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''Utopia'' is a massive mutiplayer online role playing game or MMORPG. Gameplay is divided into periods called "Ages", with each Age lasting between three to four months. At the end of an Age, all accounts are reset to their initial states to give players a fresh start, any new balance and gameplay changes are put into effect, and the competition begins again. At the time of writing (April 27h) the game has just entered its 35th age, which is called the Age of Kings. Until recently there were three game servers available: "World of Legends," where new players are encouraged to start, "Battlefields," where the game's most competitive players can be found, and "Genesis," an experimental server where possible play changes are tested. As of Age 30, the Battlefields and the World of Legends servers have been merged, uniting both servers under the name of World of Legends. ''Utopia'' is a highly successful game, having won the People's Voice Webby Award for Gaming Site of the Year twice. According to the official site, the World of Legends server alone has over 50,000 active accounts. {Link without Title} ''Utopia'' is free to play; the game is supported by revenue from banner and pop-up advertising. Players can either pay a small fee for each Age or a one-time fee permanently for some ''minor'' in-game bonuses and removal of all advertising in the game. HISTORY ''Utopia'' came online in online multiplayer game. ''Utopia's'' earliest rounds are often spoken of as a golden, chaotic age by the game's most experienced players. Because kingdoms were broken up after each of the betas, players initially assumed they would also be broken up, after each round, once the game officially went online. When that didn't happen, many players formed strong loyalties and attachments to their kingdommates, but this started to create minor stagnation among the game's societal structure, particularly among the most successful players and kingdoms in ''Utopia''. After ''Utopia's'' first three rounds, Patel attempted to correct the stagnation and created the only forced game-wide kingdom break-up in its history. Ironically, this led to wide-scale cheating throughout the game as players traded accounts to reunite with their former kingdommates or to create "super kingdoms" comprising the game's most competitive players. The result was to compound the stagnation ten-fold. Although there had been some minor account trading taking place in the early rounds, it was generally unspoken of. After the shuffle, it became common knowledge and an openly-endorsed strategy by Utopia's competitive players. Before the shuffle, kingdoms where the individual players weren't particularly competitive, but had strong loyalties to each other, were usually able to band together to take down a harassing individual of stronger size but who was less well-integrated into their own kingdom socially. With trading, having a well-socialized kingdom took far less effort and the more competitive players were able to dominate the game's hierarchy. Patel eventually cracked down on the practice, but it remains popular among the playerbase. ''Utopia'' was originally created under the company Solaria Games, which had its roots as early as 1996. In 1999 Solaria Games was renamed to Echelon Entertainment, only to be renamed in July 2000 to Swirve.com. GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW Like in many browser-based strategy games, Utopia has a Real-time gaming environment. A player's province continues to grow, produce resources, and recruit soldiers even when he or she is not logged on. This also means that a province may be attacked even while its player is not logged in. For this reason, many kingdoms encourage their players to log in frequently to better respond to conditions in-game. Upon selecting a server and creating an account, players are given a choice of Race ( Human , Elf , Dwarf , Avian , Orc , Halfling , Undead , Faery ) and Personalities (Merchant, Shepherd, Sage, Rogue, Mystic, War Hero, Warrior, General, and Freak). Each Personality and Race has its own strengths and weaknesses; some have access to unique spells, some have bonuses to offense or resource production, and so on. In addition, each Race has access to a unique military unit called an Elite, and each Personality has a bonus related to the number of Elite units. Players' provinces are grouped into Kingdoms; each Kingdom is a team of up to 25 provinces. Provinces within the same kingdom can send resources to each other, have a private forum for discussion, and can elect the leader of one province to become a Monarch. A Monarch has total control on political issues such as declaring wars on other kingdoms and moderating the kingdom forums, but otherwise does not have any direct power over other players. In the interval between the end of an Age and the beginning of another, players are able to log in to their accounts and interact in the forums in order to plan ahead. However, no actual gameplay takes place, and although players may issue commands to their province, no changes will happen until the game officially begins. Once the Age proper has begun, players are given 72 real-time hours of protection, some land and a fixed amount of resources to develop their province before military attacks are allowed. New players joining later in the game also receive the 72 hours of protection, but start with more resources than they would have been given at the start of the Age. STRATEGY & GROWTH Gameplay in Utopia usually revolves around one key resource: Land . Land increases the total population of a province, providing more peasants which can be taxed or drafted into the military. Buildings can be constructed on owned land to provide further bonuses, and the combination of buildings built by a province is usually a major part of its strategy. Land is measured in acres, and each acre supports 1 building and up to 25 peasants. Land can be acquired through exploring (costs gold and soldiers), by casting the Paradise spell (costs Runes and Mana), or through attacking another player - "landgrabbing" - which does not cost anything, but requires a powerful military, and generally provokes retaliation. While the cost of exploring is initially cheap to give players a head start, it soon becomes prohibitively expensive as the size of a province grows, and attacking other players becomes more attractive. Only specialized builds are capable of exploring to large sizes while successfully defending their land, and explorers are generally looked down upon both within kingdoms (as being a burden and taking up a space for a more team-dedicated player) and in the wider community. INTER-KINGDOM RELATIONS & WAR There are five levels of relations possible between kingdoms. Most relations are not reciprocal, i.e. it is possible for a kingdom to be hostile to another, even if the other kingdom has not declared any relations. The only exceptions are Ceasefire and War.
