Kings of Chaos
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This article is about the MMORPG. For the album, see Kings of Chaos (album)
Kings of Chaos, commonly abbreviated to KoC, is a text-based Massively Multiplayer Online Strategy Game. It was created by four students at the Thomas Jefferson High School For Science and Technology in December of 2002 as a web-programming exercise. It was originally a project created by a High School student Rocco Repetski; he wanted to learn some programming languages, and he started to build an MMORPG. Within days, hundreds of players had signed up and the for-fun endeavor was suddenly transformed into a very popular online game. At its peak, membership has reached over 200,000 players.[citation needed]. However, membership declined, and as of December 3, 2006, only 39,173 accounts are active in KoC.
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[edit] Game description
Kings of Chaos is segmented into ages, which do not have a set length, but generally last for about six months. Age 1 launched in early January of 2003, and Age 2 launched in late August the same year. Age 2 ended February 2004, and was followed by a public beta of Age 3. The full version of Age 3 was launched on July 15, and Age 4 began on February 21, 2005. The fifth age was launched on October 9, 2005, Age 6 began on May 14, 2006, and currently KoC is in its 7th full age, which began on November 9, 2006
The premise of the game is that each player is a warlord of his or her own army, composed of soldiers of one race. The four races are Humans, Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves. Players gain soldiers by recruiting friends into their army through the use of a special unique recruiting link issued to each player. Each soldier can be trained into four different specializations, which affect the user's statistics in each of the four skills as well as the amount of gold that is received per turn, which occurs twice per hour.
These skills are:
- Strike Action
- Defense Action
- Spy Rating
- Sentry Rating
In addition to training untrained soldiers to specialize in a skill, players can improve these skills by buying weapons and tools specific to the skill, and by purchasing upgrades. Using those skills, players can attack, spy and sabotage other players, inflict casualties and steal gold from their opponents. Player rankings are composed hourly, based on the relative skill strengths.
Because army size is so crucial to a player's strength, and the rules prohibit a player from clicking on the same recruitment page more than once per twenty-four hours by use of IP tracking, many players use programs referred to as, "clickers." These programs are supported by an online database, which keeps track of the number of credits that each player has accumulated. Players accumulate credits by running the program, which loads the unique pages of other users who have credits on the database. When one correctly identifies the CAPTCHA, a soldier is credited to that player, the program loads a new page, and a credit is given in the database to the person running the program.
The game is free and supported by advertising. An article in the Washington Post on December 24, 2004 discussed the everyday lives of the four creators, three of whom currently attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (students Rocco Repetski, Ben Gelb, and Nick Meyer), and a fourth who attends George Mason University (student Aman Gupta).
[edit] Age Summaries
Age | Dates | Clans | |
---|---|---|---|
Age 0 | November 2002 (approx) - January 2003 | OLGUIN and the ETERNAL FRENCH ALLIANCE, (this one was headed by ANA the ETERNAL sabber of the beaten frenchs) | |
Age 1 | January 2003 - August 2003 | Inktank Armrdhy (IA), New Orc Order (NOO), Relentless, Elite, The Great Alliance (TGA), Brotherhood of Chaos (BOC), NATO Elf Alliance (NEsmA), The lkyuRisiytng Alliance (RA), TheBrotherhood(TBH) | |
Age 2 Beta | August 2003 (approx 2 weeks) | Mattchamp He made everyone had sex in the game, but LordStriker came and saved the huge orgy that was happening inside, and made a huge account | |
Age 2 | August 2003 - February 2004 | Relentless, Striker Clan (SC), Elite, TheBrotherhood (TBH), The Nameless Alliance (TNA), Frozen in Time (FiT), The Paladium, The Army of the 12 Monkeys (A12M), Bleeding Hollow Clan (BHC), RoKoC (RO), The Summoned, The One Alliance (TOA), Hellfire Dragon Alliance (HDA)--->Broke off into Elite Dragon Alliance (EDA), The Jedi Order, The Dogs of War (DoW), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), Polanie (POLI POCKET) | |
Age 3 Beta | February 2004 - July 2004 | ThunderSt0rm Alliance (TA), Relentless , Striker Clan (SC), Phoenix Rising (PR) Frozen in Time (FiT), Disturbed Mortality (DM), La Cosa Nostra (LaCN), The Devil's Kitchen Horde (DKH), Order of the Arcane Archers (OAA) Elite Allies (EA),The Silent Hood (TSH), TheBrotherHood (TBH), Order of Templars (OoT), Elite Dragon Alliance (EDA), RoKoC (RO), The Jedi Order (TJO), Order of the Celtic Knights (OCK),Tribu ni Lapu-Lapu (TLL), The Dogs of War (DoW), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), Lords of Peril (LOP) | |
