Individual and Community

September 20 2009
Epilogue:
After accidentally locking myself out of Evony for 72 hours due to a faulty password reminder form, I returned to find my 2.5 months of diligent clicking totally for naught. Two of my cities – both with level 10 walls and 13,000 archer towers – had been completely destroyed by a rival alliance so that they no longer existed at all. The third had been reduced to 0 population and 100% discontent. I teleported this city to a state closer to my alliance, and gave the account to an alliance member, and bade farewell to Evony for Good.

Town View of an Evony City

update Sept 13 2009

I was initially hesitant of this game and read several controversies about it, which I blogged about here . Evony is a resource management game where you develop your city and grow it through building new buildings, resources fields, and population, all while defending yourself against others in the world who may do you harm.

I started out skeptical and refusing to pay any real $ for playing the game. But after a couple of weeks of dedicated building, my attitude changed as I grew invested in my cities. I continued to play and grow my town, eventually to build a second city, and now a third. To gain the third city, I bought the $30 ‘free package’ to get medals for the next rank that allows you to control more cities. You gain win medals by attacking nearby valleys and cities, but the ‘drop rate’ for these is very low in my game and I have only gotten a few medals from victorious combat.

I am lord named anomie on my server.

There is a fine balance between maintaining defenses while continuing to invest in your city’s growth. This varies according to where you find yourself in the world – whether in a hostile environment or in a relatively quiet environment where you can peacefully grow. You get 7 days of ‘beginner’s protection’ where you can build your city in peace without worrying about being attacked.

The game has a great market dynamic where you can sell resources you manufacture or buy resources from other players. It has been interesting to watch as the prices have slowly risen as more players have come to my server and the demand has increased .

The Alliance play is engaging and have met some interesting people through my alliance. I have recently learned how to raid NPC ‘barbarian’ cities for resources, so am just building resources right now, with no real fighting of other players.

Am curious what the end game of this thing is. I am even more sold on the Flex / Flash based interface as a way to deliver games.

In order to make the game completely portable for me, I use Google Docs spreadsheet to keep my game notes, so my gaming experience with Evony is completely “in the clouds”, and am able to play anywhere at anytime.

Evony

On the POSITIVE side:

• The game has a Great user interface.
• Responsive support team with active forums.
• Fun as hell resource management game.
• I have survived off of the 7 day beginner protection.
• Challenges our concept of Intellectual Property. These guys have created an awesome game. yes the concepts are borrowed from other games, but they are first to build THIS game.
• Diplomacy and alliances play important role in this game.
• The owners are constantly refining the game to improve balance and playability. They are really trying.
• Sex sells. The ads worked for me, got me to try the game. The game itself has nothing to do with sex. Can’t fault someone for using tried and true marketing approach.
• This has the making of a great 4x browser-based game.

City View of an Evony City