Evony is a free online browser strategy game. I found it from clicking on an advertisement for it, not knowing what it was. I thought it would be a 2D video game, but it wasn’t. You aren’t going to be running around as one of those cool looking avatars in those ads. So, if that is what you expect don’t bother playing it.
The graphics for it are quite good though from other similar games such as Ikariam. Again, don’t expect anything fancy because it is not one of those games where you run around killing stuff.
Evony is a game where you build up a town and its fields to prosper in the land (or server) that you chose. Starting out, you focus on the town and city to build it up while still under the new player protection (you won’t be attacked for the first seven days after your account was made). Later on you can focus on the map to conquer valleys and other cities.
It also offers a series of quests that help guide you along your way. I found this to be a very helpful tool because I couldn’t find many resources on their site on what to do in the game.
The buildings players can build include: Town Hall, Cottage, Warehouse, Inn, Feasting Hall, Embassy, Marketplace, Academy, Rally Spot, Barracks, Beacon Tower, Forge, Stable, Workshop, Relief Station and Walls.
The buildings are cute but I would have liked to see them evolve into bigger and better buildings as they were upgraded – but they don’t.
Resources that need to be used in Evony include: Farms (for food), Sawmill (for lumber), Quarry (for stone) and Ironmine (for iron). Upgrading buildings and even furthering research require these items so make sure that is something you invest in as soon as you can.
If you find yourself in need of resources fast, or perhaps you have too many, Evony has a great auction system where people can put up bids for buying and selling each resource through the marketplace. I found this to be very helpful.
One of the most interesting aspects of the game to me was the Hero. You build an Inn and then set up a Feasting Hall to employ a Hero to rally your troops and fight with your people.
Overall, I think the game is fun. Plus, the added bonus of being able to play it on any browser is great and so is being able to chat with your alliance while playing.
If you want to play for free too, join Server 12 and send Sheri (my name on there) a message.
* I also wrote this review on Associated Content about Evony.
10 comments:
The only online community I play, which to do the real cool stuff costs money, but it is Pirate Puzzles by Three Rings. I have a pirate Wendyrie and am a senior officer in a Flag and everything. I haven't paid to play in months, but during the winter, maybe. It can be boring and cold!!LOL!
Thanks for the recommendation, I am always looking for decent online games.
But please take care, Evony could be malware: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/16/is-evony-malware/
that sounds really fun!
Great review! Looks interesting! =)
You heard about the new Twilight MMORPG they're coming out with?
I'm excited as heck.
I might give Evony a look. I've been playing other browser based games like Travian and Tribalwars for years. If I join, I'll probably join the same server as you ^___^
Evony has been advertised lots of times when i surf but I just pass by it. But I find the graphics good, so I might get a try on this.
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
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.
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