Quick update on Clash of Clans, which I’m still really enjoying.
Clan Wars were recently added, and so far they have been great. They take the core gameplay of attacking another player’s village with your troops, and add more weight to the result by tying it into a clan war score. This makes every attack feel more important, and really makes you think about not just how to get the most resources, but how you can hopefully level the entire village in the time limit of the attack.
You also only get two attacks per war, so again this really makes you stop and consider your attack, and if you fail or don’t score as highly as you expected, it kinda stings. Especially because everyone in the clan can see how each attack went, and even view a replay of each battle. In top-ranked clans I’m sure this is used as a way to remove poorly performing members, and honestly it’s a pretty fair approach.
What still surprises me about the game is how little it pushes you to spend money. No ‘sale’ spam. No in-game pop-ups. You do see the gem (paid currency) cost to speed everything up, but since you get a decent amount of gems just from playing, even that is IMO more a convenience in terms of the UI than the usual F2P in-your-face taunting. And perhaps most importantly, speeding stuff up isn’t that important or truly beneficial in the long run, so again you really don’t feel force.
And yet the game is making a ton of money, which honestly I’m happy about. The more F2P titles that succeed using this model (like LoL), and the more titles that fail using the normal, obnoxious F2P model (most MMOs), the better.
#ClashofClans
Hardcore Casual 
I have inherited leadership of a CoC clan almost by accident – I got promoted to elder for being one of the few to donate units instead of just leeching, and then got randomly picked as a successor by the previous leader when he quit. We’ve lost all of our clan wars to date because it’s quite clear that much of the roster is inactive – as in, out of a clan of 45 members maybe 5 of us will make attacks in the 24 hour battle window. I’m trying to decide whether I can summon the energy to purge the leeches and inactives (and then keep up an active regime) or just pass the mantle on and go join a more active outfit.
On the plus side, even the fractional share of loot you get for losing is worth having if you attack strong targets.
I’m in a rather active clan that purges people who don’t attack, attack and consistently get zero stars, or have a poor base and give up 3 stars all the time. It really is a pretty brilliant system in terms of being able to accurately and fairly judge performance.
Clan is Sinister Hunter.