Kings of Chaos

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Kings of Chaos, commonly abbreviated to KoC, is a text-based Massively Multiplayer Online Strategy Game created by four students at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in December of 2002 as a web-programming exercise. It was originally a project created by a high school student Rocco Repetski; he wanted to learn some programming languages, and he started to build an MMORPG. Within days, hundreds of players had signed up and the for-fun endeavor was suddenly transformed into a very popular online game. For the first two weeks, membership doubled every 24 hours, enough to eventually crash his high-school's server that he was hosting it on. At its peak, membership has reached over 200,000 players. However, membership declined, and as of July 2006, only 56,012 accounts are active in KoC. Kings of Chaos.

Game description[edit]

Kings of Chaos is segmented into ages, which do not have a set length, but generally last for about six months. Age 1 launched in early January of 2003, and Age 2 launched in late August the same year. Age 2 ended February 2004, and was followed by a public beta of Age 3. The full version of Age 3 was launched on July 15, and Age 4 began on February 21, 2005. The fifth age was launched on October 9, 2005. Age 6 began on May 14, 2006.

The premise of the game is that each player is a warlord of his or her own army, composed of soldiers of one race. The four races are Humans, Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves. Players gain soldiers by recruiting friends into their army through the use of a special unique recruiting link issued to each player. Each soldier can be trained into four different specializations, which affect the user's statistics in each of the four skills as well as the amount of gold that is received per turn, which occurs twice per hour.

These skills are:

• Strike Action
• Defense Action
• Spy Rating
• Sentry Rating

In addition to training untrained soldiers to specialize in a skill, players can improve these skills by buying weapons and tools specific to the skill, and by purchasing upgrades. Using those skills, players can attack, spy and sabotage other players, inflict casualties and steal gold from their opponents. Player rankings are composed hourly, based on the relative skill strengths.

Because army size is so crucial to a player's strength, and the rules prohibit a player from clicking on the same recruitment page more than once per twenty-four hours by use of IP tracking, many players use programs referred to as, "clickers." These programs are supported by an online database, which keeps track of the number of credits that each player has accumulated. Players accumulate credits by running the program, which loads the unique pages of other users who have credits on the database. When one correctly identifies the CAPTCHA, a soldier is credited to that player, the program loads a new page, and a credit is given in the database to the person running the program.

The game is free and supported by advertising. An article in the Washington Post on December 24, 2004 discussed the everyday lives of the four creators, three of whom currently attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (students Rocco Repetski, Ben Gelb, and Nick Meyer), and a fourth who attends George Mason University (student Aman Gupta).

Age Summaries[edit]

Age 0[edit]

Age 0 was when KoC first became notable on the public domain and was also dubbed as 'Lord of the Rings (LOTR) - Chaos' as it was released in accordance to the second LOTR movie, The Two Towers. The pictures used (which were later replaced by race shields) depicted characters from the trilogy including Aragorn as Humans, Gimli as Dwarves, Legolas as Elves and Lurtz as Orcs.

Age 1 BETA[edit]

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Age 1[edit]

Age 1 was when the game officially adopted the name, 'Kings of Chaos (KoC)'. The age was relatively quiet as alliances were still only just forming (as many people had previously played with friends, classmates, workmates, and the like, but not as an alliance). A notable fact of this age was the famous war between The Great Alliance (TGA) and New Orc Order (NOO) and their respective allies. Other worthy alliances included Inktank Army (IA) led by Inktank (who won the age) and Relentless lead by orc00, Lovirath_cL, Nuckadamus and several others. Another, the Rising Alliance (RA) was lead by DyCyn and formed at roughly the same time, giving it the right to call it one of the oldest still existing alliances in the game. Another formation was the clan Elite by garnett214, an alliance which was created mainly to take down Relentless. Their reasons were (in their own words) that they were "tired of the bragging by Relentless" and that they "wanted to form another super power to match Relentless". All but TGA and the Rising Alliance are now obsolete with many of the IA members within the Relentless chain. The New Orc Order was disbanded by its founder Wersus but was later reformed by its co-leader, Errtu in mid-Age 5. Elite split later when many of its members joined the Striker Clan after being recruited by LordStriker.