In Age 30, Stances - which had been tested previously on the Genesis server - were instituted on the World of Legends server. Stances are packages of modifiers that affect the entire kingdom, and which can be chosen by the kingdom's monarch. Stances do not work during times of war and cannot be changed during protection. OBJECTIVES While there is no official objective to accomplish, players usually compete for Land, Honor, Networth, and War victories.
''Utopia'' keeps track of the players and kingdoms with the most land, honor and networth throughout the world. Throughout the history of ''Utopia'', becoming a top kingdom networthwise has been seen as good measure for which kingdom best managed to build themselves up from a State Of Nature to become a real Utopia . At the end of each Age, the highest-ranked provinces and kingdoms are enshrined in the Hall of Honors. SOCIETY Utopia tends to encourage social interaction between players. For some, the social aspect is the main reason for play; with 40,000 possible accounts per server, and the chance to meet players from around the world, the social possibilities seem infinite. Players are encouraged to interact with other players in the same kingdom; each kingdom has a private forum that is accessible only to its members. Players that do not wish to remain in the kingdom they are assigned to can defect to another kingdom. However, defecting costs 15% of everything a player owns - land, military, honor - and is usually only used as a last resort. One social aspect of the game which makes its way into play are Alliance s. Alliances are not officially endorsed by the game's maintainers and are often disdained by non-alliance players, yet are treated with a certain level of tolerance as an inevitability. Alliances form when groups of competing kingdoms decide to band together and operate as a group. They often employ tactics that single kingdoms can not use, such as overwhelming an opponent by outnumbering them. The basic structure of the game itself was not designed for these kind of groupings and Utopia gives few defenses against such strategies. Alliances usually coordinate their operations using non-Utopia forums and other non-sanctioned communication channels. Players also commonly use IRC and Instant Messengers , such as ICQ and Yahoo Instant Messenger , to aid in communication outside the game. However it is against the rules to force other players to use these methods against their will. TOOLS The player community has developed many free Utopia-related tools that not supported by the game developers. Most are formatters, designed to help players quickly share in-game information with each other. These tools include Utopia Angel, Utopia Prophet, and Utopia Metatron. These are third-party software that have to be downloaded and installed on the player's computer, while other tools like the "All-in-One Formatter" from Utopia Temple are used through a web browser. Utopia also hosts several interactive forums, these being the Bugs and Suggestions forum, Strategy Talk, Utopia Talk, General Talk, Politics, Roleplaying and the now defunct Relations forum. There are three other forums here which only moderators may post in, which are a vital source of information regarding the forums and much outdated information. Of the seven forums, it is assumed that Bugs & Suggestions, Strategy and Roleplaying need no further explenation on what they are. Utopia Talk - This forum is used as a general catch-all for any Utopia-related chat. Like all of the boards there, it generally holds its own group. The only real difference between the Utopia Talk forum and the General Talk forum is that the Utopia Talk is limited to game-related chat. General Talk - A board where just about anything and everything goes, these posters are generally people who have stopped playing the actual game, but have remained despite their stopping to chat with old friends. Topics range from ranting to lusting, pointless spam to impressive comentary, and is as random as one can expect. Politics - This board is a hot-bed of activity where moderation is low, permitting the many various ideas about the world events to be shared, some more than others. The majority of the chat which goes on here is generally considered to be flaming and biased ranting, though interesting and informative discussions about the current events around the world are not unheard of. It is to be noted that about three years after the formation of the Politics board, a separate web