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Planetarion is being ended by them though - the next round is the last.
(announcement at http://www.planetarion.com/news/news/read/235-round-30-signups )

Why aim for Warcraft? Unless the aim is to limit research to owners of high-end computers who rank graphics at least as high as gameplay and have large amounts of spare time and will put up with grinding, then it's the wrong model to compare such a project to.

Planetarion peaked at over 100,000 players (before it went pay-to-play) and all you need to play it is a browser. It's a simple game to code, as evidenced by the countless clones that were quickly written when the owners started charging. Gameplay there happens in 3-month (or so) rounds, with rule changes each round, so it's the perfect model for the research described.

Cutting things down further, the browser-based NationStates is so trivial it's barely even a game, and there's practically no in-game interaction between players, but 1.9 million nations have been created. It works because it's a nice idea, and it has forums where people roleplay all the things the game ought to include but doesn't.

If you want a game where economics play a big part, aim it at web users. There's a huge and nearly empty market for an blackberry/iPhone MMPORG. Make it turn-based so you can play it to a decent standard even if you only log in once a day, and hard-core players don't need to check in more than once an hour. Political Asylum provides an excellent model of how this can work.

When planetarion used to exist I was online 24 hours a day...

What... it's back again... no-one told me that... oh well... sleep is over-rated anyway!

There are no screenshots because there are no graphics!

It's all HTML, and you play it in your browser. The game itself (even the free trial) has no adverts, but there is 1 per page on the support pages.

Descriptions of what's going on are in the introduction to the manual.

It's probably my fault you missed this, because I decided to link to the sign-up page rather than the manual, partly because I hate the design of the manual (it's nothing like the design of the game pages, which are skinnable), and I think it's probably more overwhelming for a beginner to go there or to the 'portal' main page than to just dive in and play.

Planetarion, the one I'm addicted to, is entirely browser based, with no fancy graphics. There is no "levelling-up", the combat is entirely player vs. player, and all you have to do to get new skills is choose which one you want to research next. The gameplay is all in the co-operation of players, forming alliances, trying to get into better alliances, defending your friends, ganging up on your enemies, outthinking dumb people and general larking about with likeminded people in irc. It's even inspired several clones (myphppa, starsphere, dawn of myth, planetia etc.).

Sadly it's dying a slow death because people always go for a $50 + $30 a month glitzy graphics game over a $0 + $15 every 3-4 months one that has no graphics. Before Evercrack, Planetarion had 180,000 accounts, now it's down to about 6,000, despite many improvements being made each round.

If you want to give Planetarion a try, I suggest you sign up for a free 2 week trial. If enough of you do, the game might get profitable again.

It's really sad to see great browser based games like Planetarion getting ignored in favour of dozens of eye-candy-rich gameplay-poor levelling-up rpgs that cost a fortune.

Thousands of people devoted huge portions of their lives to playing Planetarion, with 180,000 accounts at it's peak, and the on-line community spirit there was simply amazing.

It's just had an complete re-write for round 10 with many improvements, but it's future is in doubt because people won't pay $15 for a 3 to 4 month round, or even bother with the free 2 week trial

Planetarion was my favourite game some three years back, I loved it. Then at about round 5 they decided charging was obligatory and users tapered off. The model they used to use, where paying was optional and gave loads of cushty features, worked famously.

Oh well... Nostalgia. I for one love MMOGs, especially MMORPGs--but don't devote my life to them...

...in school and already being turned into fully fledged FTGs (Furry Toothed Geeks).
Watch this get shut down the instant some newly initiiated script kiddie hacks the school computer systems and defaces their website... The web's greatest game is free again, www.planetarion.com to sign up!

I have seen a challenge/response system that defeated the OCR problem. It's in an online game, Planetarion, that had a problem with cheats using programs to manage their accounts while they were away and to run large numbers of accounts (both against the game's rules.) To log in, you first have to give your username and password, and then answer a question that's in an image. The questions are always obvious to a human, but a computer would need to be able to understand English before it could answer them. Since they implemented the login question, the bots have (as far as I know) disapeared.

Although Half Life was more immersive, and there are many better games out there, those little squares with info you had to click kept on appearing a long time in real life.
Being a big bully and member of the biggest alliance in the online browsergame Planetarion messed up my life for about a year. At it highest point there were about 200k players, and organizing the alliance and galaxy so you'd stay on top was a full time job. For a year it was normal for me and my friends who also played, to never sleep for about more then 5 hours, unless somebody you could trust and had your cell phone number was online.

I waste my precious youth playing games like Planetarion and Starsphere and all they require is a browser and way too much of my precious time. Oh, and a fee in the case of Planetarion, but that's a detail.

