Why are you part of the Elvenar universe?

[Moho]

They say Elvenar is a free-to-play browser-based game, where you will build a flourishing city and discover a magical world full of mysteries.

My plan is to devise a more elaborate questionnaire on this topic but right now I'm not sure where to begin. So I thought I should start from my personal experience as well as other players' personal experience in this game.

Here is why I am part of the Elvenar universe: It was a mere accident, which can be summarized by the phrase COVID-19 pandemic. Finding myself confined within four walls for a long period of time during the Christmas holidays and spending more time on the computer than I had before led to a situation where I thought I could kill time by playing a game. The only game I was playing occasionally at that time was Wordament. After a one or two-day search I eventually landed here and decided to stay. The game was beautiful. It looked like a game with some complex mechanics which I didn't understand at that time (and I'm not sure I understand it very well now either) and it seemed to work properly. However, I didn't expect to be playing longer than several months. It was the city-building aspect of the game that drew me in at the beginning but what eventually made me stay was the Spire.

Everybody's experience is a different one. If you enjoy sharing your own exploits or trials, please let me know how you ended up here and why you are still part of the Elvenar universe. Hopefully, I'll be able to gather enough information and organize myself so that I will draw up a questionnaire whose purpose should be to reveal what lies beneath the world we all belong to right now - the virtual realm of the Elvenar universe and the reality of the myriad of people playing this game. I know it sounds too ambitious to be true, but I'm not going to write a treatise. With your help, I only want to identify - if possible - certain general trends and draw a simple conclusion. Let's see if I can.

 

[Katwick]

Some of us simply enjoy the intricacies of Logistics and Supply Chains.

 

[Moho]

the intricacies of Logistics and Supply Chains.

Running an Elvenar city is a problem of management, of course. But so is running a city in Simcity. I'm not familiar with other games on the market. I wonder what makes Elvenar unique in this respect...

 

[Lelanya]

This game has everything that I enjoy: building up, resources and expansion, city tetris, and fighting. Why am I still here? It's a beautiful design, with great players, and it's addictive.

 

[Yogi Dave]

It's such a combination of things. Yes, it's city management, but I found Simcity really boring and tedious with the details and it was only about that. Elvenar has a many more dimensions with the tourney, spire, FA and events. Plus, best of all is working with a group of people in my FS. Add to that the interaction with people in the forums. If this was a single player game, I'd have dumped it long ago.

 

[Moho]

This game has everything that I enjoy: building up, resources and expansion, city tetris, and fighting. Why am I still here? It's a beautiful design, with great players, and it's addictive.

It's such a combination of things. Yes, it's city management, but I found Simcity really boring and tedious with the details and it was only about that. Elvenar has a many more dimensions with the tourney, spire, FA and events. Plus, best of all is working with a group of people in my FS. Add to that the interaction with people in the forums. If this was a single player game, I'd have dumped it long ago.

Yes, I agree with all these arguments. Thank you for your answers.

And I would love to see more opinions. When it comes to Elvenar, every time you think you have covered everything someone will show up and point out something you've missed.

 

[crackie]

When everyone was herded indoors during 2020, I thought there would be too much time to play Civilization, which I have been playing since the first one came out 30yrs ago. Since those games are marathons, I thought that would be a bad idea and I would become very unproductive if I were holed up playing Civ all day. I gave a link with a list of games to my friend and asked him to pick a new game for me to play so I don’t fall into a Civ abyss. He picked Elvenar. At first, I thought the gameplay was too slow and uneventful. Plus, tech trees and wonders…it felt like a low key Civ wannabe. And then fellowship happened and something called chat was discovered and unlocked. Elvenar is really the name of the water cooler to hang around to have fun, idiotic conversations and we just happen to sometimes need to collect things and pew pew some bad guys. Turns out I have been just as unproductive during the pandemic as I predicted, but playing elf games instead, or mostly chatting to strangers, though a few I’m now happy to call friends.

 

[Yogi Dave]

Another thing I thought of during breakfast was the way the game evolves with new chapters, goods, frustrations, etc. Of course, this leads to things to argue and complain about (and say yay about too). With the chapters, I love the storyline quest (I know many don't) except the one in the Elvenar chapter. I felt like I was being lectured at, but I did it anyway. Then we rebelled in the next two chapters - somewhat with Embassies and definitely defiantly with the Traders of Unar. Put those stuffy old ascended beings in their place.

play Civilization, which I have been playing since the first one came out 30yrs ago

I was still playing Civ from '91 when it came out and had added Endless Legends to the mix in '14. So, in early '17 I needed a different distraction. Elvenar fell into my lap, so to speak.
.

 

[ajqtrz]

1) The people. I like helping manage people and have a great fellowship. At first I played solo (for a couple years) but realized that if it was going to be a long term thing I needed some meaningful relationships. So I went out and recruited them...LOL (and they thought they were being recruited to fill my fellowship roster. HA!)

2) I love organizing cities via Elvenarchitect. I've done my own countless times and probably 100 other cities for the fun of it or to help others. Efficient cities are an art form and I am an artistic sort of person (you should see all the songs I've written...whew!)

3) The people. I like talking to people, hence the description of me being "loquacious." Most of the time I find people here actually reasonably polite and often insightful.

So, for me, at this late state of the game, it's the people.

AJ

 

[The Fairy]

I like the city building part, and trying to optimize my city. And I like that I often have to adjust, when I start a new chapter or new game elements are introduced. But what I like the most is the social part of the game, chatting with others, helping each other and working together with others in FAs, spire and tourney. And I have got several friends in Elvenar, and met a lot of wonderful people

It took me a long time to find a game with enough social elements that wasn't fighting games where I risked having my city destroyed.

