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The History of Utopia

When did it all start? We have to step back to a time long past. In the early 90's, Mehul Patel and his brother Amit, created several Inter BBS strategy games, namely Solar Realms Elite, Alpha Colony IV, Barren Realms Elite, Falcon's Eye and The Arcadian Legends. With Barren Realms Elite, also known as BRE, the Patel brothers ushered in a new era of Inter BBS Gaming, which gained alot of interest and popularity, allowing BBSs to play as teams against other players and teams from all around the world. Utopia is based on Falcon's Eye, which was set in a medieval world. Falcon's Eye gave the player extensive control over a feudal state and objective of the strategy game was to learn to balance the needs of its empire, while competing with others, using a vast array of races and military, economic, and magical strategies. Falcon's Eye was sold to John Dailey Software in 1999.

Mehul Patel started using the web in 1994, while attending college. Solaria Games was launched on the internet on December 6, 1996. Initially Solaria Games had only Earth: 2025 as interactive online game. A short time later, Solaria Games changed name to Solaria Interactive and was known on the web as Solaria Central Plaza. The Plaza offered a little something for everyone, including daily comedy acts, live music and chat, virtual gifts, and its popular attraction: interactive games.

On December 28, 1998 Solaria Interactive became Echelon Entertainment. By June 2000, Echelon's site ranked among the Top 1000 websites by total audience and Top 100 by total pageviews. Mehul Patel never officially promoted Echelon Games, which makes the success of this venture even more amazing, to observers as well as to Mehul himself. In July 2000 Echelon Entertainment was restructured into a new company and website, Swirve.com. Mehul's goal remains to expand Swirve.com's name brand while diversifying his services to include all major forms of entertainment.

Age by Age, Round by Round

On December 5, 1998, the First Age of Utopia was launched. The invitation read: "Join now for the first official round of Utopia! If you're already playing, manage your province. Otherwise, join in and begin making friends and enemies anytime. New players, be sure to check the Utopia Guide to learn all about Utopia, the most innovative and advanced interactive game of its kind!"

Utopia's first round is also called the "Golden Age" by many old players. It was a relatively small world back then: one server, 17 islands. There were many bugs in that first release, and many were exploited before they were fixed. Because during this age there were no diminishing returns, attacking almost always meant lots and lots of land. Thieves and wizards were scarce and playing focused on pure strength of military forces. The game display was very simple and not much different from what it is today.

Alliances were formed (the Barduvian Alliance, Mosaic and AUK, to cite a few known ones), but it was the conflicts between islands that made this round interesting. Opposed to the alliances mentioned, island alliances were formed with the intent of preventing kingdoms on the same island from attacking each other. The wars between Islands 1 and 7 and, later on, between Islands 4 and 5 come to mind. While non allied kingdoms or islands had to suffer from those that were allied with each other, a new Utopia ethic was trying to rise: protecting the weaker kingdoms. So bigger kingdoms would take smaller ones under their protection, adding yet another twist to an already hyperactive round. Weaker kingdoms were mostly comprised of players who had very little or no knowledge of the game. The necessity of a more even playground was what prompted such protection practice and what ultimately prompted the introduction of diminishing returns for the Second Age.

The Second Age, the islands were expanded to 25. This age saw an uprise in alliances and the birth - and downfall - of CQ (name derived from ICQ, the chat application most players used to talk with each other), along with all the aforementioned alliances, which grew stronger and gathered more members. Diminishing returns were implemented but the existence of multi accounts and alliance ties ravaged some players.

