Welcome to the very first edition of ‘Back in the days’! In this weekly article I will reminisce about some removed and forgotten features. Also I am going to look back to some events from the past. This week a feature that doesn’t have a long history, unlike some others, but was being used a lot; establishments.
Basically, establishments were maps of each state, which were divided by several square lands. These lands could be bought by players for a price around $1,000,000. As soon as someone had purchased a piece of land, the value started to increase. These lands could be worth hundreds of millions rather quick, making them good investments. After some time this was changed, making these establishments a waste of money. Because the price was a bit high, hardly any lands were owned during the last round.
Now, I can hear you think; “So I own some ground, now what?” Well, lands could be upgraded in two different ways. The first option was to build a garage to store your cars in. After 2 days of building, the $500,000 you had invested allows you to store up to 100 cars. By making your garage public, you could charge other players for using the empty parking lots, however this was hardly ever being used.
The second way to upgrade your land, which costs $1,000,000, was to build a safe house. After 5 days it allowed you to hide in your safe house. While doing so it was supposed to be harder for shooters to both search and kill you. The price that had to be paid for the usage depended on the user’s rank.
On May 23rd 2009 this feature was used in a whole different way. Event Horizon members packed their bags, and travelled to the state of Pennsylvania, starting to pick up several lands. Because pieces of land, owned by crewmembers, were shown by the crew color, more and more gold was visible on the map. In no time two letters were shining in gold: “EH”. Event Horizon became the first crew to have its initials on the establishments page. At this time, a player was only allowed to have one establishment at a time, which was changed later on.
With this memory I would like to end this week’s edition of ‘back in the days’. If any of you readers have different memories of this feature please post your pictures or memories below. Also do request other outdated features for next week’s edition of 'back in the days'!
