I was talking about this with someone the other day, but does anyone remember back when KaW had NPC Kingdoms a couple times in its past? Specifically, they were kingdoms that for all intents looked like players, but were created by the developers with specific scripts to retaliate on failed spy actions and all attacks (if/when they had the units). They were put into the game to give the players at the top something to attack/grow into for profit instead of attacking downwards for scraps (pre-Epic Battles), and were there at the start of the game (or more specifically shortly after by a month or 3), and (I think) after the next major expansion/release of tiers/land (if not the one after that also as well, memory is foggy). They were great for us OSFs since successful steals didn't trigger return fire (the odd failure was worthwhile), so against the right kingdom you could steal from larger targets for decent profit and low risk. I'm 99% certain said kingdoms were removed from the game after a time, but I know we (the players) used to keep lists, and so I'm curious if anyone remembers the names used or more specific times NPC kingdoms were in the game (specifically by the devs, not talking about scripts/macro/bot accounts getting banned left and right). TL/DR: Remember, Remember, the 5th of November...I mean, NPC Kingdoms. Talk about them if you recall. Help prove I'm not insane (for this specific reason at least).
i had only heard rumors. i do remember the early ebs that you could attack constantly. but they would go down everytime the devs would take them off line. and everyone would go "dtw" which meant, "devs turned off the water". my clan wasn't very good at that eb. we lost all the time, didn't seem to matter how much we hit. the best part was that the eb's had their own clan pages. i don't understand why the new ebs don't get one. it was cool when it used to keep track of an eb's "wins". i just don't understand why there used to be such a long cooldown time between ebs. 24hrs seemed a bit much. glad they changed it to 15minutes.
Half the lb is prob dev accounts....#%**^+r was so far ahead of everyone for years running max xtals and non stop hte every day....i mean ...how could somebody be that stupid to waste that much money on a tap tap game where you dont own your account they can ban you basically at will and you have no way of getting your investment back....tap games literally are the worst thing you could spend money on.
This was long before HTE and the like, and the first batch was definitely before the clan system as you know it. Still, I appreciate the input, though I'm a bit concerned something was lost in the translation. I'm staying out of conspiracy theories here. NPC Kingdoms were a stop-gap, and I guarantee the LB was the LB. People really do sink thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars in "tap tap games." I know because I did it for a short while (not here).
I knew the npc kingdoms existed but beyond that I'm unsure which of my old farms were npc or just inactive. I might have a list here still somewhere
It's ok Sholron. I don't remember wordwaster's epic battle either, unless he's talking about the very small (and at the time secret) epic battles beta group on the test server before the update dropped (aside, Wulf never forgave me for something related). That's the only time I can recall anything like what he's talking about. ..and I'm pretty sure that's not what he's referencing. Epic Battles did have a long cool down. Have they been shortened since? It's been a while since I've done one
it is about time you apologized for silencing me. better late than never, i suppose. apology accepted.
NPCs... That's throwing it back. I doubt they're still in the game, I went back and looked for a few a year ago and couldn't find any.
@wordwaster Given that I've silenced so many individuals so long ago, I don't even recall the reason if I did silence you. All the same, you have my condolences for having your "voice" cut out from under you for a time. On topic, and on the plus side, at least you got to experience what it must have been like for the machines ;-) @Avatar, I think they were too, I'm just not totally trusting my memory on that one due to the decay of time.
If there was an announcement, I don't think it was on the forums. I think people just noticed them disappearing after a while (good 'ol "User Not Found" error). Then again, plenty of announcements that old are missing from the forums, so it's possible.
I always thought it was weird when I had return incoming from an account with no wall posts or seemingly inactive ect. I thought it was just unlucky that they where active, because everyone was searching for inactives to farm. Never even thought about them being npc's
It was never confirmed by devs that they existed - but their in game behavior suggested that they were npc though.
Why yes, Sholron, I do. Lightning Towers were so stat-efficient it made me quite upset about later static defense towers (how they sucked for a long time) and caused me to go on a mini-campaign on the subject a while later. But yes..Lightning Towers. They were great.