Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I wanted to take some time to warn/inform people of my experiences BEFORE they decide to get too involved with this game. I will try to remain as unbiased as possible and the views expressed below are my own. First, without taking any money into account, let's talk about pure gameplay: Game of War has many interesting parallels to MMO's. Some things that come to mind: Quests, Leveling up your hero, crafting items, enhancing item stats via gems, alliances (or guilds), gathering resources, hero skill trees, research trees, kingdom events, gold store and a few others. This is pretty amazing given the fact that we are talking about a phone/tablet game. This is the primary reason this game is so addictive, especially to people from an MMO background. It is very easy to pick up the game, start building your empire and get hooked onto the game. The graphics are still primitive compared to a full MMO but the essential elements of gameplay are all there making this a fun game to play (initially). How do you become competitive in the game (a.k.a. "end game" for prior MMO players)? Now when you start playing the game you might think there is an end-game where you will finally be able to reap the rewards for all the hard-work you have put in to level your character. Right? Unfortunately, this never happens as THERE IS NO END GAME! This game is designed so that it's a constant battle between the top players in the game to dominate and show their superiority. So unlike an MMO where once your hero reaches the highest level and you have finally got the legendary gear you toiled for, you are ready to start "raiding" in a guild, in Game of War, even after your hero has reached level 50 (the max), your stronghold (or city) is at lvl 21 (the max), you have some pretty decent gear in the game YOU CAN STILL BE ZEROED by other high level players. Being ZEROED means losing all your troops that you worked so hard to build and SPENT REAL MONEY (more on that below) to build. Once you are ZEROED, it means re-building all your troops again from scratch. So unless you are in the top 5% of the gaming population, YOU CAN NEVER BE SAFE and either live a life under shields (costs money) OR be willing to fight and risk getting ZEROED. There is no middle ground like other MMOs where you can choose a more passive existence and participate in events as much or as little as you like, and STILL enjoy all that the game has to offer. In Game of War, the sole objective is to be the highest power player in the entire game. Period. If you were looking for a nice peaceful existence, look at some other games. What are the places in the game where I have to spend money and how much? As folks in other threads have already mentioned, this game is DESIGNED to make you keep spending money and never stop since the game designers keep raising the achievement bar. It starts off easy when you start the game, you see some nice gold packs for $4.99. These progress to $19.99 and then $49.99 and finally to $99.99. Once you have reached the $99.99 mark, the game stops offering you any lower priced packs and you are FORCED to buy the higher priced pack if you want to continue enjoying the game at all ... And I say this because you cannot NOT spend anything in this game and STILL enjoy. This is just not a possibility. I will give a few example below and let you decide: - After level 13 and above, any building upgrades and research starts taking DAYS. After lvl 21, research starts taking YEARS (in REAL time!). Some higher level research can take 3-4 years! Now if you want to just sit around for 3-4 years without doing anything else in the game, then more power to you :P Otherwise, you will need to buy a gold pack. Gold packs that cost $99.99 offer "speedups" to speedup your building construction and research. Let's see how much you get in one $99.99 pack. The current 7x packs offer around 800 days of speedups. That sounds like a LOT. In reality, this won't get you very far, even if you combine this with events that reduce the research times. Currently, there are 11 research trees. After lvl 21, to get lvl 10 in any "single" research category within a research tree takes upwards of 300 days minimum. So 800 days of speedups will probably get you to lvl 10 in one or two sub-categories of a given research tree. As you can imagine, completing ALL the research will easily take 30-40 packs if not more. Since the top players in the game have completed all research, you will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage if you are also not a big spender ... you get the idea. YOU NEED TO SPEND TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE IN THIS GAME. Just when you think you are done with all your research or your gear, MZ will release a new research tree. They have started releasing new gear every week now LOL. This ensures that you are continuously spending and can NEVER be the top player unless you are in the top 1% of spenders. Ok. I have a few thousand dollars to burn? Would you recommend this game to me? If you have EXTRA money lying around to burn and if your idea of fun is to DOMINATE and be the BEST PLAYER AT ANY COST then maybe this game is for you with the following caveat ... you will NOT stop spending in this game EVER. Once you run out of the few thousand dollars, tough luck. In order to remain competitive, you have to keep spending week after week. I have seen enough horror stories in this game where the husband was hiding the credit card statements from his wife to pay for his Game of War addiction and finally the wife caught on. Did not result in a very happy ending :( Try not to be one of those guys ... In the end, remember that this is a GAME and if it is going to cause you real life issues, then it's probably not worth paying the price. You can decide on your own! Game on.