Age 2 BETA[edit]

Age 2 was a private game only for a small select group of people. Most of these people who were playing were invited because they happened to be on IRC, a popular chat client for KoCer's next to MSN, AIM, ICQ and YIM. A notable fact of this age was the establishment of The Nameless Alliance (TNA) by LakerFan and several others who had played Age 2 BETA. Many of its members were apart of Relentless so TNA was a major ally to them, though later many of its members would leave to join Phoenix Rising (PR) in the infamous PR/Relentless split. Secretive to others was this alliance's member list, forum and IRC channel, known to its members only.

Age 2[edit]

Age 2 was one of the most notable ages with the establishment of many notable clans and alliances and was arguably KoC at the height of its popularity and excitement. The invention of a new program called the Clan Recruiter (CR), created by LordStriker, led to the establishment of Striker Clan (SC). LordStriker was invited to join Relentless by some of its leaders (Relentless was an invite only, later it would become public for everyone) which he accepted. Doing so at the time was plausible since Relentless was mass attacking (aka massing) everyone who was not in chain or ally. Though SC and Relentless were friendly, later they would become bitter enemies with the 'KyraKyle Incident' which involved LordStriker and KyraKyle, a high ranked Relentless member. This caused a massive war between the two clans. This age, the number 1 ranking was held by LordStriker longer then anyone else; many thought he would take the age but Relentless, along with several other alliances, led a legendary mass attack against LordStriker which let orc00 take the number 1 rank, moving LordStriker down to number 2. Relentless wasn't popular to many people (given its longer history than SC) but LordStriker was dubbed 'the player you love to hate' from his leadership techniques and playing style, which many regarded negatively. During this age, the infamous PR/Relentless split occurred with several of the newer leaders having difficulty with the older leaders with both groups conflicting on leadership of Relentless. Unable to agree, many of the newer leaders such as DennyD, princess-magenta and fury along with most of TNA and several high ranking Relentless members left and formed Phoenix Rising (PR). Also, IA later became apart of Relentless after Inktank left the game and orc00 taking control of IA. Several other alliances came into being this age, including Frozen in Time (FiT) and The Silent Hood (TSH) among others. Age 2 was the only Age ever where the Kings of Chaos Administrators distributed prizes to players.

Age 3 BETA[edit]

Sabotage was reintroduced during the last weeks of the age. The spy/sab formulas allowed people to spy on people that were in the top ranks. Because of this, Lord Striker's stats were widely posted on the Give Up Already formus. During the age, one recuiter was banned due to not displaying the entire recruit page, a violation that affected many players. orc00 won the age mainly due to the reintroduction of sabotaging. The KOC administrators had not anticipated how much damage could be done to accounts by sabotage, and so many top-ranking players (along with Lord Striker) had all their weapons destroyed in a matter of minutes, allowing orc00 to claim the top spot.

Age 3[edit]

Final Rankings and Stats :

During Age 3, cLickwhORe, a multi-window clicking program, was released to all members of the Phoenix Rising (PR) command chain. This program was - and still is - used to increase one's army size by hundreds or even thousands of troops at a time. Many clans then joined the PR chain in order to gain access to cLickwhORe; By the end of the age, Denny, the chain head for PR, reached an army size of over eight million, the record size to date, due to this strategy. A neutral clan multi-window clicking program from The Lords of peril (LoP) became the recuiter of choice for the neutral clans.

LoP and TSH engauged in a war with the Turkish Rebellion (TR) forces which involved The Rebel Alliance and many others. TR was defeated by the use of chain sweeping, a tactic that involves the sabotaging of an enemy's armoury starting with the lead account and branching down to all of the officers and sub officers of that particular clan. Combined with a mass attack, it proved an effective strategy. This tactic was repeated several times by other clans because of the possible devastation it can inflict upon a clan.. Exactly whom started the term "chain sweeping" is not known.

Age 4[edit]

LordStriker was able to remain at the number 1 spot for almost the entirety of the age, with Denny_PR overtaking LS for a short time before the end of the Age. With cLickwhORe open to all KoC players and other multi-window recruiters present, Phoenix Rising lost its advantage from Age 3 and so took the second spot. As the age came to a close, Phoenix Rising made a plan that would what would put them in the first spot. TheGodFather_LaCN would be sell-off his account to Denny_PR so he could pass LordStriker and beat him once again, but instead of Denny_PR claiming the 300 billion gold, it was bombermanneke. This resulted in bombermanneke taking the second spot and forced Denny_PR to sell half of his Defense Action in order to pass bombermanneke in the rankings again. By taking this steal, bombermanneke ensured LordStriker ended as #1. This would be his first and last time in that spot. This legendary attack bombermanneke made is still the biggest KoC steal ever to date. Though LordStriker had prevailed, this would be the last appearance of LS to the top rankings.

