Never Ending Generosity

I don't remember exactly how I got involved in this very, very addicting game called Blogshares. But it has been fun. Maybe it was started from a posting in id-gmail. I would have been playing "normally" if Enda haven't give me some stocks to play with. But then another, shocking event happened. I read Laila's page stating that she will give five billion Blogshares dollars to every newbies. Whaaat? I didn't believe it initially. But I said to myself that I have nothing to loose. So I put a sell order on one of my cheapest stock I have, set its price to 5M B$, send a PM to Laila regarding that, and wait, and wait, very nervously.

Then the most wanted answer came, and I got a first taste of Blogshares $ million. A huge jump from initial B$ 500 every new player got. But what to do with this much of "money"? This stage is very shaky. I bought ideas, created artefacts, and blindly trying to follow rich players' way. Of course without much success in gaining thousandfolds valuation in the shortest time.

So, treasure hunt continues. Then I know that chips can be sold around 25 million B$ each. Chip hunting period started. Again, Laila help me much when she created her personal mission to collect 700.000 chips. She is willing to buy chips at above market rate: 35 million B$ each. But unfortunately, I use an ISP which utilize transparent HTTP proxy which use round robin. This invalidates some of my industry moderations which if was succeed will reward me more chips per item I moderated than voting (which in turn will be moderated).

More fun is guaranteed when you have friends to play along with. But then, I'm in the middle of an internal battle: to continue playing as a normal member, with transaction limitations; or became premium member, which will allow unlimited transactions daily. To be a premium member, we, Indonesians, can't do easily because we can't use PayPal. Alternatively we can trade 18.000 chips for premium membership. But collecting 18.000 chips takes time. So when Laila created a mission which will give 10 winners free upgrades to premium membership, I got another urge to try premium.

Well, this part will contain my 'review' to Laila's blog, if you can call this a review. It seems that Laila got several jumps, which might make her rather unprepared of Blogshares antiques (like PRDs and HTOs, especially on top blogs). Or is it others were rather unprepared of Laila's increasing valuation?

But what impressed me most is Laila's never ending generosity. She had given back much more than she received initially. Remember 35 million B$/chip? 5 billion for 1 share? Those make newbies entry much more easier to bridge a huge disparity (B$ 500 newbie vs 1 quadrillion richest player). She was not stopped at that, but also spread her "wealth" to real world through Save The Children. Very good examples. A game can be much more than just having fun.

Thanks Laila.