The Third Age saw a further increase in islands: 35. Two new races were added to the game: Halflings and Avians. With their addition, a reasonable balance was achieved, even though Avians fell short of being balanced. New alliances formed and previous alliances strengthened: Gemini, UDNO, and Barduvians. It was an age marred by scripters and hackers and many good players fell victim to them. Achieving "fame points" was a fairly simple process with only two benefits: every 1,000 points gained meant 1% bonus to maximum population and every 1,500 an additional vote for the regency. Other elements worth mentioning were buildings, one specifically: Plazas. Plazas were described as places where the peasantry could build their own stores, shops, markets and employed significantly more peasants, increasing income. Shipyards were essential to attack provinces in other kingdoms: they were used to transport the military, as Stables did not exist. Boats were produced the same way Guilds produce wizards today: a 1.5% chance to build a boat per day. Every shipyard could hold maximum 5 boats (each boat transported 100 troops). Thieves also had an operation called Sink Boats, sometimes the only way to stop attackers. Barracks were called Strongholds, and Forts were called Guard Stations. Homes used to house 50 people. An attack option that was widely used, although it took a longer time to complete than all others, was the Missionary Attack, which did not capture land, but peasants. Elves ruled this age, largely due to a +1 to their offensive and defensive units. Dwarves kept reaffirming themselves as the "attacking race".

The Fourth Age was for many a sad milestone. Mehul decided to "reshuffle" all the players, due largely to the problems experienced the previous age and the need for a new challenge and diversity within the game. Such decision was unpopular and many players decided not to return. After 4 weeks of play, a massive deletion wave hit 3,000 players. Many innocent players were caught in that wave. The Fourth Age saw quite a number of known players fighting for a spot at the top.

The Fifth Age was known for the first attempts at "feeding" strategies. Early in the round, the server was reset due to bug fixes: this reset caused many players to be assigned to a different kingdom than the one they had started in. Alliances like Absalom, UDNO, and AA were still strong and countless others started, namely HaLL. It was an age punctuated by many alliance wars and harsh words. The server lag remained a problem for many and frustrations reached peak heights.

The Sixth Age was known as the age with the negative networth bug. A few provinces appeared with negative networth. A direct effect of the bug was that when people attacked them or used thieves against them, they would experience negative losses, which in turn meant gaining troops. As with every bug, some players quickly realized the potential of the bug and topped the charts. Mehul fixed the problem right away and deleted all provinces that had exploited the bug (even those that had just wanted to see what the bug was all about). Big alliance wars to mention were those between KLA and AA and the war between HaLL and the House alliance. Most of these wars were started because of gang-banging, multiplaying and feeding accusations. Many players questioned what Utopia had become and frustrations were voiced in the Utopian forums.

The Seventh Age saw the introduction in the charts of Top Kingdoms by Honor and strategies changed. The most important change for this age was the shift from networth-based gains to land-based gains. Several other changes to magic and thievery were implemented in an effort to halt the feeding strategy. Specifically spells were limited to certain races (Tree of Gold became an Undead only Spell, much to the horror of many players regardless of race choice relying on it to keep their economy going). Cheating took a new height, with the appearance of the FREE alliance which ran several scripted provinces. Tired of the constant cheating, players got together and formed new alliances to defeat such practice. Mehul eventually deleted the top FREE kingdom and the community cheered. The Seventh Age marked also the beginning of an alliance war between Absalom and HaLL which ultimately resulted with Absalom disbanding at the end of the round.

And then the Age of Chaos dawned. Starting with round eight, every following age was named. This was the age the game was split between two servers: The Utopian Battlefields and The World of Legends. The Utopian Battlefields was the "experienced player" server, with the top 750 kingdoms of the previous round being transferred there. The World of Legends was open to all others. This round saw another wave of alliances, among them NH, and wars among previous alliances like AA, EoS, HaLL and so many others. The Age of Chaos was characterized by many exploitations of bugs, questionable ethics by many kingdoms, cheaters, multis and alliances who would do anything to stay ahead of everyone else. Suiciding strategies were used and trading was rampant: while many players were eventually deleted, there seemed to be no consistency as to what constituted "fair play".

