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and after that was Earth 2025.

Don't bother starting without a build strategy. ... the command line might actually be more fun.

I play wayy too much Earth 2025 it's alot of fun. Being web-based it's a good option for linux.

Not quite as popular as it used to be, but there are still a few thousand of us that play this browser based strategy game.... http://games.swirve.com/earth

Ever played Falcon's Eye? Mehul Patel, who created that and some other great BBS games has created Utopia which is basically Falcon's Eye evolved, and with 80k players.

Now everyone will only have to deal with spam in ICQ, AIM, NewsGroups, MSN, Popup software, Spyware software, and Net Sends.

Add to the list: spam in MMORPG! I couldn't believe it when I started receiving spam messages in Utopia.

On the contrary, Utopia does exist, and you can play it. However,I'm sure you meant "utopia".

Most communities are not allowing Wal-Mart to move in.

Replace "most" with "some", and I'd be inclined to believe you. As it stands now, most communities already have let Wal-Mart move in.

Considering the shear number of goods available in a new Wal-Mart SuperCenter... they kinda believe in choice

O.k. Go buy a Cat5 crossover cable. An item any mom and pop computer supply store would carry. What? No cable? Is this too specialized for Walmart? Too bad if they kill the small stores that would carry it. Or, how about trying to build theatrical costumes with fabric supplies from Wal-Mart. Sure, a large enough community will still have the speciality stores, but a mid-sized college town is totally fucked.

BRE is still alive in a new form.. It's called Utopia now and run by Mehul Patel and Swirve Games.. 60k players (more than half of them punks) but still fun, and of course, free..

I'm personally partial to Utopia.

Who needs that when you have Earth 2025?!

Looking at my post, perhaps my italicised never was a little bit harsh. I'm guessing that once I'm off and out of this ivory tower of academia I'll at least re-evaluate this statement, though I can't say for certain that it'll change. Years back, before college and social life and all that good stuff, I used to play on a couple MUDs which really were great fun. The interaction between players was always something that made each session interesting and unique. I tried picking one up again in college, about three years ago now, but I can't find the time to play as much as I'd like to keep up the interaction. Having seen some of the MMORPGs being played I almost think that I prefer the interaction through the horrific ANSI colored text to something like Everquest. Same charm in nethack I guess, but I don't dare install that again lest I wish to fail out of grad school.

Right now the only game that I really play online is Utopia which is a rather large completely human player kingdom game. It consumes a little bit more time than I should give it, but it's usually in little 10 minute chunks a couple times a day.

Ahhhhh... brings back the memories...

check out earth 2025 if you are still into that. This is what B.R.E. has evolved to.

You want Earth 2025, and Utopia which were written by the same authors as BRE and SRE. In fact they play like a more sophisticated version of BRE on the web, but with a lot more players than your average BBS could ever muster.

You want Earth 2025, and Utopia which were written by the same authors as BRE and SRE. In fact they play like a more sophisticated version of BRE on the web, but with a lot more players than your average BBS could ever muster.

Best free game ever.Utopia.

It's a massively multiplayer game where you build up a province, wage war against other kingdoms, cast protective, and harmful spells with your wizards, steal gold, spy, and assasinate stuff with your thieves, invade and conquer with your army.

Great game, mad strategy, no download at all, and it's free!

http://games.swirve.com/utopia/

Yeah, it does suck to be me.

I was at one time totally addicted to Utopia until I realised that it was not a good idea to cancel a week-long vacation to play the game so I snapped out of it, killed my kingdom and quit. If I was able to get broadband where I live, I'd probably be addicted to Asheron's Call or Everquest at this moment.

I have come to believe that what is really required is education. Most people are not aware that gaming can be addictive and thus they don't consider the chance that it will happen to them. I didn't. But if people recognise that they have addictive personalities like mine, then they will be able to regulate themselves more effectively.

