If you have read my article called “Do you have what it takes to be the next Spam Queen?” it actually explains everything about this obnoxious online game browser, the one that must not be named before, ehem Evony. The ubiquitous ads of Evony seems inescapable as they hog the ad space in every gaming site or non-gaming sites we visit.  Since countless bloggers and advertisers complained to Google regarding this spam abuse of Evony, this is their early Christmas to all of us:

“Hi everyone — thanks for your patience so far. We’ve received all of your feedback and have looked into your concerns. Any Evony ads should now point only to evonyonline.com, so having evonyonline.com on your filter list should now effectively block all Evony ads. If you still see ads after adding this URL to your filter (and it’s been over 48 hours since you’ve added it), reply to this thread and we’ll look into it.”

Google Admin

Woot woot, I don’t need to filter all my articles and comments and replace them with an image version [], that’s less hassle indeed. Well speaking of the devil, UMGE Group, a  publicaly listed game development company out of China, wants to dominate the online gaming market through their shady Evony, as well as dominating the advertisement world too. Now, it seems their next tactic for supremacy is to control the bloggers and media people by threatening them with lawsuits. Bruce Everiss, a veteran games industry marketer who runs a website at http://www.bruceongames.com/, is their first victim of this nonsense libel case they filed in Australia. The armchairdiplomat.com blog also criticize this move as saying “Now setting aside the obvious dick move on UMGE’s part by suing a UK blogger in Australia for a game owned by a Chinese company who’s servers are in America, doesn’t something have to be proved to be incorrect to technically be defamatory?” and PopeHat.com witty response “Its Lawyers Rely Upon, Act Like Boobs”. Even the British daily newspaper “Guardian” received a legal complaint from Evony LLC and the demanding to remove the controversial article “Has Evony become the most despised game on the web?” So I want to ask the same question I’ve been pondering, has the Evony become the most despised game on the web? Oppps, don’t say anything defamatory or Evony will shoot errr sue! After the jump, you can read on the actual threatening letter sent to Bruce from Warren McKeon Dickson, a firm of Australian solicitors hired by Evony.

If you want to help beat these people you can. Just cut and paste anything I have ever said about Evony on here and put it anywhere and everywhere on the web. You don’t even have to credit the source if you don’t want to. They cannot threaten everybody! The more that the truth about Evony is propagated the better the Streisand effect will be - BruceonGames.com

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Bruce Everiss, a veteran games industry marketer, has revealed in his blog “bruceongames.com” that an upcoming MMO will be released soon. Well this might be not the fantasy RPG everyone will be looking forward to.  From the same developers of , this suspicious business strategy-based browser game will grace our placement ads, blog comments, and mail inbox with their false advertising  in a matter of time.

Update: Evony.com threatens Bloggers: Don’t Criticise our Game or We’ll Sue

According to Bruce in his other blog post, these dirty tactics are connected to Chinese Businessman Eric Lam who was sued by Microsoft for online advertising click fraud. He is also directly involved with this uproar of countless bloggers in the web and now he’s ploying to release an alternate empire to bombard us with spam bots and a new cheesy line such as “Hi there, come save me, my Lord!”

If you are one of their spam abuse victims, download the banner below exclusively made by thebigcritique.com and spread it out to everyone!

Link the image to http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001286.html

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The massively.com recently posted a blog about the abuse of comment spam on many websites by members of , a free MMO real time strategy browser game. Like BruceonGames.com and other game related blogs, MMO Grindhouse blog is also  receiving a bulk number of spam comments like…

Update: Evony.com threatens Bloggers: Don’t Criticise our Game or We’ll Sue

The best way to combat this kind of  spam abuse is to directly report it to their support center. So we did try to contact one of the admins a few days ago and gave them the spam related links and screenshots. They admitted it was one of their members who has been bugging us. They have a program called  that lets members earn credits by referring new players to the game. However this kind of spamming already went overboard and it’s giving headaches for variety of websites. A few hours later (on that same day we complained), they posted a new announcement on how they will take action against the issue:

Here’s a witty response by Mark for thebigcritique.com

Case solved, my lord! Free from spam forever! (i guess…). Update: The Empire(craft) stikes back, save us from spam, my Lord!