The Utopian Renaissance started in Fall of 2000. Quite a number of changes were made to the races and the military. Further, the kingdoms that had chosen to stay together, were transferred to the world server, while players that wanted to be shuffled into a new kingdom were placed in Battlefields. The biggest change was given by the introduction of the concept of "utilization". The official guide to the Utopian Renaissance stated: "With too much housing and too little work, many of your peasants will be unemployed and provide little or no tax revenues. However, with too many commercial buildings and too few peasants, your buildings cannot function at capacity either. A farm cannot grow food without farmers. A Hospital cannot save lives without doctors. Each building (except Homes) on your land will require 20 men or women to provide their full benefits. This is measured in Utopia by Utilization. The fewer peasants per building, the lower your Utilization, and the less benefits your lands provide - however, all buildings automatically provide 50% of their benefits, regardless of your labor situation. With volunteer labor, your buildings can actually achieve utilization beyond their theoretical capacity."

The Utopian Renaissance is known for a bug which affected a couple of provinces (on both servers): the province on the World server went from a positive to a negative networth and then, after reset, to over 2 billion gold coins in networth. Said province had also negative units and was quickly eliminated by other players.

The Age of Conflict was designed to encourage war, destruction, and - as the name implies - conflict. Mehul relaxed many restrictions and developed rules to promote damage. The capacity of homes was reduced, while buildings employed more people and were largely improved. The minimum and normal gains from attacks were increased, military expenses became higher while exploring became cheaper. Mehul strengthened the damage done by magic and thievery, gave more power to dragons (no longer bound by war declaration to be sent to other kingdoms). To curb the feeding strategy, a 10% tax was imposed to larger provinces receiving aid, and the Explosions spell was addedl: it destroyed portions of aid shipments to and from a given province. To promote war, a 10% offense bonus was added and higher bonuses given for honor. Utopia had suddenly new life and heated debates raged in the forums.

The Age of Nobility started in Spring of 2001. A substantial amount of changes was implemented. All races were adjusted, a trade tax system - which is still valid today with minor variations - was added to regulate aid between provinces. The relations system was overhauled, dragons had inherent benefits, and monarchs lost their offensive bonus but gained a defensive one in magic and thievery. Soldiers were no longer drafted for free but had to be paid for, extra generals were given a +5% offensive bonus each and some buildings were adjusted for utilization purposes. Another new element was given by the addition of the Plague. All new elements, and their effects, were adjusted as the age progressed. The Patriotism spell (designed to increase draft rates), and the Spy on Sciences thievery operation were introduced. As the name of the age implies, the Honor System was substantially changed to reward provinces based on Titles of Nobility. Alliances continued to be formed and clashed more than ever.

The Era of Magic focused on the goal to differentiate mages from other players and offer them the tools to be successful. The intent was to give Thieves, Mages, Attackers, Explorers, and Scientists the ability to compete both as individuals and kingdom members. It was a major change from previous rounds, which historically had been dominated by Attackers, while all other strategies seldom if ever succeeded. Honor from Thievery & Magic was completely revamped: based on relative size, the number of thieves used, difficulty of the operation, thief/magic defense of the target, potential damage, and whether or not the kingdoms would be at war. Both Thievery & Magic were more effective on similar-sized provinces (giving players a reason to grow). Further, operations could be run through 10% Mana / 10% Stealth, although the lower that number, the more difficult and less effective the operation became. In general, spells were meant to be both cheaper and more powerful at the same time. The Guild production was doubled, and Wizards were counted towards population space like peasants, thieves, and the army. A new option, Release Wizards, was added to convert them into peasants to eliminate overpopulation. The duration of spells was based on the number of Guilds so true Mages could cast spells for longer periods. Spells changed: Illusionary Forces was eliminated, the bonus for Invisibility was increased, Drought caused a loss of horses in addition to previous effects, and the TownWatch spell reduced the amount of recources the opponent destroyed or captured. Five new spells were added: in the self-spell category, Halflings and Undead could take advantage of War Spoils (land would be gained immediately, while troops would return as during normal attacks), and Paradise created a small amount of acres each time it was cast. New Offensive Spells included Greed (raising military costs of an opponent), Fool's Gold (destroying gold), and Meteor Shower (designed to destroy buildings). In an effort to even the playfield between pure attackers and other strategies, science costs were raised by 50% and the tax value of soldiers was doubled. Alliance battles continued (VlaoS, Absalom, KLA, EoS, nPALS, just to mention a few). For the first time, races were ranked individually, eliminating the top player chart. This was done to underline the far greater challenge in building a successful kingdom than that of achieving individual success. Despite the emphasis on magic and thievery changes, the attacking races ranked ahead of all others.