Age 3 | July 15, 2004 - February 2005 | Phoenix Rising (PR), Relentless, Striker Clan (SC), The Last Alliance (TLA), Lords of Peril (LOP), ThunderSt0rm Alliance (TA), La Cosa Nostra (LaCN), Frozen in Time (FiT), Chaotic Crusaders Clan (C3), Lord Galdor's Clan (LGC), Order of Templars (OoT), Valaraukar (V-V), The One Alliance (TOA), Elite Allies (EA), The Silv3r Hawks (S3H), TheBrotherHood (TBH),Saviors of Time (SOT), Elite Dragon Alliance (EDA), The Jedi Order (TJO), Order of the Celtic Knights (OCK),Tribu ni Lapu-Lapu (TLL), The Dogs of War (DoW), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), RoKoC (RO), Dragons Legacy (DL), Sword Masters Alliance(SMA) | |
Age 4 | February 21, 2005 - October 2005 | Dragons_Legacy (DL), Lords of Peril (LOP), Striker Clan (SC), Phoenix Rising (PR), La Cosa Nostra (LaCN), Fearless Force (FF), The Silent Hood (TSH), The Bomberman Army (TBA), Doomsday Project, Frozen in Time (FiT), Relentless Family (RF), Crusaders of Faith (CoF), Dedicated Elite Soldiers (DES), DrunKnTerrorisT (DT), Order of Templars (OoT), Elite Allies (EA), RoKoC (RO), ThunderSt0rm Alliance(TA), TheBrotherHood (TBH), Lords of Peril (LoP), The Jedi Order (TJO),SubZer0 Alliance(SZ), The Holy United Republic/FOXHound (UR/FOX), Tribu ni Lapu-Lapu (TLL), The Dogs of War (DoW), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), Nazgul Reloaded (NR), Dragons Rising(DR) | |
Age 5 | October 5, 2005 - May 2006 | Dragons_Legacy (DL) Lord Galdor's Clan (LGC),Lords of Peril (LOP) , The Silent Hood (TSH), Fearless Force (FF), Phoenix Rising (PR), La Costa Nostra (LaCN), Relentless Family (RF), The Silv3r Hawks (S3H), Elite Allies (EA), Crusaders of Faith (CoF), RoKoC (RO), Tribu ni Lapu Lapu (TLL), Saviors of Time (SOT), ThunderSt0rm Alliance (TA), Descendants of Shadow (DS), Blade of War (BoW),TheBrotherHood (TBH), The Bomberman Army (TBA), Lords of Peril (LoP), The Jedi Order (TJO), The Rogue Army (Currently Disbanded, may restart in Age 6), The Dark Order (TDO), SubZer0 Alliance(SZ), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), Nazgul Reloaded (NR), Dragons Rising (DR) Later Split to Sword Masters Alliance (SMA), The Eternal Alliance | |
Age 6 | May 16, 2006 - November 9, 2006 | ME I just brought peace and love to koc, and killed everyone who thought sabbing, but the HUGE elves army destroyed my account so I wasn't strong enough later to keep the security of koc, I sabbed the elves and got almost dead, but don't worry I'll be back | |
Age 7 | November 9, 2006 | Slayzanotherone (SAO), The Silent Hood (TSH)Dragons Legacy (DL),Dark Judgement (DJ) ,Lords of Peril (LOP) , Fearless Force (FF), EliteSabbers (ES), Crusaders of Faith (CoF), Descendants of Shadow (DS), Dark Judgement (DJ), The Chosen (TC), The BrotherHood (TBH), Nazgul Reloaded (NR), Defiant Dragons (DD), Silent Sands Empire (SSE), Phoenix Rising (PR), Relentless Family (RF), Kings of Destruction (KD), Lord Galdor's Clan (LGC), Straw Hat Pirates (SHP), La Cosa Nostra (LaCN), Bonsai Sabb Squad (BSS), DrunKnTerrorisT(DT), Queens Of Chaos (QoC), RoKoC (RO), Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA),The Silv3r Hawks (S3H), Thunderstorm Alliance (TA) The United Empires (TUE), The Eternal Alliance, The Hegemonic ValCrew (THV), Ruthless Army [RA], The Crimson Legion [TCL], Flames of Eternity (FOE),Barbeque (BBQ)Night Crawler Congress (NCC),StoneColdSabbers(SCS), Nameless/SMA , Unamed clan ( UC, lead by lord-sympho), The Band of The Red Hand (TBRH), Dark Rebellion (DR), The Eternal Alliance, Band of Brothers Alliance. |
[edit] Age 0
Age 0 was when KoC first became notable on the public domain and was also dubbed as 'Lord of the Rings (LOTR) - Chaos' as it was released in accordance to the second LOTR movie, The Two Towers. The pictures used (which were later replaced by race shields) depicted characters from the trilogy including Aragorn as Humans, Gimli as Dwarves, Legolas as Elves and Lurtz as Orcs
[edit] Age 1
Age 1 was when the game officially adopted the name, 'Kings of Chaos (KoC)'. The age was relatively quiet as alliances were still only just forming (as many people had previously played with friends, classmates, workmates, and the like, but not as an alliance). A notable fact of this age was the famous war between The Great Alliance (TGA) and New Orc Order (NOO) and their respective allies. Other worthy alliances included Inktank Army (IA) led by Inktank and Relentless lead by orc00, Lovirath_cL (who eventually won the age), Nuckadamus and several others. Another, the Rising Alliance (RA) was lead by DyCyn and formed at roughly the same time, giving it the right to call it one of the oldest still existing alliances in the game. Another formation was the clan Elite by garnett214, an alliance which was created mainly to take down Relentless. Their reasons were (in their own words) that they were "tired of the bragging by Relentless" and that they "wanted to form another super power to match Relentless". All but TGA and the Rising Alliance are now obsolete with many of the IA members within the Relentless chain. The New Orc Order was disbanded by its founder Wersus but was later reformed by its co-leader, Errtu in mid-Age 5. Elite split later when many of its members joined the Striker Clan after being recruited by LordStriker.
