The browser game phenomenon has been around for a long time now, leeching hours away from players to the detriment of managers everywhere who struggle to keep employees on track when there are so many distractions on the world-wide web. What is it that makes browser games so addictive and, for the most part, successful?
Take for example one of the most recent such titles, Evony.
Evony is a browser based title like any other in the genre. The game requires you to become a powerful Lord, with an overarching quest of saving some princess, or something. The game itself is so disjointed from the primary quest that it is somewhat of a grail, but no matter, browser games, unlike normal games rarely have a clear beginning and an end. The end inevitably comes when your wife leaves you and your pets are starving because the game has you in its icy grasp. Why is this such a unique phenomena for browser games like Evony?
Well, as the game pans out in a massively multiplayer online environment, you are competing with thousands of players all around the world. You’re required to construct buildings in your various cities, which have certain build times. The crux of a MMO browser game is that the game carries on while you are logged out, so the idea is to begin construction on buildings, then log out and return later to queue up more buildings and make sure your city isn’t in any immediate danger.
This plays well to the main advantage and attraction of browser games, they are playable on almost all hardware, almost anywhere with a browser and an internet connection. It also makes them uniquely placed to be able to fritter away your work hours. It becomes blatantly obvious that the difference between a great Evony player, and an average Evony player will be the number of times they login throughout the day to check on their production. This is the first inherent problem with games such as these, and in my opinion the biggest barrier to the casual market. The majority of people simply cannot sacrifice the amount of time required in MMO online games. You certainly can’t save your game and return later to find things as they were. Fortunately starting out is made easy in Evony as the game provides you with seven days of beginners protection, which is just enough time to find your feet and join an alliance for protection.
The initial phase of building in Evony is highly entertaining and incredibly addictive, as the game romances you with its pretty visuals and the subtleties of game progression. There is no doubt that the creators have done a fantastic job at making a pretty game, which certainly sets it above the largely text based browser games of the past. The problem being though that the endeavour on which you are embarking does not become clear until you have already sunk several weeks of your time into the title. Later on in the game, build cycles take several days, and it becomes such a balancing act in having the right amount of food production for your troops. This is when the close relationship begins to falter for most players. In the time I have been playing, I have seen an enormous number of players quit, but then there are some that are so advanced and so successful that they are still investing the majority of their day, perhaps during their work hours.
It seems a little bit like poker, as once you’ve made a significantly high investment into the round, you can’t fight the desire to see the round out. Evony plays a similar game, giving the impression that if you throw in the towel, you’ll have wasted all those weeks. So one fights on, toward some unknown end, with intangible benefits.
Browser games are typically free to partake in. This sounds great, but micro-transactions are taking up a large part of this world now. Developers have seen this as an untapped resource, and in Evony you can invest real money for virtual returns. Effectively you can buy yourself a stronger playing position.
Fortunately this is subtle enough to not grossly disadvantage players who do not want to make the investment (myself included). But it does create a three-tier class system – those who pay, those who invest considerable hours, and those who are only casual players. This style of continuous play won’t suit casual gamers, or people who want a quick thrill. It requires hours of time, and the pay-off is somewhat subtle. There’s no grand ending, or story driven action to tell you you are doing a good job.
Evony, due to its quaint graphical interface, gives you enough visual input to create your own story, and your own idea of what is going on. The ability for players to form alliances with one another creates mini-empires where players look out for one another, and take on other alliances. The unity and communication required turns Evony partially into a diplomacy and military simulator. You’ll participate in coordinated attacks to whittle your enemies down, and breaching their walls with catapults and battering rams.
As time goes by though, I can’t help but wonder if the effort invested into Evony might not have been better spent finishing up some other game, such as Grand Theft Auto 4, or something with a clear ending. The longer you carry on, the harder it becomes to justify leaving as the investment continues to climb. Without a conceivable end however, how long can this go on for?
I am not all together unhappy about this addiction, however MMO browser games need to find a niche where they can accommodate all players. Where winning doesn’t involve a pure time investment, where the crowning glory isn’t being able to say you, and you alone invested the last three months of your life to Evony, at a rate of sixteen hours a day. Until casual gamers can join, without being rolled by powerful players immediately, a true mass appeal for browser based games is not going to occur. The fact that they are free, and readily available plays in their favour, but MMO browser games still have a long way to go.
Granted, Evony has done an amazing job at making the game look and feel appealing to all gamers, however once a player scratches the surface and sees the investment-heavy time-killing game mechanics, many are likely to be put off.
Recommendation
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Comments
It looks like Evony is just a scam to take money off people. Chinese gold farmers go first party. I have collated what is happening here: http://www.bruceongames.com
They need to pay for his server and staff. That is business marketing.
Time will prove everything.
