I would like to first start out by saying, Eco is an incredible idea for a game with great developers who actually care about it. Being that it is such a great game, I ended up buying the Dev bundle from their website, well worth it to see this game succeed. However, the players that play it or run servers tend to be toxic. During my recent excursion into the world of Eco, I played on two official servers and four unofficial servers.

If you are new to the game and want to learn from the best players possible, either join the Eco official discord and ask questions or play on an official server. From my experience, there are incredibly nice players looking to help others on the official servers, while on unofficial servers, the admin will ban you for sneezing.

Unofficial servers tend to die in this manner just a few days into the cycle and therefore are a massive waste of time to the new players of the game. In the 4 unofficial servers I played, 2 of them died before day 5 and I got banned from the other 2. The reason for the ban direct from the server owner: “Found to be abusing game mechanics, acquiring deeds/areas that you would not have access to. While they likely were traded by other players/friends, it’s is providing unfair advantage over others.” – I was playing with a small group (3) of friends, all new to the game. To avoid overlapping land claims in the game, since I was the one whom played the game before, I used their claims. At no point was there an abuse in game mechanics but simply put, I was showing my friends how to play and within 30 minutes, I, as well as my friends were banned. Admins also tend to use the admin commands more often then not. As I was playing late one night, the admin used the teleport command to return to his base and said “He was getting off for the night so he wanted to be in his base.” That was the first of many teleports I had seen him conduct. He ended up just giving himself a bunch of skillpoints to progress the game for himself.

Griefers: I really do not care if someone griefs a server by dumping tailings somewhere. There are in game mechanics to prevent that, but for some reason, no one wants to use them to prevent or deter others from doing so. If you don’t like someone dumping tailings, put a law up to prevent it in the future. This game is meant to be an in-depth sim, but no one wants the Eco-Terrorist to play. I find it more fun to have an additional threat to the world other than the meteor that takes 30 days to arrive. Having the added threat could increase or speed along the production of the needed resources for the community.

Toxic: I attempted to host my own server under the premise “Do want you want, if the community does not like something you are doing, then make a law.” I had it up for a bit before I took it down due to multiple players coming from other servers to talk trash about it. Even a couple alt accounts from the guy that banned me above. I try to play the game to have fun and do not feel the need to be attacked for doing so. Turns out there are many “Server Wars” in Eco for some reason.

Overall amazing game, great concept and great dev team. 10/10 if you like Minecraft with a government. Just don’t play unofficial servers if you are new. Stick to official to learn, and then branch off.

Amazing game.

The pacing in this game is superb. You never feel overwhelmed with objectives and advancements are spaced out over the whole year. I would say this game is better than the first one 'Portia' but I cannot exactly pinpoint why.

Overall I would recommend this game!