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Warflow
Warflow is a Free browser game set in Chinese history. Deploy and lead your troops to fight!
I have been impressed with Google Flash ads on the internet for a game called Kingory featuring a Chinese Hot Girl dressed in Chinese-style long gown, the girl voicing ‘Play Me.’ Pulled toward the hot girl and hot words, I was trying to register an account to check what the game offered.
As the game was loading, I begin to realize the Game is nothing other than ReXueSanguo, which, as a matter of fact, is the most popular strategy browser game in China based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel (same source material as Dynasty Warriors, Sango Fighter, Red Cliff, etc.). Below are my impressions of the game.
Quick historical background: At the end of the Han Dynasty, China split into three kingdoms: Shu, Wu, and Wei. The novel tracks the last days of the Han, the subsequent conflicts, and the reunification of China. It’s not a dry history text book, but contains tales of heroism as well as greatly exaggerated but entertaining historical narrative. One of the most defining battles in the novel (the Chinese Gettysburg if you will) was the Battle of the Red Cliff in which Cao Cao’s massive naval army was defeated by the combined armies of Sun Quan, Liu Bei, and others following a calculated fire disaster. John Woo recently made a movie about this called Red Cliff. The novel also involves one of the most badass Chinese tacticians of all time, Zhuge Liang. He’s also known as the guy who filled boats with straw on a misty day and tricked his enemies into wasting all their arrows. He’s also a personal hero of mine, like a historical Norm Chow. Also, he’s played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, whom my former roommate Sharon thinks is the hottest man alive.
Well, enough about literature and history. Did you know the actual Chinese name for Kingory translates to Heated Blood of the Three Kingdoms. Of course, this is a very literal translation and the actual meaning is meant to convey the heat of the epic historical struggle. It was nice to see this as the setting of an online strategy game.
I’m assuming that they have decided to title it Kingory because they learned experience from Evony and Casvian. Of course, that is a great step forward the big success. If the naming hit me, I’d like to identify it Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online. However, that may not work well compared with Kingory. LoL, I am a historian, but a gamer.
After a quick initial loading and browser setup which only took a few seconds, I was redirected to a map page. Here, I could choose the gender, a picture, as well as what region of China to begin my conquest. As you can see in the screenshot, there’s a checkbox to agree to player policies. But strangely, when I was on the page, it was checked by default.
Anyway, I picked the best looking guy, named myself ‘Special K’ and ventured forth to build my kingdom.
Whoa! It’s Kung Fu Panda! Surely, Dreamworks can’t be too happy about this. That is, unless there’s some deal between the companies. I’m in no position to speculate about such things, so I won’t. Whatever the case is, I’m not sure what Po has to do with the Three Kingdoms. He sticks out like a sore thumb in a game that’s otherwise grounded in historical realism. But he does give some helpful hints.
There’s an optional tutorial system that teaches you what all the features are. However, I’ve played 2-3 similar browser games with nearly identical interfaces, so I turned that off. I consider myself a pro now.
The game itself is very familiar. In fact, if you’ve played any other recent Chinese browser games, you might be a little shocked by this. There are basically three main screens. The town screen lets you expand your town by constructing buildings like a rally point or barracks. The rural screen lets you build resource mines for the game’s four main commodities: food, lumber, stone, and ore. Then, there’s the main map, which shows all the territories and rival towns nearby.
One of the things Kingory has that other games don’t is a stronger emphasis on the hero. Unlike other games, you can equip your heroes with weapons, armor, and artifacts to strengthen your armies. The stronger your army is, the more likely you can take over a territory or conquer your opponent’s city.
I really like how streamlined the interface is. The main game functions are displayed along the bottom of the screen with non-intrusive icons. Resources, armies, and other stats are displayed on the left side of the screen.
In addition to building structures and waiting for resources to increase, you can spend money to buy in-game items that speed up production and grant bonuses. You can also embark on various quests or make alliances. But be careful, it’s easy to get back-stabbed. Thankfully, beginners are under special protection and can’t be attacked.
To defend your town, you’ll need to raise an army and build fortifications. You can train soldiers, swordsmen, cavalry, and a variety siege weapons like trebuchets and catapults. In addition to upgrading your wall, it’s important to build traps, barricades, rolling rocks, rolling logs, etc. When your opponent attacks your city, these fortifications weaken their armies before they engage your garrisoned troops.
Playing the game felt like second nature and I suspect it’s because Kingory is similar in nearly every respect to a certain other Chinese browser game. I thought the game was fun and had pretty charming old-school graphics. But I don’t quite know what to make of the advertising campaign yet. The ad that appeared on my blog piqued my interest, but not for the right reason.
I’ve never been a fan of products that exoticize the mysteries of the East, even when they come straight from China. As a student of Asian American studies, concepts designed to appeal to an orientalist mindset upset me. And to me, presenting an Asian woman as an exotic, sexualized object without background or justification represents everything that Asian American studies stands against. On the other hand, I really like the Three Kingdoms setting. So again, I’m torn.
