All right! So this will be my first post in a good while. My apologies, I’ve just been quite busy. Finishing school, re-painting, re-modeling, and re-decorating the house. ….I’ve also had too much fun playing with the things I want to review rather than review them.

  This time, however, I’ll be reviewing something a little different. This game is called Evony. It’s a massively-multiplayer-browser-based-real-time-city-building-war game. …That’s a mouth full, isn’t it? It’s based in a fictional middle-aged world with a couple of different continents to choose from and a number of servers to play on. As of now, there are well over 500,000 people playing and even more coming in and trying it.

  To most people the game itself is something of much confusion. You must build, maintain, and protect your city, or cities (You may have up to ten per account depending on your rank). Maintenance of your city is done through a simple, but very interesting, materials system. Building your city, troops, and keeping your people happy are all centered around food, iron, lumber, and stone count. Materials increase every hour, on the hour, in real time even when you’re not playing. Troops require a certain amount of food every hour to survive, and if your food count goes to low, people begin to leave your city.

  Depending on the amount of people in your city determines your rank in the game, or “prestige”. Your prestige determines your rank on the leader-boards. Prestige, like gamerscore in the Xbox-Live system, is a competitive and fun way to keep up with your social gaming status. Like I mentioned earlier though, if your food count drops, you lose people. If you lose people, your prestige drops. I think it is a very fair thing to do.

  You can also increase the amount of everything you gain, and the strength of your city by leveling up your buildings, town halls, and the walls around your city. Research is another way to increase everything. All of these things can go up to level nine. After level nine, however, it requires an item called a “Michelangelo’s Script” to level things, except research which only goes to ten, to ten and above.

  Like any other game, Evony has special items that can increase the production rate of materials or strengthen your troops. Most of which only last for twenty-four hours. As one would expect, you have to pay for these items: or win them in the “Wheel of Fortune”. Sadly, it rarely gives anything of use. Personally I refer to it as the “Wheel of Perpetual Disappointment”. Many people, who take the game far too seriously, are willing to spend a lot of money on these items, and of course, use them to their advantage.

  To protect yourself from these inevitable invasions, you are permitted to join an alliance in Evony. There is a large number of alliances, some powerful, some weak. Whatever the terms, joining one is usually the best thing to do after hitting around ten thousand prestige to protect yourself. It makes the game much more enjoyable, too. Instead of sitting there, watching your buildings build, it becomes more like a chatroom with things to do while you talk to friends.

  Other than pummeling each other in deathmatches for the sake of your city, you can always attack NPC cities or valleys. Valleys are small areas of land on the map that are conquerable after only one victory, and increase the production of your materials by a nice little percentage depending on the level. Beware, you get to keep them as long as you like; but other players can take them from you. That being said, it’s not a good idea to leave your troops in the valleys, because they require twice as much food every hour. Valleys are expendable, so take advantage of them.

  All of this fighting, scouting, and conquering is done through a simple message system. Every time you get attacked, scouted, or plundered, it sends you a message instantly. It sounds boring, but it does allow you to decide how to counteract in a tactical manner.

  Evony is free to play and a great thing to run in the background. It’s very addictive, because it’s just so interesting to see your city rise above those around it and conquer the people who attack you. Like any other video game, it does have it’s downsides.

  It most definitely isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like slow-paced games and have nothing else to do while playing this, then you won’t enjoy it very much. Especially if you can’t join an alliance, you’re also particularly weak for a good amount of time until your city gets stronger. Even then, if you’re not in an alliance, most people (Myself included…) will probably still attack you without worrying about it.

  Evony’s servers are also not of the highest quality. They tend to lag out a lot, and can be quite slow at times. This can get extremely frustrating when you’re in a rush to do something, like retaliate to an attack before another wave strikes.

  Building times are also, of course, a subject of much argument. Long waits make it much more realistic, and more fair for the people who are higher level. It’s reasonable that higher level things take much longer than lower level because if that wasn’t in effect the lower level players would be completely drowned out. However, the building times can make the game boring to a lot of people, and even abysmal to others. It really boils down to a simple matter of opinion and what you think is fair.

  If you can look past the building times, somewhat laggy servers, regular system maintenance, and the jerks who take advantage of new players and try to join an alliance as soon as possible, like to watch your city get stronger and stronger, and like a multiplayer game with a huge and friendly community, Evony is definitely a game you’d at least want to check out.

  I mean come on, it’s free!

Overall Rating: 8.6/10