Age of Z Origins

Despite my complaints about mobile games and microtransactions, I’ve been playing Age of Z Origins a lot in the past few days, but yet to spend any real cash on it yet. I think my interest will be short lived since I saw another flaw with the game today. I mentioned before that to continue level up, you need lots of resources. You can gather them but you can also buy just about everything in game. As the level requirements grows exponentially, it’s a contact between patience and your wallet. Also, the game has been around for two years. There’s really no skill involved. You either level up over time, or spend money to shortcut the process.

Today, a really powerful player (or a big spender), teleported his city in my neighborhood and started scouting various cities. Since the outcome of battles are determined by the power rating of your units, there’s really no contest. If you have teammates (called alliances) are near by, they can send reinforcements to help you. I’ve never seen this in action. The teleporting invader also skipped my city since I think my defense rating is about the same as his offensive rating. It reminded me of the opening scene from Mortal Engines where the rogue city of London was cruising around eating other mobile towns.

Again, if you’re on the receiving end of this, there is no relief. You will always lose if the attacker has more troops than you. There is no skill you can develop to counter these attacks. This attacker also did not stop at one attack; he/she typically hammered a lower level city four or five times, basically killing everyone in the city and forcing the other player to grind for days to rebuild their troops… or spend money. Since the only equalizer is time or money, if you don’t want to wait, then you got to spend real dollars. The first few days were kinda fun since the game economy has a lot of interdependencies but as you level up, it feels like you’re walking in a bad neighborhood, waiting to get mugged.

I think this pandemic has bee favorable for the gaming industry. All these people sitting at home need something to do. There is only so much video streaming you can binge watch. The Nintendo Switch was out-of-stock when it first came out but soon became available everywhere. I got one last year for $300. Right now, it’s out-of-stock again and slimy resellers are trying to get $600 on Amazon. Much like the price gouging on surgical masks and hand sanitizers back in March.

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Just found out that Camel Games, the publisher of Age of Z Origins is based in Beijing. I could tell they were not a US based company from the in-game dialog. The English is not bad but awkward in places, plus they sometimes use the wrong article, like “a” instead of “the”. Not that I have any secret information but with the controversy over TikTok and WeChat, I wonder what information the app is pulling off my iPhone/iPad and sending to the Chinese government?

I also read on an online review that they charge differently by region, which means US and Europe’s prices for in-game packs cost more than in Asia. I was wondering why a lot fo the super high ranked players appear to be from Vietnam if they had to pay-to-play. The game is not cheap if you want to go that route.