Your blog look nice. I collected it.. THank you
Is Evony malware? I have just written this up: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/16/is-evony-malware/
nice review, currently i play it ^_^
This game is pretty fun. Been playing a few weeks now (54000 prestige) and only play twice a day.. about 20-30 min in the morning and 20-30 before bed. I get some stuff building and log out. It doesn not take hours and hours a day to play. I don’t spend money either. It’s a fun game and best of all it’s free. One con: don’t leave your browser open all day to this game or it will eat all your cpu resources.
I quite enjoy it too!!! o_O
There is a basic flaw built into this game. I got sucked in and played for several weeks. I spent a lot of time and built big strong cities. I was in a medium sized alliance with several smaller players, some of them pretty young kids.We all got along and developed a sense of community with the larger players helping the smaller ones. In order to protect our smaller people, we strictly left other players alone and avoided conflict, but we were still savagely attacked without provocation by a large alliance of huge players. I have no problem with those who want to play war, but there should be a permanent FREE way to opt out of that if you just like the building part of the game. There’s a truce agreement that can only be bought and it only lasts for 12 hours. If there were a way for the aggressors to only go after each other, I would give this game a good rating, but in the end, I found it a very unpleasant experience. One player can ruin the game for many.
Evony is not a just a ordinary game at all. I went from play World of War craft to playing Evony and yes world of war craft is better but Evony has its peeks and a downfall just like world of warcraft does. Evony is for the person that likes being the strong and powerful and also making friends. Who needs dungeons and flying rides when you have archers and catapults that can destroy a city in a heartbeat. Although there are a lot of kids that are in there teens that play this game, most of them are nice and are willing to help out with the cause at mind.
The publishers do a good job at giving you all the tools that you need to succeed in this game and then when they know the server is going to be down they are good about compensating you for the time that was lost which makes it nice. The only drawback about the resources that are provided is that most of the areas are getting over crowded and the resources are getting a little scarce in some areas with the NPC’s and other players. Then if you need even more help there is Evony wiki as well. There you can find answers to most of all your questions and if you don’t find it there then you can ask and you will get an answer within 48 hours which is really good timing.
Something that is very important that I have found out about the game is that in order to succeed you have to make friends no matter how independent you are your no match for a 200k prestige player when you first start. So if you make friends with everyone that you can then when someone wants to be that bully then you can call up your friends and eliminate your problem. To get started I would recommend following the quests and do everything you can to get as many resources as possible cause the resources will save you or break you in the end. When you start to build your armies up you will want to focus on your archers and your warriors. Get as many of them as you can and then go to swordsmen because they will defeat your archers and then from there go to pike man cause they will defeat the horseman which a lot of players have. Then go to your siege weapons like the catapult, battering ram, because they will take out the archer towers when you attack a city.
Over all this game is really fun and just like any other game you will get what you put into it. This game is for all ages and I believe it will be around for a long time to come. That is if people keep on having fun and enjoying what these fantastic developers have done for us. If it weren’t for them then we wouldn’t be lords of evony.
We have to admit Evony got an impressive success in a very short period!
Evony is not a just a ordinary game at all. I went from play World of War craft to playing Evony and yes world of war craft is better but Evony has its peeks and a downfall just like world of warcraft does. Evony is for the person that likes being the strong and powerful and also making friends. Who needs dungeons and flying rides when you have archers and catapults that can destroy a city in a heartbeat. Although there are a lot of kids that are in there teens that play this game, most of them are nice and are willing to help out with the cause at mind.
The publishers do a good job at giving you all the tools that you need to succeed in this game and then when they know the server is going to be down they are good about compensating you for the time that was lost which makes it nice. The only drawback about the resources that are provided is that most of the areas are getting over crowded and the resources are getting a little scarce in some areas with the NPC’s and other players. Then if you need even more help there is Evony wiki as well. There you can find answers to most of all your questions and if you don’t find it there then you can ask and you will get an answer within 48 hours which is really good timing.
Something that is very important that I have found out about the game is that in order to succeed you have to make friends no matter how independent you are your no match for a 200k prestige player when you first start. So if you make friends with everyone that you can then when someone wants to be that bully then you can call up your friends and eliminate your problem. To get started I would recommend following the quests and do everything you can to get as many resources as possible cause the resources will save you or break you in the end. When you start to build your armies up you will want to focus on your archers and your warriors. Get as many of them as you can and then go to swordsmen because they will defeat your archers and then from there go to pike man cause they will defeat the horseman which a lot of players have. Then go to your siege weapons like the catapult, battering ram, because they will take out the archer towers when you attack a city.
