Ms. Merchant points out another factor: creating shared value with these unployees.

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She replaces Dusk of Oolacile as your spell merchant in the expanded content, and points you on your way to the Royal Wood.

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Card issuers now "have the ability to be on a merchant's site and to allow the use of points on the merchants site, " says Josh Berwitz, vice president of business development at American Express.

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The National Retail Federation points out that under terms of the settlement, a merchant who adds a surcharge to purchases on a Visa or MasterCard would have to do the same with American Express cards.

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The proposed settlement, which hasn't been finalized, would allow merchants to offer discounts, rebates or other incentives to get customers to use cards with lower merchant fees, such as "plain-vanilla" cards with no rewards or points programs.

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These loans, which will be at four percentage points less than current market interest rates, represent a huge subsidy to the merchant banks.

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Though reluctant to mention Groupon and LevelUp in the same sentence, Priebatsch points out that the daily-deals company often makes more off of a merchant in one day than credit card companies make in a year.

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Most notable among them is the inclusion of Guilds -- a range of building types used to train units in sciences such as War (accumulate experience points for battle), the Church (construct priests and monks with special powers), the Merchant's Guild (needed for trading with others) and Magetowers, (used to create wizards and learn new spells).

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