Chat Wars was publicly released just over two months ago and is still growing with new players. Daily online is about 10 thousand players.
The article is more of an overview of the game and less of a guide for a beginner.
Introduction
I am sure that among the readers of this blog there are a large number of young (and not so) people in whose life one way or another there were massive multiplayer role-playing games, or, more simply, MMORPGs. World of Warcraft and Lineage 2 are perhaps the brightest and most famous representatives of the genre. There is even less doubt that over the past couple of years regular readers have often come across the concept of a 'bot' for a 'messenger', probably even tried some, and some, perhaps, even use it on an ongoing basis. An article with a selection of the most interesting bots for Telegram was published on our resource quite recently. Nevertheless, over the past time, through the efforts of an employee of one well-known payment system – Vladimir Koltsov – and his team, consisting of two people, among the many bots for Telegram, something unusual and truly interesting has finally appeared. Of course I'm talking about the first domestic text MMORPG Chat Wars.
Management and mechanics
The whole game is written in the form of a bot for Telegram, which, through the efforts of the players themselves, is constantly overgrown with a great variety of additional bots and chats. The game interface is made in the form of buttons and text commands that you enter into the chat window. The essence of the game is extremely simple – five opposing forces are fighting for resources and superiority over each other. The game has a fantasy setting, if of course you can put it that way in relation to a text game: five castles (white, black, red, blue and yellow), kings, knights, swords, spears and armor.
Recently, the game has appeared 'donat' – an opportunity to purchase crystals for real money. Crystals can be spent on redistributing your attack and defense parameters, moving to another castle and some other features that do not affect the gameplay. The creator of the game has repeatedly stated that it will not introduce a 'donate' that affects the game's balance, so all players are hoping that the 'pay to win' model will be avoided when monetizing the game.
Character interaction interface
Game process
Starting in the game, you choose a faction for which you will fight, and become a cog in the huge castle system. As in any other RPG, you start from scratch – the basic characteristics of attack and defense are equal to one, you have no weapons, no armor, no money (or 10 gold if you followed the referral link). Before the upcoming ascent to Olympus, you need to decide which path you will go – 'attacker' (aka DD – Damage Dealer) or 'defer' (from the word Defense – protection): this will determine your role in the upcoming battles between the castles, which, by the way , take place in the game every 4 hours – 8:00, 12:00, 16:00, etc. by Moscow time. As the names suggest, attackers during battles are sent to inflict damage on other castles, and defers defend their own, but at the same time, it is not uncommon for all the attackers to defend the castle to prevent the 'breaking through' of the defense. If, at the end of the battle, the attacking forces broke through the defense of the castle, each player of the losing side loses 30% of his gold, if the defense survived, then the attackers already lose part of their gold, and also have a chance to leave something from their uniforms on the battlefield – they pick it up victorious defenders. It should be noted that at the time of this writing (February 2017), the game has a noticeable imbalance of power and a shortage of defenders, since their path to wealth and prosperity is much more difficult than that of attacking players. At the moment, most players are pumping either only attack or only defense, however, the creator of the game in his last interview recommended a 70/30 ratio in favor of some of the indicators, because some high-level armor and weapons that are not yet in the game will require a certain number of points for both parameters.
Example of a report on the results of a battle between castles
In their free time from battles, players spend completing quests, of which there are now three: a trip to the forest, a trip to a cave and, of course, 'Robbing Cows'. Did I forget to mention? The game is almost entirely made in a humorous genre, and all the texts in the quests are quite funny, so the old meme about 'cows' came in handy here. As a result of completing the quest, you get experience, gold and resources, but you can return with nothing, and in some cases with the loss of money. Completing the quest requires 1-2 units of stamina, which replenish at a rate of 1 unit / hour. The total amount of stamina, unlike the indicators of attack and defense, can only be increased by inviting new players to Chat Wars using your own link. Initially, you have 5 units of stamina, and this is generally enough, however, bringing the indicator to 8-10 does not hurt, but keep in mind that the maximum indicator of stamina does not affect the speed of its recovery, that is, if you gain 50 points of stamina, recover from zero to a maximum, it will be more than two days.