Other blogs about  worth to read and laugh with

• codinghorror.com
• mmocrunch.com
• mu.ranter.net
• BruceonGames.com
• popehat.com
• massively.com
• gamepolitics.com
• negativegamer.com
• arksark.org
• brokentoys.org

If you are one of their spam abuse victims, download the banner below exclusively made by thebigcritique.com and spread it out to everyone!

Link the image to http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001286.html

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Restaurant City is a simple but very addicting game in Facebook.com. It lets you run your very own restaurant and employ your friends to work for you as waiters and chefs. You need lots of money to be able to buy extravagant decorations, furniture and equipment to make make your mark with a completely unique restaurant. This guide is based on the success of “IHOP UHOP” restaurant built by ihopuhop. This guide covers “island” layouts, which helps you make a restaurant layouts you can build as efficient as possible!  Read now and let’s get cooking after the jump.

This visual guide is created by ihopuhop for the Playfish – Forum. All credits goes to this guy.

IHOP UHOP’s Guide to Island Layouts

Introduction

You can begin using island layouts when you have a total of 6 staff. If you have less staff, please check out my General Guide to Efficient Restaurants.

**Disclaimer: island layouts are slightly buggy right now, so you will need to do a little bit of trial and error to get them right.**

What is an “island” layout?
If you’ve ever seen a restaurant that has two or more separate sections, or “islands”, with its own cooks and waiters, then you’ve seen an example of an island layout. Here’s one, as an example:

What’s so special about island layouts?
Island layouts are unique in that they are extremely efficient. If you read the basic strategies in my Guide to Efficient Restaurants, you’ll see that smaller restaurants (few cooks and tables) are always more efficient than bigger, bulkier restaurants. In a small restaurant, waiters don’t have to walk as much to serve customers, while long walks are almost unavoidable for big restaurants.

The beauty of an island layout is that we can take that big, bulky restaurant and split it back down into those smaller, much more efficient chunks.

On Bugs and Problems
Unfortunately, island layouts are plagued with a host of problems. Without the right island set up, the game will get confused and repeatedly put all your waiters in one island or scatter them randomly. However, we can overcome all these problems.

**The next section will show you how to set up your island layout right so that it works correctly and consistently, without any of the problems.**

Island Building
Okay, so you’re ready to go out and build your island layout! There is only one thing that you must do to get island layouts to work consistently. I don’t know why it works, but if you do it right then you won’t encounter any problems.

Check your waiters, swap your stoves
After you’ve completed your layout, go ahead and assign your waiters and cooks. The following two things can happen:

Possibility 1: Your waiters are in the right position:

Congratulations! Go ahead and Save & Close. If they’re still in the right position when you reload the app, then you’re done! Otherwise, please read on.

Possibility 2: Your waiters are in the wrong position:

Don’t feel bad, this happens. What you need to do now is to go into the furniture view, and swap your stoves (I’m not kidding). Randomly take one of your stoves, and swap it with another one:

After each time, leave the furniture view and check to see if your waiters are now in the right positions. If not, keep going (this should only take 1-3 attempts). Otherwise, Save & Close, and if the waiters are still correct after you reload the app, then congratulations! You are done!

As long as you don’t touch your stoves again, your waiters will always appear correctly and your restaurant will run at its peak efficiency.

Recommended Layouts
Here are recommended island layouts that have been tested and verified (I have confirmed that these are all 50 popularity layouts):

Note: The islands pictured here are deliberately placed far apart so that you can see them better. If you are lacking space, you can just squeeze the islands together without any problems. Click the “compact layout” link below each picture to get an idea of how it should look.

4 Cooks, 2 Waiters

[Avg. customers served per minute: 11.2]
(Don’t have space? Try this compact layout instead)

5 Cooks, 2 Waiters

[Avg. customers served per minute: 14.6]
(Don’t have space? Try this compact layout instead)

6 Cooks, 2 Waiters

[Avg. customers served per minute: 17.8]
(Don’t have space? Try this compact layout instead)

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Check back often because these designs are always evolving and updating thanks to feedback from the community.
You can visit the community at http://forum.playfish.com/.