Age 5[edit]

Many were caught off guard by the sudden start to this age, which disrupted many alliances' plans. LordStriker, leader of Striker Clan (SC), left the game after claiming that the game's admins were biased against him, because of the changes to the sabotage ratio that were implemented by the admins after the age started at the request of Phoenix Rising(PR). After his departure, SC, already weakened by internal conflicts, quickly disintegrated. Many left to join the FearlessForce chain, lead by CPH_KILL that had left SC the previous age. Other significant alliances to come out of SC were Strategic Assault and Battery (SAB, under the leadership of OTC-) and The Humping Turtle Clan under the leadership of Xena and Yertle the Turtle. Phoenix Rising (PR) began the age in first place, but lost ground as a series of conflicts based upon their recruiter policies encouraged other KoC alliances to utilize other recruiters in force. The age ended with Graahoeje (LGC) eventually claimed the number 1 spot, followed by Snake_Bonsai of DES and Lor20_PR of Phoenix Rising.

Age 6[edit]

Several notable changes were introduced by the administrators at the beginnings of this age, including the "highest rank" feature (which had failed during Age 5), minor tweaking of the percentage bonuses of races (in an attempt to encourage the use of the elven and dwarven races) and the ability to post bulletins for all officers to read.

Following the success of the co-operation between Lord Galdor's Clan (LGC), Strategic Assault and Battery (SAB) and Relentless Family (RF) during Age 5 with the "growth rotational deal" (an agreement between clans whereby the lead accounts of the individual alliances change position throughout the age in an attempt to fairly split the growth benefits of the chain), many alliances in Age 6 began to try similar rotation deals, including the initial merge between Fearless Force (FF) and Dedicated Elite Soldiers (DES). Another important event was the departure from Phoenix Rising (PR) of three of the leaders who left to form their own alliance, now known as United Legends (UL). BSS/DT and SAB entered into a war early in the age, and once SAB joined the PR command chain, PR also joined in on the side of SAB. A consequence of this was the premature ending of a growth sharing deal which PR had just begun with TDO (The Dark Order). Other notable, early wars included a conflict between FF/DES and ES/LaCN, which cooled off after DES and other chains split off, and was then followed by a new war between ES/LaCN and Nameless/SMA/Sandstorm. Relentless Family has also been in war throughout most of the age (twice with Fearless Force, including when DES was with them the first time, and another with ES/LaCN), yet has still achieved the second greatest total fighting force after a slow start to the age. following the DES/FF split a war between BSS/DT/UL emerged and envtually was resolved after many weeks of sabbing

In addition to the numerous wars, other significant events included the banning of a large amount of cheaters from the three largest recruiters after it was discovered that they were fake clicking using an automated program. Following the mass banning, the KoC site itself was brought down at the beginning of Age 6 through a player's attack on the host server. Some players have speculated that the two events are connected, but there is no direct evidence of this. This age is one of the more controversial ones with the new sabotaging potential, leading to more bitter fights than ever.

Age 7[edit]

• New players are now given 15 attack specialists, 15 defense specialists, and 10 general soldiers to start with. They are also given 150,000 gold and 60 attack turns. This aims to make the game more exciting for new players
• You may not sabotage more than 50 weapons at a time.
• Higher resale value on spy and sentry tools.
• Repair cost on weapons is lower.
• You may now list your alliance/family affiliation in your Command Center.

Forums[edit]

Giveupalready.com hosts the official subforums of Kings of Chaos. Its KoC section is an integral part of the game, since it is where players come to discuss game issues and alliances. The forum was started by Valkhorn in August of 2002 to replace his old Rom forum called "Direct Downloads." It was handed over to Ithaqua in April or May of 2003, and was sold to Tau in January 2004. It has a rich subculture consisting of the "serious" type in the serious discussion forums, roleplayers in its vast RPing section, artists in its books and art sections, and KoC players in the Kings of Chaos subforums.

Attribution[edit]

Some content on this page may previously have appeared on Wikipedia.

Footnotes[edit]