 

[AeglirielGilmir]

Agreeing with the others above. I started playing because I was drawn by the city building aspects, and also the great design and challenge aspects, but it was for the people that I stayed. I enjoy chatting and doing FAs and other events with my fellowship, and also, unlike other city building games, Elvenar has other things such as events. Also, it isn’t as overly competitive and intense and fighting-focused as other games I’ve played. I’ve met more people than I expected through Elvenar

 

[quin629]

I love all games: board games, RPGs, computer games. Originally played stand-alone computer games (another long-time devotee of Sid Meier's Civ series here, @crackie). Internet was limited to dial-up for a long time so I was late to online gaming. Once we got a slightly better connection, Farmville was my gateway drug. Grew beyond that and found Forge of Empires. Enjoyed the more complex city-building and loved the aspect of Guilds. Got burned out in a leadership role and hated the PvP aspect. Had seen in-game ads for Elvenar so tried it instead. Inside of 2 weeks I'd deleted my FoE city in favor of Elvenar and never looked back.

It's the combination of all the elements. The city-building, the story lines, the graphics, the add-ons (tourney, spire, events, FA), and the interactions with people. With only 25 in a FS it's a lot more personal dynamic than the FoE Guilds with up to 75 members. At first I really avoided any fighting here because I'd so hated logging in to FoE & finding my city had been looted by another player. Eventually I came to realize how much of the game I was missing out. But I still love that I can do a lot with autofight, while others get the most enjoyment out of manual fighting. I like the options Elvenar has for so many play styles.

 

[muffy.]

May 2015 I broke my back …and found Elvenar that Oct .
While I love the game …… it’s the people I come here for .
It’s all of you ~ it’s the laughter , the insanity, the crackiness I mean …
It’s just you ~

 

[Alram]

I came for the spire and stayed because no PvP.
I found this thread interesting.

https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/4-different-kinds-of-players.3578/

 

[SoulsSilhouette]

I've been here a long time. I have always liked this game. When farmville (yes I know) started to die out for that stupid Farmville 2, I started playing. I've always loved the art of the game and I liked that if I left for two days, someone didn't plunder all the booty from my city, like they did in FoE. I raged quit WoW because of the cutie peachy bear things that kept killing me and killing me and killing me and killing me. I found this and I like it. I liked some of the stuff they did.. like linking the tourney with the fellowship instead of that insane neighborhood thing. I have played through the great AW nerfing. I've played through all the negative changes. I really enjoyed the first few years of the FA, before they just got lazy and decided on one never changing map .... thinking it was better to raise the cost of badges instead of changing the map. There are many things that I like about this game and some things I absolutely despise. But I love the peeps. I love the evolution of my play. I started out as a caterer, now I fight... not well, but I'm getting better all the time, sort of. I'm not someone that Inno cares about. They certainly don't pay any attention to my thoughts at all. So I just play my game and try not to quit when they do stupid things. Yes, starting the FA on a tuesday was supposed to hurt the top fellowships by not having a tourney, but they had the spire. I pushed harder during the tourneys because of that, but again, they make adjustments without thought to the bulk of people and concentrate on their fiscal bottom line I think.

 

[crackie]

Given how many people in the thread mentioned the social aspect of the game as a drawing point, it is such a shame they’re funneling all the new players together into new fellowships. You lose a lot of that teamwork and camaraderie because no one knows what they’re doing. At least, that’s my experience doing a month long residency in a newbie fellowship with a new city. Careful Inno. If you don’t play your cards right, that water cooler will just be renamed Discord, and we won’t even have to do any tourney or Spire.

I was still playing Civ from '91 when it came out and had added Endless Legends to the mix in '14. So, in early '17 I needed a different distraction. Elvenar fell into my lap, so to speak.

Even when you’ve done the expansions and DLCs, there are giant swaths of custom fan created content to explore since the game is so extensible. You want to fend off dinosaurs instead? Sure. Zombies? Sure. There so many civilizations and leaders to pick from too that are not officially represented and some of the stuff is just top quality custom content. You can create some very strangely interesting themed games.

May 2015 I broke my back …and found Elvenar that Oct .

PSA: Don’t milk cows with long nails.

 

[Moho]

I found this thread interesting.

I've followed the link and, within that discussion, there is another link to a really deep analysis of gaming and types of gamers. Very interesting, but I don't know if I am prepared to go that deep, that is adopting a sociological or anthropological perspective. But the information in there is quite useful.


There is a lot of interesting info in this thread as well. Right now I think I only need the time to organize it, draw my own conclusions, and move on to the questionnaire I have in mind. For me time is always a problem, and this greatly influences my own playstyle here.

 

[Yogi Dave]

Last thing: I love what I call the Moho Threads. They always have a very light and enjoyable aspect to them, and most are intended to draw us into either a game or sharing something about us. Thanks for them and adding a little brightness to the forum. Now as for @muffy and @crackie, you two crack me up while having good info too.

 

[Moho]

I love what I call the Moho Threads.

This is flattering. Thank you for your kind words.

It's a good forum. I mean, a propitious environment.

 

[Zoof]

I'm around here because I got sucked in by a sponsored recommendation on my browser's (Firefox) homepage. EDIT: I swear! It was an innocent click. Innocent, I tell ya!

The graphics were far above what I was used to, the gameplay mechanics seemed interesting, and I suppose I never left.