forum was created by those who frequented the board. The complaints were that the moderation team was both biased and ineffective. Today complaints are still common that the moderation team is biased and lax on consistancy. Relations - This forum, which was once another hot-bed of activity, has long ago died to only a few new posts a month, and continues to slow. It was originally made for forum members to offer their thoughts and ideas on a new relations system when Swirve was looking to make a complete overhaul, but since the relations change has come and gone, the forum remains for the most part dead. It is assumed that Swirve no longer checks this forum, and any suggestions made there are lost. JARGON Utopia has developed abbreviations and words that are unique to the game itself. Following is a list of some of these words and their definitions. ;AD:Animate Dead (Spell for Self) ;Anon:Anonymity (Spell for Self) ;Arm:Armoury (Building) ;AW:Assassinate Wizards (Rogue-only Thief Op) ;BB:Builder's Boon (Spell for Self) ;BE:Building Efficiency ;BF:BattleFields (Removed Server) OR Burn Farms (Thief Op) ;BG:Bribe Generals (Thief Op) ;BL:Bloodlust (Removed Spell) ;BM:BeastMaster (Faery Elite) ;B&S:Bugs & Suggestions (Forum Board) ;BT:Bribe Thieves (Thief Op) ;CB:Crystal Ball(Spell) ;CE:Crystal Eye(Spell) ;CS:Clear Sight (Spell for Self) ;Dice:Paradise (Spell for Self) ;DPA:Defence per acre ;Fanat:Fanaticism (Spell for Self, also called Fana) ;FB:Fireball (Spell) ;FG:Fool's Gold (Spell) ;FL:Fertile Lands (Spell for Self) ;GP:Greater Protection (Spell for Self) ;IA:Inspire Army (Spell for Self) ;KD:Kingdom ;L&P:Love and Peace (Spell for Self, also called LP) ;Land fat:Having more land than you are able to defend. A ratio of Networth/acres is used to determine if someone is land fat. The lower the number, the more land fat you are. However the recent changes to the attacking system, whereby an attack is more effective the higher a province's networth, has somewhat redefined the term in recent ages to indicate only an extreme low, rather than the old meaning which was far broader in range. ;LL:Land Lust (Spell) ;LS:Lightning Strike (Spell) ;MA:Mystic Aura (Spell for Self) ;Mehuled:Having one's account killed ostensibly by Mehul Patel, for reasons which are not publically available. Possible reasons: having multiple accounts, farming (creating an account that's easy to attack or steal from with a lot of resources), violating terms of conduct, etc. ;MF:Mind Focus (Spell for Self) ;MO:Modified Offense. This is more reliable than RO. You get your MO when you add variables to your total OF/RO points that are otherwise excluded from the calculations, such as number of War Horses, Barracks et ;Mod:Moderator. On the forums, a person who tends to and cleans up the forums. ;MP:Minor Protection (Spell for Self) OR Mehul Patel (Utopia creator, used primarily on main forums) ;MS:Magic Shield (Spell for self, also called MSh) or Meteor Showers (Spell on hostile province) ;MV:Mystic Vortex (Spell) ;NB:Nature's Blessing (Spell for Self) ;NM:Nightmares (Spell) ;NS:Night Strike (Thief Op) ;NW:Net Worth ;OFF:Offense Points (also called RO - Raw Offense). You will usually make a successful attack against a rival kingdom if you have more offense points than they have defense points. However, OF/RO points are not very accurate as they do not include various other things that increase you offense such as Barracks, War Horses etc. ;OOP:Out of protection. When a province is created, it is in protection mode for 3 days; a period where the province may grow, free from interference from outside provinces. ;OOW:Out of war. Outside of war relations. When a player commits offensive acts against kingdoms other than that they are at war with. ;OPA:Offence per acre ;Pat:Patriotism (Spell for Self) ;QF:Quick Feet (Spell for Self) ;Rax:Barracks ;Riots:Incite Riots (Thief Op) ;RM:Reflect Magic (Spell for Self) ;RtG:Rob the Graineries (Thief Op) ;RtT:Rob the Towers (Thief Op) ;RtV:Rob the Vaults (Thief Op) ;SoM:Spy on Military(Intel-gathering Thief Op) ;SoS:Spy on Sciences(Intel-gathering Thief Op) ;SW:Sabatage Wizards (Thief Op) ;TG:Training Grounds (Building) ;TM:Thief/Mage (also called T/M) or Traditional March (a type of attack) ;TF:Torch Farms (Rogue-only Thief Op) ;ToG:Tree of Gold (Spell for Self) ;TPA:Thieves per acre ;TW:Town Watch (Spell for Self) ;UGT:Utopia General Talk ;WPA:Wizards per acre ;WS:War Spoils (Spell for Self) EXTERNAL LINKS
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