The Era of Mystery experienced the biggest sweeping changes ever. Mehul felt it was time for a major overhaul of the game. Several features were eliminated, and others added. The most important change was given by the introduction of the Personality System, which allowed players more strategic options. Buildings like Strongholds and Guardstations were eliminated, while new ones were added: Forts, Thieves' Dens, Libraries, and Dungeons. War Science was changed to affect only offensive actions. New attack types (Conquest, only available to the General personality), new thievery operations (the reappearance of Assassinate Wizards, addition of Torch Farms and Burns Forts - all available only to the Rogue personality), a new spell (Anonymity - designed to conceal the attacker's identity), and several race changes, were added and/or implemented. Further, a distance penalty was set in place for actions between far-away islands. Given the extent of the changes, several bugs had to be fixed before all features worked as they were intended to.

The Era of Strife saw another big set of changes, this time encompassing just about every aspect of Utopia. Race Elite values were changed across the board and the Undead race could not be chosen, but instead was only available to provinces which died during the course of gameplay. Those provinces had then the option to continue in their own kingdom as an Undead player or starting over with a different race. The military value of soldiers was raised to 2 (from 1) and specialists were worth 4 (instead of 3). Elites required triple the maintenance costs of other units. Since the Missionary attack had historically being used less than any other, it was eliminated and its benefit (that of capturing peasants), was added to traditional attacks. Killing other provinces was made easier and the Conquest attack was tweaked. In keeping with the intent of limiting strategic choices other than attacker, Magic was revisited and even more spells were added: Fanaticism, Aggression, Pitfalls and Tornadoes. The last two were available only during War. After three ages attempting to balance the Plague, the Nature's Blessing spell was changed to give a chance to cure the plague, while retaining its previous benefits, and the Hospitals' effectiveness to cure the Plague was increased. The Plague itself spread more quickly and was far more lethal: prisoners died very quickly and tax collection was restricted. Thieves were not ignored either, and this age saw the introduction of the Propaganda operation, while Burn Forts was made available to all races. Honor was modified as well, to promote more aggressive actions and thus giving substantial rewards: each title above and including Count provided an additional level of bonuses.

The Age of Valour saw the entire kingdom relations system redesigned and split in four parts, each with its specific benefits or lack thereof: no relations, hostile, war and peace. The major change was that War could no longer be declared, but was the result of mutual hostile activities, which had to be declared first. The Multi-Attack/Gangbang Protection system was redesigned to account for all events: attacks, thievery, and magic: it weighed the damage of various attacks differently and was intended to be much more fluid and realistic than the previous system. All these and other changes were made to stop the continuous barrage by alliances, which experienced little or no penalty for repeatedly attacking a province, also known as "gang-banging". Distance penalties were further increased for all types of attacks, spells were adjusted to be more or less damaging (during this age, the "Haste" spell changed name to "Builder's Boon"). A new spell, Landlust, was added to give non-attacking provinces the chance to gain land during War. Attackers cheered at the change to the General personality, which was allowed to carry out the Conquest attack during both Hostile and War relations (other personalities would be able to use it only in War), with significant gains specifically during War. New provinces were designated as "Unclaimed" until players would login for the first time. To curb the "hit and run" strategies operated by certain players, the option to Defect/Delete their account while their army was away, was eliminated.

The Age of Discovery started in early 2002 and did not see many changes. Most of these focused on tweaking the large amount of modifications made during the previous two ages. Base birthrates were lowered while basic peasant income rose. Races were adjusted slightly, although some races received higher benefits: Halflings could train thieves for 300gc, Elves could no longer cast self-spells on others, Dwarves could not use mercenaries any longer (while Avians were allowed to), and Undead were once again a selectable race, with brand new characteristics. Building housing was adjusted, while sciences decayed over time. Maintenance for the army was required only while troops were home. Some spells were made race-specific, and some others were made available to all.