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Restaurant City is a simple but very addicting game in Facebook.com. It lets you run your very own restaurant and employ your friends to work for you as waiters and chefs. You need lots of money to be able to buy extravagant decorations, furniture and equipment to make make your mark with a completely unique restaurant. This guide is based on the success of “IHOP UHOP” restaurant built by ihopuhop. He will show you how to build efficient and effective restaurant layouts to maximize your bottom line!  Read now and let’s get cooking after the jump.

This visual guide is created by ihopuhop for the Playfish – Forum. All credits goes to this guy.

IHOP UHOP’s Guide to Efficient Restaurant Layouts

Introduction

Hello! At the IHOP UHOP restaurant, we pride ourselves on squeezing every last gourmet point of out of our staff before they collapse from exhaustion!

Note: This guide only covers single “island” layouts, which are easier to build but not as efficient as multiple island layouts. If you’re feeling adventurous (or you are “hardcore”) and don’t mind a bit of extra work, go check out my Guide to Multiple Island Layouts.

Basic Strategies

1. Don’t make your waiters walk
The less your waiter walks, the more time he spends serving and the less time he spends getting there.

2. Too many tables!
Resist the urge to add as many tables as you can afford. If you have too many tables and not enough cooks, you won’t get the food out fast enough! I find that you should only offer 3 tables for each cook you have.

3. Center your stoves
Keep your stoves centered. A food order from any table can go to any stove. Don’t keep all your stoves clustered in one area.

4. Use corners
Your waiter can service in all 8 directions, so use corners as much as possible to give him the most reach.

5. Box waiters in
Form a complete square or rectangle using your tables to trap the waiters in. This way, they don’t wander around needlessly to serve food.

6. Avoid the walls
Don’t set your tables and chairs against a wall or the grass:

Customers aren’t very courteous and they refuse to scoot in! The 3 empty seats shown above will always remain empty because the two customers block them off.

Advanced Strategies

7. Count steps
A good, quick rule of thumb to judge a layout’s efficiency is to ask yourself: how many steps maximum do my waiters have to take?

Both these layouts have the same number of tables and stoves, but one is more efficient! Which one?

The answer is the first one, because waiters only have to travel a maximum of 2 steps. In the second one, waiters have to travel a maximum of 3.

8. Avoid diagonals
Look closely at your waiters’ speed, you can actually see that they move slower diagonally! It takes 1.4 times longer to cross a tile diagonally than to cross it up, down, left, or right (but it is still faster than going through 2 tiles!). Whenever possible, within reason, try to remove diagonals from your waiters’ path.

9. A Note on “Island” Layouts
You’ll sometimes see restaurants that have two or more “islands”, each island having their own cooks and waiters, like this one:

These islands are very effective, because smaller designs (with less cooks and tables) are much more efficient than bigger, bulkier designs. However, they’re also more difficult to create. I’ve written a Guide to Island Layouts, but this guide will focus strictly on traditional designs since these are easier.

Recommended Layouts

All right, enough talk, here are my recommended layouts!

2 Cooks, 1 Waiter

3 Cooks, 1 Waiter
(Special thanks to Orphaen)

3 Cooks, 2 Waiters
Keep the same layout as above (3 Cooks, 1 Waiter), because you’ll need more cooks to handle more tables.

4 Cooks, 2 Waiters

5 Cooks, 2 Waiters

What to do when you have 8 staff
Congratulations, you now have a full staff! If you’ve come this far, you should really consider using island layouts instead, since it’s hard to make an efficient 8 staff “traditional” layout. Check out my guide on Island Layouts.

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Restaurant City is a simple but very addicting game in Facebook.com. It lets you run your very own restaurant and employ your friends to work for you as waiters and chefs. You need lots of money to be able to buy extravagant decorations, furniture and equipment to make make your mark with a completely unique restaurant. Here’s a visual guide for fast leveling up your restaurant and practical tips for beginner, advance, and expert players to survive your restaurant finances.  Read now and let’s get cooking after the jump.

This visual guide is created by Drimus for the Playfish – Forum. All credits goes to him.

Well You recently started right, you dont understand too much and you want to win the game fast but.. Life aint that easy ^^ Now im Gonna explain u how to lvl fast in the following points

First of all im still waiting the spanish forum cuz im not very well talking/typing in english but… ill do my best to help you guys! If i’ve grammar mistakes, let me know where and ill fix it!

