It's been a long time since I did a blog post on the Empire Avenue blog it seems. We've been working hard, working on features, yes, but working on the direction of marketing and the company and more besides. Today, we've rolled out some changes that will cause significant change to how Empire Avenue is played.
We have always been honest about how much we value the feedback of our Beta users and certainly our customers. From the very beginning of the site, once we allowed you to expand beyond 10,000 shares, you had to buy those upgrades which expanded the number of shares available, whether you used Eaves or a mixture of real and virtual currency. As of today, these upgrades will happen automatically, without cost and infinitely.
Empire Avenue is a great game which is also a social network tool for creating value-based relationships. You have made connections around the globe. You have established communities, you have made friends, you have expanded into other networks. In Empire Avenue, a network is established by buying and selling shares in each other, by becoming invested in the creations that you put out on the social web. Putting artificial roadblocks towards the creation of those networks no longer seemed to be valid, useful, or fun.
For anyone who spent real money on these upgrades since August, we have given you a credit towards other items in the Empire Avenue Shop, you can use it now or in the future, please look in your email. For those that spent money or eaves in the last week (since Nov. 15), the credit is 100% and the eaves have been refunded into your account. Any money you saved has also been refunded.
In addition, we have rolled out upgrades to expand the number of people you can buy from 1000 to 2000. These upgrades are now available in the store.
You might also notice that you can now message your shareholders, something so many of you have asked for since we opened the site. Use it wisely, people may sell you just because you decided to spam them. Used correctly it is a tool to open up your network so you can contact them all, tell them about the great things that you are creating. You can disable this Shareholder Mail entirely if that kind of networking is not what you like. It is also up to you to show each other how you wish to see these features being used. The best teachers are your peers. After all that is why we all value our peer networks!
ADDENDUM / UPDATE
As noted in my comments we cannot give eaves that were spent already back into the system without breaking the site. The decision has been made instead that we will take a portion of those eaves that you have spent and add it to the new upgrades we have rolled out (buying up to 2000 people). This will happen later on Monday night.
ADDENDUM2 / UPDATE2
I should have posted this in the blog in the first place. You can turn off the automatic share upgrades at any level. Simply go to Profile/Settings and choose the correct option on the side. For those who play at a specific level, you can just find that level and stick to it.