These are really big games, you actually get to talk to the people that develop and run them, and over the course of time they develop to comply with the wishes of the majority of the players. These are truly what I'd define as on-line, interactive games...and guess what, there's way better choices than C# for this kinda thing...

my best friends' email, login, pr0n-service and even `planetarion.com' was `finalfantasy'.

At least i could pre-empt his sad days... like when his pr0n servers went down...

I've been playing Planetarion for almost a year and Archmage off and on. Recently both of these web-based games have moved to a p2p model (though Archmage has recently backed down I believe.)

The move to p2p for Planetarion has not happened without alot of groaning however. In the end, though I think they have managed to convince people of the value of the game compared to a relatively minimal fee. The current round getting ready to start is $10 (as low as $6 or $7 if accounts are bought in bulk) for a 3 or 4 month round. Not to mention that PA has extensive and sophisticated external resources, e.g. battle calculatores, alliance sites, etc. The devoted players knew from the beginning they would pay, it was just a matter of minimizing the damage ;)

One of the biggest problems has been the ability for kids without credit cards to find a way to pay. Clearly, many parents are less than willing to support their kids' gaming addiction.

On the otherhand, I play alot of PC-based games, especially Unreal Tournament. P2P for such games would be questionable as much of the online facilities are hosted by the users themselves. However, in the case of the game producer actually providing the facilities, I don't think it's unreasonable to charge a yearly fee for instance.

I am addicted to a couple of things and one of them is Games, although i am less addicted since i started using Unix only, but still freeciv and freechess are a bit addictive...and the 4 years a kept playing the massive multiplayer games like Ultima Online and Planetarion before where pretty hefty addictive....
and there for it was my Atari-ST for which had about a 1000 floppy disks with games on it...and some other stuff ofcourse :)
But after all i learned how to use computers pretty well, i learned some programming and wrote a Arkanoid version once and now i have had some Sysadmin jobs and now i am Programmer or so they say, i still lack good hacking skillz...

Still i think my game addiction wasnt really bad for me, only it made me forget there was a real world out there although i dont really lack social skills, i have a handfull of friends and i go out to the pub since i was 14 and i still do now when i am 22...i have a girlfriend...so life seems pretty oke...still i live in a fantasy world, but i dont think thats cause of the games....

Now i am addicted to more things like IRC, Smoking and Sex...
I learned a lot of nice people tru IRC which are really very nice,
IRC also keeps me from doing my work at 100% cause i can use it at my work ;P
Smoking yes is a bad habbit i guess....and Sex well figure....

Overall aslong an addiction doesnt harm you in the real world around you and you can live a life you want to everything is great....

Quazion.

www.planetarion.com

Although the game dynamics don't specificaly require the features you commented on (supply lines & strongohlds etc), to do well at this game you must build strategic alliances and pacts with other players.

This has resulted in the creation of a community the likes of which i have never seen in any other online game, where intelligence (spying on other players) and "political" aims are the main draw of the game.

Unfortunately they have just made the mistake of switching to a pay 2 play system, although this is still cheap at $10 for a single (roughly 3 month long) game

You know, like Planetarion for example. Oh sorry, you need Java to do that...

They started off rather small - just ran the thing on a couple of ISDN lines on a pc in one of the creators' front room. The game has become so popular that serious industrial strength hosting is now required, as well as round the clock care.

Banner adverts have always been used, with frequent reminders to get players to click them. Apparently only a small proportion (less than 10%?) regularly clicked them, so income was extremely limited. I remember them having problems with a particular banner-ad agency that was recommended to them, that saw the income drop even further. Now, they've added a voluntary donation option, where you can give between $10-$100 via a credit card, which brought in four-figure sums within a few days of being introduced, and there's also merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, etc).

Soon they'll be running a parallel "universe", a pay-to-play version where you are guaranteed a certain level of performance. Even now the game is hosted by Chello, it can slow down during the busier times of day, so the supposedly hourly updates in resources, travelled distances and so on, can take maybe 90 mins or more.

Go have a look. They used to have some articles on how the game started up, but I can't find them at the mo.

Evidently, they haven't discovered Planetarion -- the most addictive (and free (beer)) turn based game around. More addictive than Empire or Civilization (although, oddly enough, not nearly so interesting), Planetarion will take over your life if you let it. Turn-based games are dead? No, I think it's just game magazine editors.

Damn, i loved that door game BRE. Barren Realms Elite, anyone else used to play it ?

There is planetarion nowadays, but it just didn't seem to "cut it" like BRE used to.

and also Usurpers, Vgaplanets... *sniff* major bbs...