BEGINNER:

Dont waste your money in decoration when you start, dont buy floor and expensive chairs, tables or stooves*. (I made those mistakes that’s why u must avoid it)

*CHEAP AND EXPENSIVE CHAIRS, TABLES & STOVES:
Dont buy expensive ones! they are the same with another design, if u think ppl are more comfortable with luxury chairs/tables ur wrong.. its the same a chair of 150$ than 1 of 1400$!
Same with stooves! The 200$ Stove works equal than the 4000$ they has just a different decoration for your design..

So, Buy things that you really need.

Put the tables near the stoves, dont make the waitress walk too much and you will earn points and cash faster!

Make people walk a lot before they reach chair, thats a huge adventage for you, the waitress has more time to serve other persons and clean the table too. Dont waste money in expensive mazes.. make it with trophies ,mailbox and junk too

This is the calculation of all the ingredients you will need to get all the dishes to lvl 10

Cheese x 90
Flour x 80
Potato x 80
Cream x 70
Egg x 70
Salad x 70
Tomato x 70
Rice x 60
Beef x 50
Bread x 50
Butter x 50
Bayleaf x 40
Chicken x 40
Sugar x 40
Tuna x 40
Chili x 30
Garlic x 30
Icecream x 30
Leek x 30
Lemon x 30
Milk x 30
Onion x 30
Pasta x 30
Peas x 30
Strawberry x 30
Banana x 20
Bacon x 20
Basil x 20
Beans x 20
Carrot x 20
Chocolate x 20
Kiwi x 20
Lamb x 20
Lime x 20
Lobster x 20
Mango x 20
Mushroom x 20
Pork x 20
Prawn x 20
Pumpkin x 20
Sausage x 20
Tofu x 20
Apple x 20
Dragon Fruit x 10
Noodles x 10
Pepperoni x 10
Pomegranate x 10
Saffron x 10
Sweetcorn x 10

ADVANCE:

Expand the tables after geting the 8th employer

Now u’ve more space.. Make the maze bigger!

Now we are lvl 17. What shall we do?
Make an island as well, the best and fastest way to get points and cash

What do i mean with islands?

Here you have a tutorial about islands:
Restaurant City Guide Part 3: Island Layouts Guide

Remember, dont waste money in decoration and designs before reaching lvl 20.. use that money to get points faster.. example, dont make your emplyer rest, give him/her water when he/she is 75% and you will have a lot of popularity points too.

Why I dont grow points? I want to level up!:

Your gourmet points (the points you need to level up) go up faster if you open your interior page (restaurant city game opened). If you go outside or close the game, you get money but your points doesnt go up.

My points are growing so slow.. Why?

Because you need lvl 10 dishes!

1 of each.. (Starter, Main, Dessert)

Example: if you have a lvl 1 starter dish, lvl 10 main dish, lvl 1 dessert dish
when the costumer eats a starter u receive low points, when the costumer eats the main (lvl 10) you obtain 3ple points (2.8 l 3..)

So, you need 3 dishes in lvl 10 and then you will lvl up faster!

EXPERT:

You have now the stuff u need( in door items), 8 costumers and a cool restaurant, maybe u asked yourself what shall you do.. well heres a small and big tip for you:

Money: Dont waste money on items, just take care of your employers health.
The most health, the most they work, so what do i mean..

* If ur employer reached 75 health give her/him water 75% > 100%
* If ur employer reached 50 health give her/him apple 50% > 100%
* If ur employer reached 25 health give her/him banana 25% > 100%
* If ur employer reached 0 health give her/him water sandwitch% > 100%

TAKE OFF THE EMPOYERS REST OF YOUR HEAD.. NOW U DONT NEED MONEY TO BUY STOOVES AND ANYTHING ELSE, JUST MAKE EM WORK HARD 24/7 WITH 100 HEALTH AND U’LL REACH 50.0 POPULARITY!
With 3 dishes in 10 and all ur empoyers working hard u’ll make 15.000 points a day

Max Lvl (27) Alert!

My Restaurant: (Expert mode/one)

Click on the picture > FULL!