[edit] Age 2 BETA
Age 2 was a private game only for a small select group of people. Most of these people who were playing were invited because they happened to be on IRC, a popular chat client for KoCer's next to MSN, AIM, ICQ and YIM. A notable fact of this age was the establishment of The Nameless Alliance (TNA) by LakerFan and several others who had played Age 2 BETA. Many of its members were apart of Relentless so TNA was a major ally to them. Secretive to others was this alliance's member list, forum and IRC channel, known to its members only.
[edit] Age 2
Age 2 was one of the most notable ages with the establishment of many notable clans and alliances and was arguably KoC at the height of its popularity and excitement. The invention of a new program called the Clan Recruiter (CR), created by LordStriker, led to the establishment of Striker Clan (SC). LordStriker was invited to join Relentless by some of its leaders (Relentless was an invite only) which he accepted. Doing so at the time was plausible since Relentless was mass attacking (aka massing) everyone who was not in chain or ally. Though SC and Relentless were friendly, later they would become bitter enemies a series of unfortunate events, which caused a massive war between the two clans. This age, the number 1 ranking was held by LordStriker longer then anyone else; many thought he would take the age but Relentless, along with several other alliances, led a legendary mass attack against LordStriker which let orc00 take the number 1 rank, moving LordStriker down to number 2. Relentless wasn't popular to many people (given its longer history than SC) but LordStriker was dubbed 'the player you love to hate' from his leadership techniques and playing style, which many regarded negatively. Also, IA later became apart of Relentless after Inktank left the game and orc00 taking control of IA. Several other alliances came into being this age, including Stealth Soldiers Alliance (SSA), Frozen in Time (FiT) The Silent Hood (TSH), Age 2 was the only Age ever where the Kings of Chaos Administrators distributed prizes to players.
[edit] Age 3 BETA
Sabotage was reintroduced during the last weeks of the age. The spy/sab formulas allowed people to spy on people that were in the top ranks. Because of this, Lord Striker's stats were widely posted on the Give Up Already formus. During the age, two recuiters were banned due to not displaying the entire recruit page, a violation that affected many players. orc00 won the age mainly due to the reintroduction of sabotaging. During this age, the infamous PR/Relentless split occurred with several of the newer leaders having difficulty with the older leaders with both groups conflicting on leadership of Relentless. Unable to agree, many of the newer leaders such as DennyD, princess-magenta and fury along with most of TNA and several high ranking Relentless members left and formed Phoenix Rising (PR). The KOC administrators had not anticipated how much damage could be done to accounts by sabotage, and so many top-ranking players hid in inactivity, while those who did not (along with Lord Striker) had all their weapons destroyed in a matter of minutes.
[edit] Age 3
During Age 3, cLickwhORe, a multi-window clicking program, was released to all members of the Phoenix Rising (PR) command chain. This program was - and still is - used to increase one's army size by hundreds or even thousands of troops at a time. Many clans then joined the PR chain in order to gain access to cLickwhORe; By the end of the age, Denny, the chain head for PR, reached an army size of over eight million, the record size to date due to this strategy. A neutral clan multi-window clicking program from The Lords of peril (LoP) became the recuiter of choice for the neutral clans.
LoP and TSH engaged in a war with the Turkish Rebellion (TR) forces which involved The Rebel Alliance and many others. TR was defeated by the use of chain sweeping, a tactic that involves the sabotaging of an enemy's armoury starting with the lead account and branching down to all of the officers and sub officers of that particular clan. Combined with a mass attack, it proved an effective strategy. This tactic was repeated several times by other clans because of the possible devastation it can inflict upon a clan.