Funny references to games, literary characters and memes in quests
In addition to quests, players will find unpretentious fun in the tavern, such as dice and the opportunity to drop a few coins over a mug of ale, an arena with a battle system reminiscent of ancient browser games like 'Fight Club' and, of course, communication with other players. As in any other MMO game, in Chat Wars you will pump, move into more serious squads, meet new people and, best of all, chat with them. Without communicating with other participants in the gameplay, primarily with your comrades in the squad, I'm sure the game can quickly get bored.
The recently introduced system of crafting (creating) items deserves special words. At the moment, there are several recipes for high-level weapons and armor that are superior in performance to the top things that can be bought in the castle shop. The creation of these items requires the cooperation of a large number of players. recipes consist of an amount of resources that is almost impossible to collect alone, so crafting is carried out literally by the entire castle. The ability to change resources between players and sell them in the castle shop for gold was also introduced quite recently, thereby plunging the rudiments of the market into chaos and introducing an imbalance in the game – many players who have accumulated a lot of resources in two months of the game have sold them and purchased expensive weapons. therefore now it is almost impossible to defend your castle from attack. The latest update gave the game chests that can be found when going into the cave. Chests, of course, can be opened with keys, but they either have to be purchased for rubles (hello Valve), or be knocked out on campaigns to the 'korovyi'. In the chest you may come across a rabbit's foot, top hat, lady's hat or one of four pets – Donkey, Pig, Horse and Goose, each of which increases some of your stat (except for Goose, which in the game you can, forgive, only choke – the developers have such a sense of humor). The pet becomes your text tamagotchi: it needs to be fed (food will also fall out of chests or korovans), it will be pumped along with your character and over time it will bring more and more benefits.
What the future holds for the game
Even now, Chat Wars contains most of the basic features inherent in games of this genre, however, according to the last interview of Vladimir Koltsov, we will find even more interesting and familiar to us from the 'big' games activities, namely:
- Boss raid trips and other mass events (I believe that along with them, a unique loot with especially outstanding indicators will appear)
- Professions: so far Koltsov spoke only about earners and crafters, and it is completely unclear how this will be implemented
- Construction of buildings in the castle that will help in hostilities and simply develop your faction (now the ground is being prepared for this, two captureable forts have been introduced into the game, which replenish the castle treasury with resources – stone and forest)
- Guilds / clans
- Auctions or another type of trade that will allow you to sell or transfer your weapons and armor to other players (now you can only exchange resources)
- New quests, the ability to sharpen weapons and much more
Conclusion
Chat Wars is a very unusual and interesting project, and that is why the game is so actively gaining popularity and a base of regular players. Here, those who have a nostalgic tear down their cheeks at the words 'pumping', 'loot', 'gear' and 'siege', and those whose first and only computer was a Macbook Air in conjunction with an iPhone, can come together in battle.
The game has a lot of advantages:
- Low entry threshold – no sharpness of reaction required, no top-end smartphone, tablet or PC
- Large and diverse community of players
- Constant updates and the emergence of new ways of spending time
- Having a sense of humor among developers
- The ability to spend a minimum of your time playing
But there are certainly drawbacks:
- Due to the fact that the game is made on the bare enthusiasm of three people, updates are not released as often as the players would like
- For the same reasons, the game actually lacks those. support (it should be noted that I never needed it for the entire time of the game)
- A sudden update can lead to an imbalance in game power
- And just like any other online game, Chat Wars is quite capable of taking away the lion's share of your free time if you let it.
You can start playing Chat Wars by following my referral link and get 10 gold, or simply by adding @ChatWarsBot to Telegram.
Tell us in the comments what you think about this type of games, are they able to interest you, or are you not ready to spend your time playing without a beautiful picture? Or maybe you are already playing and want to share your impressions?