New MMO-RTS Open Beta: Stronghold Kingdoms

Costanius

Hi,

Stronghold Kingdoms is a client-based MMO-RTS currently in Open Beta. It plays like a mixture between Age of Empires, Tribal Wars and Stronghold. Its an online  spin-off of the Stronghold medieval castle construction & RTS series.

What I like so far:

-detailled tech tree, lots of options for specialization like warrior, trader, farmer

-get construction elements and design and build Your own castle. You can attack other player-made castles as well.

-work together with the neighbors, elect a district or province governor, build a district city

-You can make other players Your vasalls

-pillgage, plunder or take-over other players villages

-in village view buildings can be placed freely

Play for free:

http://strongholdkingdoms.com/index.php

RudedawgCDN

Can you actually wipe a guy off the map?

The Problem I have with most of these types of games is you get hundreds of player cities/villages where the guy stopped playing but it's literally impossible to get rid of him or take over their home bases.

I think for every 2 days someone hasn't logged on, his defenses should degrade by a certain percentage - and a percentage of units would desert.

Anyways that's why I'll never play one of these games again.

Costanius

Inactive players get wiped off the map after a certain period of time, depending on their levels. So a new player just logging in and not playing ever again will be wiped within 2-3 days.

kassiman

thanks!

been playing stronghold series before and must say one of best RTS around and now this.. mindblown.

ChosenForce

Installing now! Thanks for the thread.

FMLx

unfortunatly they did it Pay to Win

TheLizardbones

Check out Picaroon (picaroonthegame.com). It's currently in beta. Not sure about the cash shop but so far, it isn't pay to win and it's a decent game. At least it's better than Stronghold Kingdoms from what I've heard.

Loke666

I do remember thinking that the Stronghold games would make fun MMOs, even though I rather have all guilds having their own stronghold they can build together in a regular MMORPG than a MMORTS.

Still, might be worth to check out...

Costanius

Looks like the Open Beta build will roll over into the live version so all villages and castles built and ranks earned will continue, no wipe! You can also buy premium features already which apparently several players already did.

I didn't buy any items so far and am in a mostly quiet region of the map, having a good cooperation with my parish steward, improving my village and castle and our parish city. Game can become slow at times now.

But it seems that the paid items and advantages are way too powerful and create a significant imbalance in relation to the free players. Its always a challenge to balance free features with paid features and items in a way that the impact on gameplay isn't too strong while making some profit. In this case here it seems that You just can buy way too many gameplay advantages just with Your money. Firefly needs to re-balance it in my opinion.

momodig

Notice is this #3 are their stronhold kingdoms 1 and 2?

stormriders

I like the Stronghold series on PC, might be worth a try .