2001-08-24 - 11:15 p.m.

Planetarion: Donation Monkeys

As I mentioned a few days ago, this round of Planetarion has officially ended. However, the game is still running and this "post-season" time is called the "havoc period." The reason for this is that the creators have given all the players TWO huge donations of resources. The idea behind this is that all the inactive players - the ones whose planets have been devastated, will wake up and use this windfall to get revenge on the people who wrecked their planets. Failing that, these "newbies" might try to attack and destroy the games top players, thereby "democratizing" the game.

Last round, as a top ten galaxy we got loads of annoying attacks from these tiny players suddenly grown huge. The most irritating thing about these attacks is that there was no point in counter attacking because most of these player's planets had little value.

However this round is much, much different. What's happened is that many of these little players have donated away all their resources to one player in their galaxy, making him super-huge. Why try to take down a big player when you can MAKE a top 100 player yourself? That's what has happened on a huge scale. The top 100 is now filled with players who grew fat on nothing but donations.

To give you an idea: when the round ended, before the donations, I was roughly player #150. Now I'm barely in the top 1,500! Thanks to these donations, literally thousands of players have leapfrogged over me. And the thing is, I got some donations myself from inactive players in my galaxy! There must be dozens and dozens of people who have the donations of entire galaxies.

This raises the disturbing question: how many people out there are account-sharing? The answer obviously is: a lot!

I hate to say it, but this result is typical for Planetarion. The creators do something expecting a certain result, but the reality always comes at right angles to their expectations. Maybe they should leave well enough alone.

Countdown: 17 days behind