The Age of the People surprised all utopian players anew, when Mehul decided to add a new element to the game: "Happiness". Instead of simply optimizing numbers that were completely controlled by each player, the game was now affected by leadership styles. It was meant to give players a feel for real-world leadership, where the approval of the population may be just as beneficial as it could be constraining. Mehul stated that such a system would be quite complex and difficult to implement, but he believed that it would help move away at least a little bit from the pure control and pure numbers aspect of gameplay. Once implemented (Utilization removed), Happiness affected Tax Income, Building Efficiency, Maximum Population, and Military Strength with different levels of peasant happiness ranging from Rebellion to Euphoria - each influencing the efficiency of the province. Other changes were made for the age: successful attacks offered Free Buildings to be built on a portion of the incoming land, the Meteor Shower Spell was reworked to exclude Elites, and Elites could be gained in combat.

The Age of Heroes brought no big surprises. Minor changes were made: Elves and Undead saw their races adjusted, the execution times for all attack types were either lowered or increased, Conquest was weakened, and military costs adjusted. Significant changes were those made to the Relations Systems by limiting the option of declaring Peace only on a kingdom that had declared the proposing one Hostile, and penalties for attacking outside of War were increased. The one change, however, that affected the game from the beginning, was that coming out of protection (April 1, YR 0), kingdoms were only able to interact with their own island. Then, every 3 hours, the game opened up one island in each direction. Three days after protection ended (July 1, YR 0), the entire world was accessible.

The Era of Hope focused on optimizing the concept of "Happiness". All races were adjusted (certainly the most striking changes were to Orc Elites with a value of 8, and Halflings - who had a 1% chance to convert specialists into Elites by building armouries. Furthermore, Elves were allowed to cast self-spells again, even though at very high cost. Military costs were raised, the relation system was tweaked to limit abuse, and attack formulas were reworked. New elements were the introduction of Martial Law, which provinces experiencing extremely low Happiness could invoke to restore order, and the option to Block Incoming Aid.

The Age of Dreams was a simple continuance of the tweaking process of the previous age. Armouries gave all races the chance of converting specialists into Elite units (Halflings were given a double bonus), Undead were allowed to explore, and exploration costs were reduced. The only significant items were the diversified cost for Elite units depending on race and additional tweaking of the relations system, specifically War. While maintenance and draft costs dropped significantly, reduced income and higher Elite training costs were meant to utilize the full spectrum of strategies and attack types.

The Age of Wonders started in Summer of 2003. One change affected players at startup, who now would have more land and resources to begin the age with. The exploration pool was increased. War Science once again affected both offense and defense. Dwarves were made once again competitive, Orcs saw their power curbed, Faeries did not have any combat loss penalty and Undead could house more people in their homes (Undead had the most changes, still in an effort to balance them). The changes to the buildings were minimal and were made to further adjust Happiness. The only spell that was revised was Fanaticism, weakening its effects. Many scripted provinces were deleted.

The Age of Conquerors started with changes mostly related to Military & Combat, and Buildings. Elite maintenance prices were raised significantly, soldier strength was reduce to 1 point in both offense and defense, military maintenance costs were the same whether the troops were at home or away. One other interesting change was the +1 offensive strength given to specialists during Plunders. One of the historical buildings of Utopia, Mines, was eliminated, and a new building, Training Ground, was created. Training Grounds improved the efficiency of the military training practices. While not making the military stronger, these lands allowed to reduce the costs of maintaining a large army. The bonuses for War relations were increased to promote the escalation of Hostile. The KLA Allliance broke apart, and Legacy members split to reform Absalom. In an unprecedented move, Mehul deleted all the monarchs of the VAT alliance, saying that those players were considered voluntary members of an alliance which openly and actively supported illegal account trading. Many more provinces, sometimes entire kingdoms, were deleted as the age neared its end. MYTH and VAT disbanded. Although Age of Conquerors was named as one of the most boring rounds of Utopia, and Mehul was accused of having lost the feel for the game, the crackdown on cheaters and Mehul's firm actions awoke new interest among those that had stepped away rom Utopia for those very reasons.

