Evony community info

Finally, after so many weeks of hard work and frustration, the evony map is going into open beta!  That means that all of you can go to the map now and start entering data.   Yes, it is time for you to work now.  What? You think I’m meant to suffer alone for this great tool? 

Truth be told, you and I would have been spared a lot of headache if Evony had allowed us to access their map data.  There are preliminary indications that we will be allowed to do so soon, hence all your hard work may be for nothing!  Hahaha! 

Wait.  What are you doing?  Go back to work on entering that map data!  Do you have anything better to do while you’re building another cottage now that you’ve discovered you need people to recruit armies?  Maybe you think you’d better take up blogging?  Nah, it takes a special caring person like myself to do that.  I’m not judging you… You care too, it’s just that… you care about the map more.  Which is good for everyone!

My cottage is nearly done building, and I’m thinking of taking a short nap in there, you know to test it out for my residents.  So let’s wrap it up:

Currently all the map is, is a fancy game map.  You can see the real Evony world and you can see how it zooms to the small Evony map, and you can actually see about 10 times the detail that you can see in that small Evony map.  That said, it gives you no additional advantages.

But if you enter the data here is what the map will be in a week’s time:

• The map is integrated with EvonySocial.  By default, only your friends from the Evony social network will be able to search for your name and find your cities.  The permissions can be changed by you in EvonySocial, so that for example all you EvonySocial alliance members will be able to search for you.
• At the moment city markers are only visible on the grass patches.  Later on, when you login to EvonySocial you will see all the icons of your friends and others who allow you to see them on the world map at any zoom level.  So you can see your friends right away at different states with a global map zoom level.
• You will be able to enter enemies and friends coordinates manually, and share them with your alliance members by default.  The enemies and friends will be visible on the world map and you’d be able to search for them by name.
• You will be able to customize flags and assign them to enemies or friends, say one flag for one enemy alliance, and another flag for another one.

I believe this will be a greatly enhanced set of map feature, long overdue for this game.  It should be out in about a week my time.   Given that my brain calculates at the speed of light most of the time, it means about 10 days for you ground folk due to time dilation.  Hey, blame Einstein not me. 

I’ve also worried quite a bit about security here, and I hope you find it adequate.  Like it?  Hate it?  Have suggestions?  Please leave me a comment – unless you really do hate it, then just go away, why do you need to insult me?  What did I do to you?!

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Evony is adding servers quickly.  A few days ago they added 160 servers in one shot!  If you were subscribed to our Evony new server notifier then you have received an email titled “160 New Evony Servers Launched!” listing all the 160 servers you can click on.  Of course, none of them worked.  Evony decided to simply place 160 servers online, even though probably they’d have to move them later to a different machine.  And it screwed up our server notifier.  I even thought they had done so on purpose so that our site doesn’t give any player advantage anymore.  It took us all of a couple hours to fix it, and make it better than ever, and still without violating any of Evony’s terms of use.  They broke it again later, and we fixed it again later, but that is a different story.

My point was that there are many Evony servers.  You have to agree to that at least.  I played on server 14 for a long time, and then when server 25 launched I started playing on that as well.  I was the first one on that server thanks to our new notifier!!!  With the help of our start up guide I also went up in ranks quickly (what, you think I stayed the only one on the server?) and was one of the best players.  Next morning I was in a 200th place.  Next two days in 2000nd place.  I’m not complaining, I don’t play as much as others.   Did you read that editor?  (these are tough financial times, and I have to cover my rear.  Even though I don’t get paid, I don’t want him to charge me for being affiliated with him.  I did say he’s a very nice guy who would never do such a lousy thing didn’t I?  Good…)

The problem is, I click on map on the new server 25, and nearly every square around me is occupied!  I kid you not – take a look yourself!!

What is going on?  Did I pick a prime real estate location?  I am near a lake, but I understand it’s long enough to supply everyone everywhere.  I mean I wanted a secluded foresty spot, how did I end up in a major metropolitan area?   In server 14 which has been running for almost a month there are at least 10 times fewer cities around me.  There are two options that I see:

1. There are many new users.
2. Many old users want a new chance to beat up on new users.

Did you also notice that the Evony overlords have announced that the Wheel of Fortune will now give you 4x the daily reward it did before?  How come that is that every time I spin it I get 1 speaker.  Almost all the items there are useless, but the speaker is the worst.  I have like hundreds of speakers lying around.  I will never use them, why should I?  I understand conceptually it was a way for Evony to control spamming, but when chat is free for new users this entire concept is ridiculous.

Finally, you should have noticed an Evony system message about the ievony program.  Right now it’s in beta, which means you have to be invited personally by someone, or just use the codes from their bbs forums.  By signing up – in the Evony game client click shop, then click earn game coins, you’ll go to a website, enter your code, and download a windows referral client – you will be able to earn really miniscule amounts of cents by referring your friends to the game.  Instead of them signing in at www.evony.com they’ll sign in at say evonynet.evony.com which is the link I have at the beginning of the post.

That said, you like me right?  I’m nice to you after all.  I tell you about cool stuff, and I try to make you laugh, so you should be nice to me too right?  You wouldn’t try to spam me with your own ievony account right?  Depending on the number of friends you have, you may want to avoid spamming the ones you want to keep as well.

Seriously Evony, isn’t it better for your reputation to start having affiliate websites? Why do you want to be known as the internet gaming company which pays game money for spamming?

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I was trying to find out why there is a vertical bar (|) in the title for our evonypress home. 

In order to customize your pages in WordPress you have to work with templates.  The pages themselves are in a database.  It’s a smart design, but hard to maintain the pages themselves. 

The WordPress header and title are in a file called header.php in the current theme directory on your WordPress installation folder.  Its HTML Title tag is defined as something like:

<title><?php wp_title(); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

The wp_title() function tells you the blog title, and the bloginfo('name') function tells you the blog name.  Except, changing it didn’t work!  If you remove the title tag completely the window doesn’t have a title, and if you have a title tag then no matter what you put in it will say "| EvonyPress" – EvonyPress being the blog name.   Even if you put "ABCD" for the title, it will not show it.  The EvonyPress title is stored in the database, and configurable from the admin->settings panel under the blog name edit box.  Something just HAD to be rewriting the title in script, but I couldn’t find it.

It turns out that people actually believe the titles play a crucial role for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).   See for example this site (an SEO title plugin for WordPress), or just google 'WordPress title'.  The EvonyPress has a plugin called All in One SEO.  When you click on it in the admin panel under settings you will configure it.  Fix the page title format to not include a blog post title.  Just include %blog_title%.  I know it's a minor and almost obvious issue, but if someone else out there in the websphere is unaware of plugins others installed and are facing this strange behaviour, then I hope I can save them some time. 

Speaking of SEO - if you want a higher page rank on google, put a lot of links in your blog post, it makes for a better article anyhow, and takes only a little less laziness.  Let me help you get started.  Copy the following URL: http://info.evonypress.com.   Paste it into your own blog, anywhere really, and tell them how much I've helped you with, well, life.  Go on, it's good for you.

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