Swirve Blog

Today we issued our first Utopia newsletter update, but as I am sure many of you will have changed your emails or the mail may have ended up in spam, I am posting the main points again here:

WoL and Genesis both end on Monday 3rd Nov, WoL will restart on Tuesday 4th Nov wheras Genesis will take a break for 1-2 weeks, and then be restarted. Game ending times for both games will be significantly different. The fact that they’ are both starting so close together is a once-off.

We have added some new features. The first thing you’ll see when you log in on the next round is a new account system and UI.
Let’s get the premium one out of the way first.

1. Province Sitting

This is the official province sitting option. It is the *only* official sitting option. You’ll see the function in your shiny new account section. In short, it costs 25c/day with the following rules:

-Players may only sit one province at a time -The minimum number of sitting days in any one sitting session is 3

-The maximum number of sitting days over the age (per province) is 21

-Only players within your KD may sit your province

-Only the player who is sitting the province may access it during this time, however, the original owner may cancel the sitting, after the initial period (3 days) is over

-Province sitting will end when the player a) runs out of credits, b) runs out of maximum allowable number of days, or c) cancels the province sitting

You will see where you can purchase this in your main account. Currently, it accepts Paypal but we have premium SMS on the way in a few days.

2. Province Moving

Province moving is now official but STRICTLY limited per round:

-The maximum number of moves allowed *per account* is 3
-The maximum number of moves *per KD* is 3

You can physically move your province into another KD with the following conditions in place:

-The moved province will revert to its initial state, with initial resources/cash, and 3 days of protection

-You cannot move province if there is no space in the KD

-The Monarch in the receiving KD must always approve the move

3. Province Trading

Province trading is now official but STRICTLY limited per round. Just to be completely clear, province trading is taking over a province which used to belong to another player. The rules are as follows (all on a per round basis unless otherwise specified):

- You can switch provinces with another person - provinces don’t move, only the player controlling the province changes

-The maximum number of trades allowed per province is 3

-The maximum number of trades allowed per account is 3

-The maximum number of trades allowed per KD is 3

Province trading behaviour is as follows:

- You can take over someone else’s province, and destroy your own in the process

- You can take over someone else’s province, and leave your old province in the Monarch’s control - who can then assign it or let it be destroyed, but not log into it

- KDs can earn bonus trades. Note that this system is experimental.

We want to allow people sufficient freedom to trade, but also prevent abuse of the system, with people creating farm KDs.

This system will be tweaked over time, with player input. Initially, it will work like this:

Every month:

-Each KD will get 1 bonus trade

Every 2 weeks

-The top 50 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 3 weeks:

-The top 100 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Every 4 weeks

-The top 250 KDs in terms of NW/Honor will get an additional 1 trade

Additional Bonus Trade Behavior

- if you rank for both NW and Honor, you will only be allocated *1* bonus trade

- if you qualified for the last round of bonus trades, you will not be selected for the next e.g., if you are in the top 50, you will be automatically disqualified for the next top 100 and top 250 rewards.

Finally, we will be transferring all games across to new servers over the next few days so you might see a little downtime.

Hi all,

For the next rounds of both Earth and Utopia, we’re going to be changing the servers the games run on - this is why, as you may have noticed, all the games are ending on a similar date. Once we have moved, the games will once again be staggered, so you don’t have too many new nations/provinces to look after at any one time!

The exact dates for the games are:

Utopia: WoL - Ending on the 3rd of November. After that, there’ll be a freeze time of 2 days, and protection for 3 days.

Utopia: Gen - Ending on the 3rd of November. Genesis will take a short break for one or two weeks, to let people grow their WoL provinces a little, and then we’ll restart it.

Earth - The earth games council and limited are going to be extended by a week, until the 9th of November, and primary, alliance, and tournament will be extended until the 16th of November.

Apologies for the late notice and any confusion surrounding the dates, please bear with us as we work on moving the games to shiny new servers!

More information about the details of the new account management system will be posted in the coming days.

Hi all,

Finally we are able to give you some of the Utopia news that you have been waiting for.

Let me start by saying that both of the Utopia servers will restart on November 3rd, as I know that the Question and Answer forum has a few threads about this.

I also have some news about the sign-up system for the game, which we are modifying. From November 3rd onwards you will have only one user account, which can be tied to multiple game accounts - although we will still allow only one game account per server. This means that you will access both your World of Legends and Genesis game accounts via one master account.

We are additionally going to trial a limited form of trading/targeted kingdom selection. In practice, this will mean that next round you will have a limited number of chances to perform different actions. You will be able to either move your province to the kingdom of your choice – with consent from the monarch of that kingdom, and provided the kingdom actually has space for you, or you may swap provinces with someone else – with consent of both players, or finally you may take over an existing province - which would naturally destroy any province which you may already have.

Please note however that this system is experimental, and is likely to only be available to you on the World of Legends server.

A new premium feature will be introduced at the same time which will allow formal account sitting.

Last, but not least, you will be pleased to hear that the game manuals have having a re-vamp and a re-write which is progressing nicely, although we can’t promise that they will be ready for the start of the new age.

Hi all,

Every week I write a jolly list of all the great ideas that you have had during the past seven days for the developers, and especially Roisin.

Each single (not completely off-the-wall) suggestion is read by me, reported on and dispatched onwards, and I have to say that sometimes there are rather a lot, I think my record report to date was some 40 pages long! So, if you are wondering - “Do OMAC read our suggestions?” the answer is yes, both the community managers and the Devs read them.

However, it would make the whole process rather smoother if the Bugs and Suggestions board were kept to just that, and all posts managed to be reasonably on-topic. Likewise, a title explaining what the suggestion is about is helpful, and there is no need to use the prefix Sug or suggestion any more.

Looking forward to many more of your offerings!