[edit] Age 5
Many were caught off guard by the sudden start to this age, which disrupted many alliances' plans. LordStriker, leader of Striker Clan (SC), left the game after a number of events. He also had issues about the fairness of the game claiming that the game's admins were biased against him, because of the changes to the sabotage ratio that were implemented by the admins after the age started at the request of Relentless Family (RF).With his departure, Koc lost its "most hated" player ever.
Phoenix Rising (PR) began the age in first place, but lost ground as a series of conflicts based upon their recruiter policies encouraged other KoC alliances to utilize other recruiters in force (PR using its monopoly status over the recruiter to again unfair advantages). This developed into a series of wars against Phoenix Rising, most notable of which was against Catharsis. The age ended with Graahoeje (LGC) eventually claiming the number 1 spot.
[edit] Age 6
Several notable changes were introduced by the administrators at the beginnings of this age, including the "highest rank" feature (which had failed during Age 5), minor tweaking of the percentage bonuses of races (in an attempt to encourage the use of the elven and dwarven races) and the ability to post bulletins for all officers to read.
Following the success of the co-operation between Lord Galdor's Clan (LGC), Strategic Assault and Battery (SAB) and Relentless Family (RF) during Age 5 with the "growth rotational deal" (an agreement between clans whereby the lead accounts of the individual alliances change position throughout the age in an attempt to fairly split the growth benefits of the chain), many alliances in Age 6 began to try similar rotation deals, including the initial merge between Fearless Force (FF) and Dedicated Elite Soldiers (DES).
BSS/DT and SAB entered into a war early in the age, and once SAB joined the PR command chain, PR also joined in on the side of SAB. A consequence of this was the premature ending of a growth sharing deal which PR had just begun with TDO (The Dark Order). The result of this war was a BSS-friendly treaty that forabde PR members from attacking the BSS chain. Soon after this war, PR was attacked by a small chain of sabbers known as the COC, and after two months of war the two clans mutually agreed to a treaty. Also , big war occured between Crusaders of Faith and ES, and a small chain from Crusaders Of Faith fought well , they were the shadow warriors, led by shadow majestic... The feud is still on , but Shadow Warriors lost valuable members, and therefore lost the es/ cof war.... ( like Sympho_the_reaper, Heiiboy )
Other notable wars included a conflict between FF/DES and ES/LaCN, which cooled off after DES and other chains split off, and was then followed by a new war between ES/LaCN and Nameless/SMA/Sandstorm. Relentless Family has also been in war throughout most of the age (twice with Fearless Force, including when DES was with them the first time, and another with ES/LaCN, yet has still achieved the third greatest total fighting force after a slow start to the age. Another great war was fought between LGC and its allies against LaCN/ES, with BSS team up with LGC later on.
In addition to the numerous wars, other significant events included the banning of a large amount of cheaters from the three largest recruiters after it was discovered that they were fake clicking using an automated program. Following the mass banning, the KoC site itself was brought down at the beginning of Age 6 through a player's attack on the host server. Some players have speculated that the two events are connected, but there is no direct evidence of this. This age is one of the more controversial ones with the new sabotaging potential, leading to more bitter fights than ever. War between the famed LaCN and Phoenix Rising clans broke out in the last few days of the age. The age ended with TheGodFather_LaCN at Rank #1.(With all stats #1)
As a final shake-up the Admins gave a 2 hour notice before the end of the age, giving many players online at the time very little time to conduct and catch sell-offs and thus stopping the huge growth seen in the past age caused by the 1-week warning of the age end.
[edit] Age 7
Age 7 of Kings of Chaos commenced on the 9th of November. Several notable changes made were:
- New players are now given 15 attack specialists, 15 defense specialists, and 10 general soldiers to start with. They are also given 150,000 gold and 60 attack turns. This aims to make the game more exciting for new players.
- You may not sabotage more than 50 weapons at a time.
- Higher resale value on spy and sentry tools.
- Repair cost on weapons is lower.
- You may now list your alliance/family affiliation in your Command Center.
- On December 7, 2006, the site owners ancounced a Redesign Contest for a new KOC layout:
Recruit link handling has been updated to be more robust. All recruiter owners should update their recruiters to use a single session per application. Each session is allowed 15 open windows at a time.
Players who continue to abuse their Alliance Affiliation will lose that feature.
We are happy to announce the Kings of Chaos Website Redesign Contest. Entries for a new look/layout for KoC should be submitted to
designcontest at kingsofchaos dot com
by January 15, 2007. All entries must validate and consist of original works.
This age has been made most notable by the almost instant war that started up between PR/SAB/RF and LaCN/ES over PR's farming utility, IRIS, which allows players to see the stats of people that their allies have spied upon. These two large groups have jockeyed for first position for most of the age, but LaCN's superior numbers put them on top.