Over all this game is really fun and just like any other game you will get what you put into it. This game is for all ages and I believe it will be around for a long time to come. That is if people keep on having fun and enjoying what these fantastic developers have done for us. If it weren’t for them then we wouldn’t be lords of evony.
written by Bloodcoco
server 33
carinthia
guild – assylum
hi there – evony is a wicked game so come along and join evony dont miss out the fun . build a army , build a city . choose a alliance find your friends and find your enemys . shanerocks
server 15
In the last two days evony arbitrarily and without notice merged a number of servers into one effectively changing the world and conditions and resoruces and alliances and valleys a of gameplayers worlds from one day to the next and now have at leat 5 worlds of users throwwn in the space of one. when i asked about why i could not log onto my server
I was advised and i quote:
”
hi,
thanks for your letter. w6-11 have been merged into wn2. we have sent system mail to everyone on these servers. you should have checked it carefully.
”
I received no mail. i have been stripped of my alliance(i hosted roundtbl) and thown in a totally overcrowded world- i see they gave me a free transport advanced transport for each city but that is useless in this world .I have lost 50 (all i had ) level 10 valleys i spent weeks in conquering and building up and their resorces and no place to reconquer them either.. i AM IN A WORLD WHERE THERE ARE NOt near as many RESOURCES JUST city after city next to each other. On server 8 i had space to grow was building and enjoyng it ….this will turn into a bloodbath as soon as the truce is off which i do not even know how long. this is incredibly unfair and arbitrary with or without notice ..I will be posting this messsage in every forum i can find. evony does not protect the honest gamer …they f..* them 
:mad::mad::mad::mad:
Calm Down! You are in the vitural game world, not in real world of law and order.
Bruce just keeps digging his hole deeper! LOL
I’ve played Evony since it was Civony. The game has changed since it’s “free forever” beginnings. Slight changes to game play and “medals” required to advance have made it all but impossible to be competative unless you spend money to aquire such advances. Scam? Yes. It’s just a slowly tightening noose that kills your wallet instead of a quick snap of the neck.
As an initial beta testor, medals (for advancement) were relatively easy to come by, making a nice progression to the game as you grew and became more powerful. Still, for true strength, you had to buy ever rarer items. Now, advancing your rank is a complete chore, simply a method of squeezing more dollars from you. Disagree with my opinion? Irrelevant, I played longer than most and have witnessed the slight changes to increase the revenue. If you want to throw away cash, play this and do well. If you want a simple game, a distraction? This isn’t the way…….it’s a chore playing without the cash. Better just write a check and send to China…….
What can I say about a game that claimed it was going to be different than other about racism,sexism,language and so forth. On server 40 there are 2 alliances (Nigger and Niggers) which have been reported by many and nothing has been done by Evony. Also another alliance that states in it recuiting page that its an alliance for when who want to have sex with minors. Once again reported and still there. This game is worst than World of Warcraft for bad behavior. Player by the name of jackmeoff,cuntface and any racist, foul mouthed name you can think of players are using. Some players are insane spending a lot of money just to have a strong alliance come and wipe them out and lose everything. If you going to pay money go play other games. This game becomes very boring after awhile, takes forever to built building and so forth. If you like looking at 4 walls while waiting for upgrades play this game.
The reason Evony Admin. do not address any of the issues discussed it that they simply don’t care. These they WILL NOT be addressed. What will be accepted though is your credit card number. “Free Forever” is a thinly veilded marketing ploy. It’s all about the money. If you want to excel, break out the credit card. If you want social issues addressed then go elsewhere. They WILL NOT be addressed by EVONY.
This is a horrible game, the graphics and game mechanics look like something straight from an old (circa 1980`s) nintendo NES game. The most exciting part of this game is watching people complain about all the racist and vulgar in game names and alliance names, not to mention the people who try to extort nude pictures of other players in exchange for not attacking them.This game is an epic fail.
This game is a big waste of time. Really. As someone stated before it took 1 bully to wipe you out. 2 weeks into the game, I get hit by a 127k bully with 42k archers. And I’ve kept at a fast pace in building defenses. 2weeks – 5k warries, 1k archer, 2k archer towers. Please don’t waste any more effort in this game. Free until you get attacked and u’ll end up paying all those white flag. Not to mention it doesn’t even allow you to start over. DON’T EVEN BOTHER PLAYING THIS GAME.
I am a student studying computer games design at uni and decided to investigate Evony.com.
Just to see what some of these games are like etc. etc.
The game is actually kind of cool (found myself addicted and even spent a little money on it).
But I started to notice HUGE bandwidth use by the site as I played.
I am not the only one either, there are comments on the evony forums about this.
This is odd because all of the client info, the animations etc. are all downloaded in one big download at the start.
There is no streaming media so I began to wonder what was going on.
To cut a long story short I decided to break the law and reverse engineer Evony’s client.
Not to cheat. Not to rip them off or even to use even a scrap of the code.
But just to poke about a bit and find out what was going on, maybe even offer them some ways to improve things.