The Revolution started just a week before Christmas 2003. The age featured an impressive number of changes that influenced every aspect of Utopia. Happiness no longer affected maximum population or military strength: happiness bonuses were smoother rather than sudden. Island distance penalties were reduced by half and, although the exploration pool was reduced, lower exploration costs provided an alternative to attacking. All bonuses related to Honor were removed from the personalities, the rate of employment per building was raised to 20 and construction costs rose more slowly. Science decay was eliminated and science costs were raised. Every building (excluding hospitals and buildings related to sciences) now produced a small amount of points every day. Military & Combat saw Elites dying more often than other troops and their prices dropped, mercenaries were more expensive, and specialists functioned now with a 6-point value in all land attacks. The value of extra generals sent into battle was reduced again to 3%. All-Specialist armies were more effective than Elite armies at capturing and protecting land and resources in battle. The entire relations system was adjusted, specifically War and Hostile offensive bonuses were removed. The Revolution saw the introduction of a new attack option: Ambush. This type of attack permitted to attack an opposing army while recovering from an attack on the player's province. The ambushed army would fight at lower strength and no modifiers were applied. To prevent abuse, Ambush could be used only once. On the other hand, attackers could use Anonymity and War Spoils to protect themselves from Ambush (Avians were naturally immune to Ambush). The Bloodlust spell was eliminated. Another massive wave of deletions hit both Battlefields and World of Utopia and some well-known kingdoms were crippled.

During the Age of Glory, the battle against cheaters and multi players raged on, affecting both worlds. Many players were deleted and/or suspended. One of the highlights of the age, although it came toward the end, was Mehul exploring the possibility of legalizing server multi players: players would be allowed to create a province on both Battlefields and World. A war of words exploded in the public forums, and the concept was ultimately scrapped.

The Age of Tranquillity saw the elimination of Elite prices rising with province size and the addition of a variable draft system. Exploration costs were set higher but increased much slower. Once again there were minor adjustments to races and personalities. Focus remained on tweaking the Relations system. Hostile relations were limited to 1 declaration and had a minimum 12 hour time. Once again, many scripters were deleted from all servers. Some minor bugs were discovered and ultimately fixed.

The Age of Turmoil, as its name implies, shook up the Utopian world once again. Races, Personalities, Buildings: all were significantly changed. Two new elements, Building and Military Effectiveness, were added. Elite costs experienced another increase, but their maintenance was lowered. The Honor system was also reviewed: players began with 1200 honor points, and bonuses for military, thievery and magic strength were increased. Science could once again be purchased. Many other minor changes were made to formulas and some bugs were fixed as the age progressed. The beginning of the age was rocky due to a temporary server downtime catching players while in protection. Mehul cracked down on cheaters and scripters by deleting entire kingdoms from the very beginning and continued doing so throughout the age. Kingdom forums were utilized by Swirve to warn players of rule-breaching in their choice of names and urged them to change or be deleted. While the affected players thought badly of such policing, others cheered at what appeared to be a stricter enforcement of rules, reaching far beyond what players were accustomed to.

The Age of Courage was characterized by the comeback of networth-based gains. The concept of diminishing building effectiveness was implemented (building investment was removed) and the Internal Affairs Advisor provides detailed information on how this affects the prosperity of a provice. Sweeping changes were made to all races and personalities. Military and combat was adjusted so that military efficiency was no longer linear, variable military pay was implemented, combat losses and mercenary costs lowered and of course significant adjustments were made to incorporante the networth-based gains. The relations systems was slightly changed to increase gains penalties for hostile relations and a new 10% income penalty was added to hostile. The war meter was changed to show intensity much earlier and to vary accordingly to the amount of activity between kingdoms. This age was characterized by much controversy due to the change in how land was obtained during attacks.

The Age of Intrigue, the Age of War, the Age of Unity, and the Age of Reason followed. Throughout those ages, minor changes were made to the gaming environment. The focus was on fine-tuning variations already set in place.

 

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Historic Moments

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