Quote the Raven

For those of us who like an occasional distraction while sitting at our desks, and like a bit of strategy too I will suggest the following activity. Introducing one of the few online strategy games that is fun to play and it actually has some sense of planning and development versus most of the games I’ve run across. Allow me to introduce the game named “Travian” …

I first started playing it when a group of friends who I use to game with decided to take a break from the farming and raiding drudgery and try something lighter, but still have some form of team play. The game is worldwide, so if you are going to decide to play the game make sure you join a server that supports your language and also people that are in your general geographic location. Granted there are always exceptions where people on one side of the globe are playing with the you, and coming from past experience sometimes that’s a pretty interesting way to meet people on the other side of the planet when you least expect it. I just wanted to mention the game server details cause sometimes you have better connection and speed if you play a “local” game versus where your friends are playing.

It’s all web based driven so no need to download a client or plugin that makes you question what the hell is being installed on my computer to play a web based game. There are three different races (and basically all humans types, so fantasy gamers might be looking for an elf or dwarf to represent), 10 different types of units, a dozen or so different structures to build, and of course a guild system. The documentation on the site is pretty basic, and at times nearly unattainable, but there is quite an assortment of resources on the internet that you can easily Google at your leisure.

I guess the overall appeal of this game comes along with the fact that you don’t need to have past experience to play, the game developers seem to be very active even if the fact that playing the game is free. That alone was amazing that a game of this caliber was free, and still had a very viable server setup that lacked much downtime at all. There are plenty of games in my past that I paid to play and either the server experience or the lack of customer service drove me away in a very short amount of time. So, if you get a chance and you actually like playing online strategy games with some detail to them go check out Travian. I won’t go on and on with details of the game that you could easily read on their site or any other Travian information site you come across.