I was not reslly into online gaming, except for Cityville and Mafia Wars - but as I became frustrated or bored with both of those I decided to try out some strategy games. I played Batheo, Crystal Saga, Chronicles of Merlin, Warflow - and after a while got thoroughly turned off. Why? Because at a certain point they all did the same thing - made it so hard to advance WITHOUT CASH PAYMENTS that the games became impossible and extremely bogged down. Batheo, Warflow and Chronicles of Merlin have different graphics - but its all the same gameplay and the same irritating problems - they all use the same tactics to get people to pay.

Starve you out.

Slow your advancement.

Impede you from upgrading.

Throw ridiculously hard battles at you out of nowhere.

Show you how a player who has half your levels can be twice as powerful - with CASH.

Change the game dramatically when you get to cetain levels, so you can harldy make a move without having to stop playing (like cool down timers that get increasingly punishing as you level up).

Forcing you to choose between prematurely levelling up or having no activity in your game play.

Crystal Saga does some of that - but they add on confusing levelling, impossible battles and low odds creating / finding certain items that will help you advance. You can always get past all that with CASH, though...duhh.

Now that I am more aware of the underhanded methods being utilized to extract cash from people, it will be hard to impossible for me to ever play these types of games - and I am going back into my shell over all this MMO stuff again. Cityville has new goals now anyway - at least I can keep doing stuff in that game, instead of just looking at the interface and not having anything to do for hours...