With much free time on my hands starting December 2008, I became acquainted with an online game called Travian, a browser game featuring a world with thousands of other real players. Some months back, I posted Civilization Fever, the day I signed up for a Travian account in one of the three Travian Philippine servers. Three months after the latter, another post entitled Internet Dogs lamented the demise of that account.
on 09 September, with my Grey Day in September still with eight days until completion of my Animated Suspension, I signed up for an account in the Speed server. Using the same old account name and suffixing it with an “S” for Speed server, I simply reused what I have supplied in my deleted Server 2 account’s profile, paraphrasing a famous military quote:
“When weak, defense is the best offense;
When strong, offense is the best defense.”
Although from the start of the game I was already a member of Alliance X, a group of 60 players, many have left it either because of lack of interest or incessant bombardment from other players then rejoined some much stronger alliances. Most of the Alliance X officers even deleted their own accounts. Thus, by the first week of October, or almost a month that the Speed Server was up, only five out of seven Alliance X members remained active.
To my surprise, I was designated as one of three officers of the Alliance X. I received no in-game message or any notification of such appointment. I only knew I became one of the officers when I visited the Alliance X forum. I found out later on that the account owner who started Alliance X also deleted his account, and continued under a different name. Although the Alliance X was still online, there was no way to increase its membership to a maximum number of 60 members because the founder deleted his account leaving it to a potential of only 24 members, and the remaining officers were granted limited rights. Added to that, two other officers were inactive from the game for almost a month.
Contacting the remaining members through the in-game messaging, I only received replies from three out of six other members. I broached the idea of just deleting the Alliance X then start from scratch and for the time being I enjoined those who replied to seek other Alliances or join the sole confederacy, Alliance Z, we had with. I also contacted the latter and requested an Alliance Z officer out of two members to invite all of us to join them.
Unfortunately, as soon as I was accepted as member of our sole confederate, Alliance Z, I found out that the latter also has had the same predicament as Alliance X. The founder of Alliance X also deleted his account and left the members to fend for themselves. Prior to the deletion, the founder of Alliance Z formed confederacies with ten other alliances, including that of Alliance X. I asked permission from the founder of our Alliance X in Server 2, and he gave me permission to delete the non-functioning Alliance in Speed Server to start over. I even proposed using the same name, such as Alliance X v.2.0, just to continue with the brand.
I was soon busy with the revival: soliciting former members of the original Alliance X for help recruiting others who might want to join; drafting the Alliance profile and preamble, the rules for joining which I called the Ten Commandments, and even made the introductory parts of the Alliance Forum; writing to prospective confederates, particularly those which were aligned with the original Alliance Z; and proposing Non-Aggression Pacts [NAPs] with more established Alliances (for shortcut purposes, I designate them here as A, B and C) focusing on those persistent attackers on my fledgling village.
I received promising messages from two of three NAP proposals. The leader of Alliance A even offered protection for the time being that the revival was still incomplete and pledged to caution his members about attacking my village. Alliance A leader’s profile was quite impressive: no dual account (two people in one account), multiple accounts (two or more accounts for one user), no scripts (e.g., Greasemonkey, a popular browser add-on which is illegal in Travian world), no Travian Plus (see below), yet he managed to have a number of villages to his name. Alliance B offered a personal NAP, and gave me a week to re-establish the Alliance.
The third one proved immature in a sense. I addressed the message to the top member whose name appeared on the top of the Alliance roster of officers. The top-named officer also had eleven villages to his name, ranked among the top ten in Speed Server with 7130 total number of players. Reading his profile, he was U.S.-based, again quite impressed me with his quote on achievement and unselfishness. I claimed that “I have a professional life aside from my virtual life. I only love playing Travian on my off-time; but I am almost online each day.” He asked that if I were online each day, why was I only credited with one village? I replied that even though I started when the server started, another Alliance incessantly attacked all members of Alliance X making it more difficult for most of us members to increase the number of our respective villages.
In Travian, increasing the number of villages required that the main village, called a Capital, would have to build a Level 10 Palace with the required Culture Points and three Settlers. In the middle of the first month in the Speed Server, I already had a Level 9 Palace, one more level up and I could have trained a Settler. But after the attacks, the Palace level decreased to 5. No amount of training troops would help fend off a number of attacks each day, aggravated with inactive Alliance members who could have helped. One attack also totally destroyed the Grain Mill which provide increased food production for the troops’ use, while another totally decimated the protecting City Wall. Yeah, it’s a war game.
On the last line of my reply to the the U.S.-based player, I simply stated that I do not have a Travian Plus account. The Travian Plus sells for US$25, equivalent to 600 Travian Gold, or the least sold at US$2.95 for 30 Travian Gold. With Travian Gold, the player can have more speed features and great benefits, such as faster production, bigger maps, and the like. I went to sleep thinking that at least the attacks will soon stop and probably, in virtual world, people still believe in diplomacy.
Notes:
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