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Gaming industry visionary “David Perry”, one of the brains behind the Off Cloud-Based Gaikai Game Service, has released (just this month) a video sample on this revolutionary new technology that lets you play your favorite MMOs with an Internet browser.  In this beta demo, it unveils actual games that can be run within Firefox browser without plugins involved or  installation needed, like heavy games such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Spore, Call of Duty 4, and Need for Speed Prostreet. As they state in their official site, “Gaikai states takes a radical new approach – we host the games, we run them, we worry about hardware and software updates, and we stream them to you. Full resolution, full speed, stereo sound, low lag, no compromise. The only thing you need is a browser and an internet connection”. Check out the demo video and beta highlights after the jump.

Gaikai Technology Demo

Beta Highlights

• No installing anything. With latest Firefox and Flash installed, it can push to your browser any MMO’s and PC games in the market
• This is a low-spec server with a very custom configuration, fully video streamed
• Data travel distance is around 800 miles (round trip) on this demo as that’s where the server is
• Just using  home cable connection and never used fiber connections for the demos, also works with Wifi
• The video compression codecs adjust in real time  based on the hardware and bandwidth you have (even notebooks with no 3D card)
• No OS exclusivity, from Linux to Windows and even MAC servers too.
• Office applications and desktop publishing softwares such as Adobe Photoshop CS4 will be available
• They call this Streaming Worlds, taking the full richness of modern computer games to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Source: http://www.dperry.com/

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The inventor of the board game Scrabble “Alfred Mosher Butts” have never envisioned that in next 70 years, his baby would be a sensational game in Facebook culture. Just a few months ago, the Electronic unveiled its Facebook connect where it allows you to challange your friends or families whether you are at home or in flight to Hongkong.

“Fire up the Scrabble app on your iPhone, and you’ll be prompted to log in to Facebook. You’ll be able to track all of your Scrabble stats, as well as gather information on your friends. An icon will reveal whether opponents are playing on an iPhone or a browser. You’ll also be able to chat with your opponent, in case you’d like to gloat or find out where they are.” – wired.com

While googling more topic of this app, one result got my eyes nailed on it,  “Facebook Scrabble Cheat”. I got oddly overwhelmed how popular these scrabble word finders among the desperate souls to win over their opponents. I also found this nutcase’s article confessing his obsession with Scrabble Cheats Online:

At the start of game two, I could still feel the love. IMPARTED for a bingo — all seven tiles, baby! And then I was sly enough to forgo QUOIT for 28 points (he’d know I was with you) in favor of QUIT for 26. Clever me!

I thought I could keep it casual. Scrabble with benefits, you know? But it’s not working out that way. I need you all the time — I’m afraid to play without you! And let’s be honest, you do get around. Your creator tells me that traffic to you has spiked in the past few months. He figures Scrabulous is responsible. It dawned on me that to you I was just another word nerd looking for an edge. That made me feel a little dirty.

You can read more of this scrabble cheat addict sentiments at: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/16-01/ps_scrabulous

Note: The above image header is a French Scrabble Ad from the National Scrabble Tournament courtesy of http://dontcallmejones.wordpress.com/

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Bitefight might sound like a Mike Tyson boxing game but in reality a latest vampire-werewolf themed online mmorpg game. You can read on the review after the jump!

The BightFight review credits goes to Nick Mead.

I only know about one type of werewolf: the half-human one like Michael J Fox played in Teen Wolf that can play basketball.

Bitefight’s creatures are quite different, with some horrendously vicious werewolves that hunt only one thing – vampires. And no, these are not the vampires such as The Count in Sesame Street – they’re equally nasty and vicious ones like in The Lost Boys. The tagline of Bitefight is “The struggle between Vampires and Werewolves has rampaged for centuries. It’s your destiny to decide this battle!” and that just about sums it up.

It’s at least an original premise but the game itself fails to deliver on many counts. The game involves roam across the city looking for new victims, beating them up and then building yourself an impregnable empire. Through this, you earn money which you can also use to buy safehouses and Manhunts and fighting other players reward you with money. The more experience you have, the more levels you climb. The problem is, the game is slow paced and wandering around finding people to savage takes ages whether you’re vampire or werewolf.

Bitefight Photo Gallery

Experience how to be bitten  and infect other humans by visiting:
http://s13.bitefight.org/bite/c.php?uid=48295

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