was short lived. There is no way to stay at the top of Zorg Empire without skill.

My personal story:
-I have played all universes and all tournaments. My best position was like #10 at first tournament at first 2 weeks. I got my a$$ kicked later.
-When I play, I usually play for a month or two at the start of a universe, using 600 rubies per month. I do play to see how the universe gels and if there are bugs and what improvements are needed.
-I get my a$$ kicked every time. Not because I am not good but because there are some really good players out there.
There is no shame in admitting that there are better players than you out there.

What's next:
We have shown tremendous dedication to this playerbase. I hope that the people who have remained (and you are few in comparison to the initial numbers) will help us in this new start we are attempting.

What we need:
-We need to rebuild our community.
-We need help to newcomers.
-We need trust.

What you need to realize:
-Supporting old universes seems to have failed. We tried our best. We still do. It is now up to you.
-We will still keep bringing players to the game and it is up to you to lead them and keep them to your universe.

How to make a universe last:
-I advise you start doing this from early on, our stats show that alliances is the key to this. So, at the new forthcoming universe, you can attempt this.
-You need at least 2 active alliances to make a universe successful. So no need to split up that much.
-An ideal number for every alliance should be 20 to 30 players. With such a size, even a universe with 60 core players can last and provide outstanding experience.
-The actual great number is about 4 alliances of 30 players and 4 of about 10-15 players for a total of 200 core players in active competing alliances. If you have such a core, this universe will not die out easily.
-The problem is that most people are not comfortable of being outside top100, this is why we rarely see such cases in the recent years.

New forthcoming universe needs feedback:
-I know that most do not have time to play multiple universes. But in case you do or you are a returning player interested to participate, we still need feedback there.

Communication:
-We are here,we are active. We care for the game. We still invest at the game. We are here to help. Reach out.

Community:
-There are active people visiting the forums and reading. You just need to integrate more by posting more.

Cheers

Firstly, I agree with 99% of what you have said.

However, the forums. We need moderators to encourage posting. Even as "Devils advocates", to encourage conversation.

At this time, "on paper" you have several moderators. What do they do? Absolutely NOTHING!!!

Either get rid of them an appoint new ones or, just do away with them, let people say what they want, when they want. If these posters need to be censured, then Zorg can do this surely? At the present time you have mods that are happy to just wear the title as a badge and then do NOTHING.

Secondly, as a long serving active player, also a long serving forums poster, the rubies. I for one would be happy to purchase more, but it's just too soul destroying and bloody infuriating to try and get past the useless Paypal system in place.

I was looking at the moderator team a few days ago. Indeed, I could replace/remove them indeed due to lack of moderation duties. However they are all experienced players who are still around. So it is better to retain them. I am sure they won't censor anyone without reason.

I think we have discussed this recently, about PayPal. You could still use PaySafeCard. Perhaps we can also add more payment options. We do not want to add the option to process credit cards directly though. We will always use a middle man for this as it is safer for everyone involved in this way.