When was it decided Elvenar should not fun for its players? I ask this because we had a Fellowship Adventure, which ate through our resources and pulverized our armies. It was followed almost immediately by the "Mermaid Quest", it further ate our resources and destroyed what was left of our armies. Then, with almost no time to recover, you ran basically the same quest again. I play 3 accounts and all three are basically in ruins. That means no tournament this week and maybe not next week oh and I'm still supposed to discover and win new provinces!
Somewhere along the line you have got to pay attention to the dynamics of your own game. Tasks repeatedly reward you for bigger buildings but your quests cater to those with a lot of little buildings – you're about producing it x times, instead of a total quantity of x.
On top of this you present the spire with two ways to reach the top. You can play the Slot Machine where you throw your resources at five people repeatedly until you figure out what each one wants to reap a dismal reward or you can fight. First fight or two is like most of the normal fights. Then, my survivors of the fight have to fight again against fresh troops; I was not surprised when they lost. Even with your Combat Pentagon there is no way to win when my best are 1 or 2 stars and they fight against 3 stars. I'm not stupid, well maybe a bit slow because I'm still playing.
I'll be honest, I've bought a lot of diamonds, many more than I should have (I'm on a fixed income) but that'll stop when I leave. People play games to have fun. I'm not a PKer, it's why I came here and now Players want to fight other Players? This isn't that game.
Yesterday, my efforts in the latest "Mermaid Quest" slammed to a stop. The task was raise 2 building to level 16 or above (my youngest city's buildings are all at level 10, my oldest at level 23(but they don't count because they are already higher) and both need research to grow so no chance there) or complete a research (I need 50 or more KP to complete it, that won't happen any time soon).
Speaking of KPs, in addition to all the other abuse we've taken, every time you buy a KP, the price goes up. "The Mermaid" quest started your trend for us to spend 15 KP followed by the need to buy 15 KPs. I'm uncertain how often it happens but I've used "coin refills" to get back into functioning range but to no avail, a few tasks later, you do it again. In my biggest city, 1 KP is over 1 million gold coins.
Somewhere along the way you appear to have decided the only way to play this game is to spend money. That in itself isn't too bad but change the way you get it, switch to membership accounts and get steady income. I play two accounts on RuneScape, one cost $9.99 (US$) every month; this account has been a member for 5 years. My main account has been a member for almost 15 years, I play $5.99 (US$) per month for that account. (Note the difference is because the rate is stuck at what the account cost when it joined.) Check out last year's earnings for Blizzard.com and I think you'll agree, I've made my point.
It doesn't have to be this way. The game should be fun instead of stressful!!!! I need calm and relaxing to take my mind off the stress of life but now you've piled the stress of Elvenar on top of all my other stress. For me, there's an easy solution and when I make it, you'll lose!