I know that such things are dangerous for me so I try to avoid things like "Evercrack" especially when I have other things like university classes to take care of. I am afraid of casinos because I can just see myself being robbed by the slot machines ... I mean it is statistically possible to win big money. And if I just gave up after losing $40 that would mean that I was there for no reason except to lose money so it would be more logical to go and win it back. But as we all know, slot machines are overall tilted so that in the end, the casino always wins.

But everyone knows about gambling addiction, especially since there was a Simpsons episode where Marge got addicted.

So how can gaming addiction be reduced? Educate, I say. Even if it means playing corny videos to schoolkids. Being able to identify a problem is the first step to solving it. "Because knowing is half the battle."

I don't see how it's so addictive you'd actually have to quit. There's a limit to what you can do in a given hour, and really if you log in every hour you aren't going to gain a whole lot.

Currently, I log in about 3 times a day and spend 5-10 minutes managing my province, then bounce out. It's a game where the amount you play does directly affect how well you do, but you get major diminishing returns on the time you spend after about 20 minutes a day.

Example: You can only send four or five attacks out, and that's assuming you found targets that have defenses low enough that you can break them with the troops you have four times. Remembering that the troops you send will therefore not be defending your province for the next real-time day or so.. and all this is is running the information from that province through your formatter and deciding how much you need to send to break them.

So you're a mage. You have a limit: number of runes you have, or amount of mana. Cast enough spells and you can't cast anymore for at least an hour - and an hour's regeneration gets you maybe two more spells.

Thieves? Just stealth... but you lose thieves if you fail, and sometimes even if you succeed. And you have "mana" too... a limited number of operations, and the more you attempt the less effective you'll be. You'll need to spend money to train new thieves, but first you have to wait for the soldiers to be drafted from your population, which requires realtime too - and money, which, surprise, takes realtime to be earned.

So there's not much point to playing this game more than, say, a half an hour a day... Even given that, it's a great game, and I suggest you check it out. Utopia Have fun :)

I used to play another text MUD - Utopia - but it got so addictive I had to stop.

I recommend Utopia which is a real time medival based strategy game.
Game time passes by constantly and it usually requires you to log in twice a day or so to manage your kingdom.

If you were a fans of the BBS based trade wars will like this game. Its also a good way to meet people since you are playing one province within a kingdom of 25 provinces and you must all work together in order to have a successful kingdom. (most kingdoms have one or two girls in them even) .

The game runs for a length of time called an age which typically lasts for 3 months. The 13th Utopian age ends tonight and the 14th starts on wednesday so now is a good time to start playing.

One warning though, serious players have been known to set their alarm clocks for 3 in the morning just to log in and make an attack.

games.swirve.com Talk to the guy who runs the site (Mehul) - maybe he'll be willing to give you some tips (maybe not).

Microshaft still OWNZ JOO!

I remember when Swirve had someone like this in their forums. This person spent 8 hours a day + for weeks spamming messages off of the forums, encouraging other people to do the same thing, getting upwards of a 100 different log ins, and constantly posting messages attacking the mods and creator of the game. This person literally spent so much time stirring up trouble that I believe they actually changed the way their forums worked to help get rid of her. Getting rid of people like this isn't stifling free speech, it's a service to everyone else who uses the boards....

Archfiend - Brass Knuckles Webzine

From the Trade Wars webpage:

Realm plans to release Trade Wars on Macintosh, Linux and the console systems soon thereafter.

This is good for us Windows escapees.

Let's hope it isn't vaporware.... (hope I didn't just jinx it!)

PS: For those of you who remember Solaria... Earth:2025 is at games.swirve.com/earth. It a great, large mass of online strategy gaming. There's nearly 16,000 players in the Standard game....

(/shameless plug)


Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)

I played BRE every morning before leaving for class, then checked in again at night when I got home ... for years.

We were a part of a very large network of gamers -- it was a lot of fun playing that way! That's why I've been playing games like Utopia for a while now.