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. [1] However, membership is currently declining, and as of December 30, 2006, only 37,790 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 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.
These skills are:
- Strike Action
- Defense Action
- Spy Rating
- Sentry Rating
Turns occur twice per hour on the half hour. During every turn each player is given their gold income, and an attack turn. An attack turn is literally that, a turn used to attack. The quantity of turns that may be used to attack varies from 1 to 15. Also, on every second turn the rankings update.
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.
IP tracking allows a player to click each link once, however most players can easily change their IP using dynamic IPs This therefore allows each link to be clicked several times from the same computer without any detection of wrongdoing.
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] Alliances
An alliance is a group of people who most often join in a chain to support each other from sabs or farming. Many have forums where their members can discuss Kings of Chaos and post any problems they have. For every 2 clicks your officer receives, you get 1 soldier. For every 4 clicks your sub-officer (officer's officer) has, you receive 1 soldier. This allows for the head of a chain to gain large growth in troop numbers without spending insane amounts of time clicking.
[edit] Age Summaries
| Age | Dates | Declared winners |
|---|---|---|
| Age 0 | November 2002 - January 2003 | Cr1s1s |
| Age 1 | January 2003 - August 2003 | Loviaroth_cL |
| Age 2 Beta | July 2003 - August 2003 | BunBot and fury |
| Age 2 | August 2003 - February 2004 | orc00 |
| Age 3 Beta | February 2004 - July 2004 | orc00 |
| Age 3 | July 15, 2004 - February 2005 | Denny |
| Age 4 | February 21, 2005 - October 2005 | LordStriker |
| Age 5 | October 5, 2005 - May 2006 | Graahoeje |
| Age 6 | May 16, 2006 - November 9, 2006 | TheGodFather_LaCN |
| Age 7 | November 9, 2006 | (Current) |
[edit] Age 0
Age 0 was the first incarnation of Kings of Chaos. At the time, its working title of 'Lord of the Rings (LOTR) - Chaos' came as no coincidence as it was released to capitalize on the popularity of the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers. The game featured limited functionality and few graphics. The main page and profile pages used characters from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to depict the four distinct races.
Alliance interaction was limited in this age, as Chaos had just begun and most had focused on growing by inviting new players.
The primary method of ranking was the total count of the army's "recruit clicks", although top ranking lists were also made available with the most wealth (in the game's currency, Gold) and the least wealth.
[edit] Age 1
The game officially adopted the name it now bears, 'Kings of Chaos (KoC)'.
[edit] Age 2 BETA
As the Kings of Chaos developers planned to rewrite the game, they selected a group of players to play a closed beta-test of the next version. The test lasted for approximately two months. The most notable changes in game mechanics for this rewrite were the addition of sabotage, the destruction of an opponent's weaponry, and a realism factor requiring a player's army to have soldiers with which to arm his/her weapons. The ranking system changed to favor armies with balanced strengths.
[edit] Age 2
Age 2's launch marked the last time a significant change was made to the Kings of Chaos game structure. Notable factors of this age included prize offerings for the age's top ranked players and prize offerings for certain accomplishments such as a strong focus in an important factor of army development.
The alliance community gained momentum as new fan sites and clans formed with the interest of taking a greater position in the rankings. Because the administrators left the player base very little in the way of modes of team communication and discussion forums, this created a ring of communities that operated independently from the game's website but mostly involved communities of Kings of Chaos players.
This was the first age in which "Recruiters" were used. A recruiter is a program which aids in the clicking of unique links.
[edit] Age 3 BETA
Following complaints by new players that the effect of sabotage was too strong, this beta began as a public, open beta test, largely still the same style as Age 2, but with a few of the most highly requested changes to the game including the temporary removal of sabotage. It lasted approximately 5 months, considered by most to be a full age. Throughout the age, adjustments were made to the game in response to player input. Ultimately, the main objective of the game remained the same.
Recruiters further evolved this age as developers found ways to operate multiple browser windows at the same time to minimize the time spent waiting on page loads. The recruiter was the game's primary method of soldier production, rather than sending one's unique link out to a non-player. Furthermore, some alliances had come together this age with their own recruiter systems and command chain organizations designed to maximize the soldier production of the alliance's leader.
[edit] Age 3
Age 3 began fresh with the latest additions made to the game in the final weeks of Age 3 beta. One of these changes was directed at assisting alliance development, by allowing players to choose a new commander in the middle of the age.
This age, the recruiter evolution culminated when one alliance capitalized on the advantage of having the fastest recruiter system available. Again, the primary source of soldiers was the recruiter this age.
During this age, the game administrators received some press attention at the end of 2004. Washington Post article Over 130,000 players were active at the time of the article.
[edit] Age 4
There were no notable changes to the game mechanics in Age 4.
Following the end of Age 3, many alliances had recruited players adept at programming; in order to improve recruiters. Several large alliances split up into smaller alliances.
[edit] Age 5
Age 5 brought changes to the formulae that controlled the success rate and effectiveness of sabotage, and one change in particular that dramatically altered the alliance operations that went on. Each player could now change his/her commander 15 times during the age, this change allowed commanders to boost officers by temporarily joining them. It also resulted in a change to stratagem involving rotating command chains.
[edit] Age 6
This age began with fewer than four days of notice. The administrators abruptly introduced a number of new features including:
- The "Highest Rank" feature: Which tracked the highest rank attained by a player during the progress of that age.
- Changes in the percent bonuses of each race; the reason for which can be cited directly from Aman Gupta (the leveling of the playing field for players of all races).
- Changes to Sabotage. Tool loss was implemented and also a new Spy-tool called the Nunchaku was introduced and the ability to send more than 1 spy.
The end of this age was announced 2 hours in advance. This announcement was believed to have caused a few upsets in the rankings; as there was little time to act on the end of the age.
[edit] Age 7
Age 7 is the current age of Kings of Chaos. Some changes were introduced to keep the game enticing for newer players and to try to curb the unbalanced effect of sabotage that was introduced in Age 5. It also has a little Alliance Affiliation box so you can show what clans you are in, although that feature is, most of the time, abused.
[edit] Notes
[edit] Sources
Rocco Repenski, Nick Meyers, Aman Gupta, Ben Gelb, Greg Linski. Kings of Chaos Video [video]. http://www.tjhsst.edu/~glinski/koc.wmv: TJTV.
Kings of Chaos Help Page. Retrieved on 1-5-2007.
[edit] External links
- Kings Of Chaos website
- Official Kings of Chaos Forum
- GiveUpAlready.com - Global Community Forum (also host of the Official KoC Forum)