Aside from the fact that the whole thing is very poorly constructed (it is really very beginner coder level stuff. Reminds me of a lot of
what the first year students produce for assignments) it contained some very interesting information.
Included with the client are 2 peices of tracking software that monitor your web use and which applications you have open while the client is running.
These do not install independently on the machine though due to the limitations of flash and do not actually damage anything.
But they harvest massive volumes of information. My firewall was blocking a lot of outgoing transmissions and it turns out that these
were the data trying to be sent out. So they know nothing about me. lol.
However there is a LOT of data coming IN over the ports the client uses. In otherwords it is downloading something into my cache for use later.
I have bandiwdth restriction which slows these types of tricks down and I completely clear my cache every couple of hours if I am heavily using the net.
I also noticed that all the varanbles etc. are named Civony still and that there are multiple references to UMGE.
Even a couple of folders are simply called UMGE, one of these folders contains one of the spyware programs.
So I can only guess at where the data would end up if I didnt have a good firewall.
There are also commented out sections in the code which contain references to UMGE and Lam himself, though low on details.
Thank you for reading this.
Lee
awesome game. spent 4 months on it. extremely addictive. some chumps say it’s a malware or money eating site are all lairs & lame…. No spent a cent yet. Enjoying the benefits. All it takes is thinking & strategy to keep ur self alive.
Evony is a great game for all players. You can conquer the land around you or over take all your enemies. Need some help? Join an alliance and start a horde of terror in the land around you. Take more cities as you rise above the ranks. Evony has many options too. Tired of waiting? Use your speed ups to finish the job. Upgrade your attacks and build a massive army. This game is great I’m on almost everyday. Something you need that you cant quiet get? Purchase coins and get whatever you need. don’t want to pay? Hope you get lucky on your FREE daily amulet. People is this game are always ready to help. But be warned. Some people are looking for easy targets and you may be next! Continue upgrading your city and conquering valleys and you will become very successful. Evony is awesome. don’t know if its right for you? Try it out or do training. In this game you are free to do whatever you want. One of the best parts is that there are NO CHEATS AT ALL!!!! The only way to play is fair. ALSO, THERE IS NO PORN EITHER FOR YOU CREEPS OUT THERE! The evony staff is constantly making the game better for everyone! Earn you medals and rank up above your friends. Complete over 200 quests for added bonuses. Build a barracks and begin to build the ultimate army. There are tons of players that also will agree with me. Evony is GREAT! There are players from all over the world. And now with ievony you can earn credits just for inviting your friends to play. Evony is growing to be one of the greatest games out there. Put enough time into it and you will be with the best. Earn prestige for attacking enemies and allow you cities to grow to full capacity! And don’t forget its free to play. Just looking for some body to talk to? Log on to millions of players more than willing to talk or even help you out. Take over more cities for added fun and more to do. Meet new people and add friends. In a conclusion this is a great game. With tons of strategic options. I would give this game a overall five star rating. Please try it out. I have been playing for several weeks now and love it. I believe you will enjoy it. Have fun playing.
By: roylNatE-server 036
Evony is good. I have found a game that is highly suitable for smart guys too.http://www.napwar.com/index.so?act=invite&id=293762
This is NOT a free game. if you plan on going into this as though it is a free game, you’re just another sucker taking a hook. They tout the game as free, but many players pay real world cash to basically over power the free players right off the bat. If your looking for a good “Free Game”, don’t spend your time here.
And if you have a gambling problem, don’t spend your time here. It’s got some similar hooks to gambling in ways to get you to buy “Coin’s” so that you can get cooler get powerful faster. Let me put it this way, to be competative, after a month of playing, expect to spend roughly $200.00. That is if you start on a brand new server.
Evony is the hottest browser game out there and its FREE!!! you meet lots of good players on this game.
it has had over 15 mill players and COMMING SOON is Evony Age II is soon to hit your browser. Come and Try this game your wont be sorry.
Evony is the hottest game out there. alot of people claim that you have to spend money to play but its a crike. There are some players that do play with cash but they dont have much of a advantage over the non payment players the only diffrence is they can buy speedups and build a little faster but as long as you understand the concept of the game you dontt have to worry about that prestige is just a number . so i would totaly suggest that you PLAY EVONY!!!!! at http://WWW.EVONY.COM come to server 129 and play you never know you might just have to face me or join my alliance lol have a good day and try evony
I got the new version Evony 3.08. My older version was 2.16.
The new version has all references to Eric Lam and UMGE removed.
Neither the comments in the hex code nor the decompiled Actionscript have anything that refers to them.
Also the scripts that enumerated the active programs and sent and retrieved data with the remote servers is gone,
except for the actual game network link to the Evony.com game servers.
Even the code is a bit neater and more efficient.
At least the heavy scrutiny on them is having some pluses. lol.
