I completely agree. I was going to write a formal, full review summarizing all the issue I see with TW today, but I don't think that I will now.
TW's dying for a number of reasons, including just becoming so automated that it's not interesting. You can use Construction Manager, leave for a day, come back, check, is construction and troop manager still running? Yes? Then don't worry about it. No? Reset it so that it is.
Another huge factor is the P2W aspect. If you want to keep up with those that are in the lead, you either spend money on the game, or sacrifice another worlds performance to give resources to get PP, because the ones on top aren't there neccessarily out of skill, although most of the time they probably are skilled, because I doubt that many new people are coming into this game at this point, but because they've spent PP on the world.
Another issue is church worlds. They are boring, and, if combined with pali weapons, it becomes increasingly hard to justify attacking into someone.
The final big issue I see is pali weapon balance. Specifically bonfire.
86 was the example I can use for this. It had PP, 4800 at level 30 camps, which gave you almost 6k at level 30 with the +30% to all, was a church world, and had pali weapons. This led to the world being incredibly stupid early, wars being drawn out, morale-killing off pushes that you wanted to do. It just wasn't fun. As someone who'd been around since world 9 I was appalled at what I'd come back too.
Ummm I think AM is a great addition to TW and it should've been implemented 7 or so years ago. I think a lot of people had quit TW due to it being very time consuming. Its quite time consuming now, but back before AM, it was unbearable. Its just an old game really, things live and they die. Still the fact that .net has been around for nearly 10 years now is quite a remarkable achievement.
I'm glad someone else realizes that as well. I wasn't around too much before AM was added. (I have played off and on for many years, but never got very far until now.) However, after talking with friends who have played on the older worlds before AM, they have all said the same thing, the game was far too time consuming before things like AM and LA were added. AM might be somewhat P2W because it is very difficult for a non-premium, non-AM using player (a F2P player) to compete at the top ranks when compared to a player that pays to play, but it's impractical to think that every player has 16 hours each day to devote to micro-managing villages. As such, if anything, AM has made it possible for people who cannot devote 100% of their time to the game to compete with other players on a level playing field, and I think that is a good thing.
To address Xxhowisuxx's other comments, nobody says you have to play on every world, and if you're really devoting your time towards doing your best, then I would argue that you shouldn't be competing on every world. As such, what's the big deal if you join a world just to farm and sell resources for PP? It's saving you money by allowing you to purchase premium features on the world(s) that you are really focussed on winning in. And if you do not like the settings of a world, then either do not join that world, or join it only to sell resources. People have differences of opinion when it comes to settings, and Inno usually opens up a forum thread for users to voice their opinions and discuss the settings for new worlds. So if you don't like certain settings, then voice that concern on a discussion thread.
As for Paladin weapons, that is something that has been discussed frequently. I personally have no problem with Paladin weapons, but I will agree that I am now a fan of bonfire. However, when I encounter a player using bonfire to defend their village, if the player has more than one village, I plan an operation to land nobles on all of their villages at the same time (they can only defend one village at a time with bonfire), or if they only have one village, I just skip over them and come back to them when they have more than one village. This is the most common approach I see people take when it comes to bonfire, and it makes sense to take this approach. However, again, if you are so against it and it ruins your gameplay, then just join a world with the Paladin disabled.
TL;DR: the game has lasted longer than most people have expected. Every game has people saying the game is dying when really it is not. There may be aspects of the game that you do not like, but other people do like them. If you are strongly opposed to an aspect of the game, join a world with different settings that you prefer more. The game is not P2W because anyone can get the premium features for free. And overall, the premium features have enriched the game and made it playable for people who do not have as much time, thus very strongly improving the game's quality, in my opinion.
