Conrad Askland

Here’s info on a free .txt to .rtf software conversion program.

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[22:15:20] soccerstar2222: arhhhh have u guys ever heard of a guy named cybermonsters
[22:15:35] soccerstar2222: he killed 2 of my kings in my new set of villages

www.KingdomAges.com

I’ve been checking out different free strategy and rpg games online after toying with the idea of investing in a dev team for a game. KingdomAges is one of the games I checked out.

If you’re into games, you know the big trick is to keep long term players satisfied while still attracting new players. KingdomAges does not appear to do a very good job of this.

Several problems I identified are:

• Soldiers deprecated – There are four military types: Infantry, Cavalry, Archers and Cataupults. The infantry are no match for cavalry so no one buys them.
• Slow Army Movement – Military pieces must each be moved separately, there is no group move function. It literally can take an hour just to instruct an army to move across the map (then many, many hours for the army to move – that part is fine). But who wants to spend so much time buried in the mouse?
• Awkward coordinate entry – To move a military piece you have to highlight it individually, then click “move”, then click coordinates in TWO steps. It’s mind-numbingly boring.
• Moderators attack players – This is unbelievable to me. I had a moderator attack me just a couple weeks into the game and gloat over wiping out an entire village. It’s a setup of megalomaniacs wanting to keep control over their private game. In that respect, it will never branch out to being a long term public game. Moderators should moderate – not use their backend moderator advantages for game play.
• Lack of depth – Once you start taking over towns, there is no more depth to the game play. There is little nuance to attacks with massive armies and becomes primarily a number game. Those that want to spent their time round the clock on the game can rack up units.
• Server Crashes – over two week of game play the server crashed three times.

This game would be more fun with a piece of paper and a calculator.*NOTE – Their server keeps crashing and it takes weeks to get into this game, it’s a very slow pace. In two weeks I saw the servers crash three times.*