Externals
A hallmark of the game is the community feel you get, both of your kingdom and with other players in the game. Utopia is very much a 24/7 game, in that it never stops. For the casual players, this may translate as you suffering waves when you are logged out. If you choose to play competitively, this may require you to get online soon in response to this wave. As such, communication is essential in the game, whether it be to deal with circumstances such as those mentioned above, or whether it be about rebuilding your kingdom.
Forms of external communication commonly utilized include ICQ, MSN, External Forums and IRC.
ICQ
ICQ is a popular instant messaging computer program, which was first developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis, now owned by Time Warner's AOL subsidiary. The first version of the program was released in November 1996 and ICQ became one of the first Internet-wide instant messaging services.
It was commonly used in the past, ICQ is used to a far much lesser extent now.
MSN
MSN, or Live Messenger is probably utilized by a majority of the utopian population. It allows Group Conversations, which makes coordinating a breeze. It also allows for offline messaging. However, the scope of MSN messenger only goes so far, and many prefer IRC for the presence of bots and convenience which IRC provides.
External Forums
Normally utilized by the more organized kingdoms, these external forums have archives of past age performance, player information as well as kingdom theme, goals and targets throughout an age.
A commonly utilized free forum software is phpBB, which a member will upload and host on their own server.
Community Boards
Community forums are commonplace, with the official ones being the OMAC forums hosted at joltonline. Here are a list of forums.
IRC
IRC is an acronym for Internet Relay Chat. IRC was developed by Jarkko "WiZ" Oikarinen at the University of Oulu, in Finland. IRC is the oldest chat protocol in wide use today. The first IRC network, IRCNet, spawned Eris Free Net (EfNet), which led to thousands of other networks. IRC is an effective way of communicating with people anywhere on the globe.
External Links
- ICQ.com http://icq.com/
- MSN Live Messenger http://download.live.com/?sku=messenger
- phpBB Open Source Boards http://www.phpbb.com/
- Jolt Forums - Utopia http://forums.joltonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1527
- Utopia General Talk http://www.utopiaforums.com/boardroot
- UtopiaTemple Forums http://forums.utopiatemple.com/
- uTimes.org Forums http://utimes.org/forum/