I can only hope the folks behind Kingory will choose to focus their marketing on Chinese military history and political intrigue in the 1st century and less on a pretty ‘China-doll’ girl asking gamers to play with her. Edward Said would not be happy.
Warflow is a Free browser game set in Chinese history. Deploy and lead your troops to fight!
X
November 8, 2009 at 12:25 am
I haven’t seen Po in any of the banner ads in a while, but they still use the “China doll” as you called it, and now they use Chun Li in the ads. I’m not sure how they haven’t been sued yet.
Bruceongames
November 20, 2009 at 8:59 am
I have written an article about these similar Chinese browser games: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/11/19/kingory-nap-war-evony-empire-craft-lords-online-what-is-going-on/
ez
December 20, 2009 at 3:13 am
This is one of the best p0rn games I have ever played!!
I cant believe they have it all. My favorite part is where you get to make Kung-Fu panda bend over Chun-Li from street fighter and give it to her like hard!!
You should put all the dirty pics on your post too, I cant believe you just make it out to be a boring Chinese game and leave out all the good bits.
For game currency you pay $30 USD for 300 dildo’s. Dildos can be used to purchase in game items such as aids, crabs, clamidia and many other diseases to infest your enimies with!
Just make sure you always send a lots of condoms with your troops before you go around and rape all the women from enemy villages, this will give your men vigor and if you out number them 2-1 you can double penetrate all the women and get a double vigor bonus!!
I give this game 4 1/2 penises out of 5 penises!!
Gothlaz
April 20, 2010 at 9:17 pm
The first thing I would tell anyone who is thinking of giving this game a go is DONT!
While the game has some good points the support is one of the worst for any mmo that I have played. all one has to do is log on and you will see a group of tweeners overrunning the world chat. This is just one of many of the drawbacks tough. You see the rules of the game are that you must be 18 to play yet it is overrun by the kids with foul language, sexual conversations, and spam. All of which the rules say are bannable offenses, yet it is rampant.
Just look at the previous post. This is the mentality of several of the children on the chat.
Also there are rules against having more than one account per server yet these children have many. Some of them have over 40 accounts. This is not conjecture, they literally have these accounts, yet are not banned from the game.
There are also those in the game that chose not to follow these rules and trade materials, Heros, and Metropolitan cities between accounts. This is a big violation of the rules yet nothing is done to those that spend lots of money on the game.
All one has to do to see that there is a really big problem with this game is look at the forum for the game. http://bbs.kingory.com/index.php
There are quite literally thousands of complaints about bugs, the disgrace that is world chat, and the Multi-accounting players, as well as many other complaints.
On a side note. to progress one must be able to set aside 10 hour stretches of time for conquering the Counties, Shires, and Prefectures. this is 9 hours that you cannot let up on attacking the city or the troops and defenses will reappear. if there is even a 10 second lag between attacks 1/4 of the defenses will re-spawn.
Ratings from 0-5
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 3
Support: 1
Experience: 0
My overall: 1
(My girlfriend hates the game due to the time spent to play it)
Don’t waste your time or your money.
oyooo
June 16, 2010 at 9:35 am
Cheers! Europe Server 2 is coming!
Launch time: 17:00 June 22 2010 Kingory Server Time
Celebration for the opening of new server:
* once bonus: charge first over 20 €
* regular charge bonus
* newbie gift packs
* promotion items
oyooo
June 20, 2010 at 2:16 am
Cheers! Europe Server 2 is coming!
http://www.kingory.eu
Launch time: 17:00 June 22 2010 Kingory Server Time
Celebration for the opening of new server:
* Sign-up bonus: get 160 Vouchers
* Charge bonus: more free gift
* newbie gift packs
* promotion items : 50% discount
Degree-9
December 24, 2010 at 3:01 am
This COULD have been a decent game, but just like one of the first reviews this game has almost non-existant support. So many bugs 10 cans of raid will not even do the trick.
Yes there are multi accounts, but that is not the problem. The main problem is that Kingorys modorators abandon there very own servers when players slow down buying diamonds (in game currency you pay real $ for). Kingorys fix to this is they say “Hey everyone a new server is about to open, come join and buy diamonds again.”
After 6 months the server is pretty much dead, all the good heros and metros are taken mostly by people who spend the most real $ on the game.
The game is a dead end from the start. Unless you like waisting your time, Move on to something better.
Joe Cool
February 2, 2011 at 8:08 am
this game has a huge design flaw… you see in kingory you have to feed your troops it takes X amount of food per hour to feed X amount of troops. but troops only dersert at the top of the hour, so… you only have to send 1 minute worth of food at the top of the hour for troops not to desert. basically it allows players to have millions of troops and never have to have the food it would take to support them. its really lame. i would advise all to stay away from this game.
Peter Pan
April 17, 2011 at 4:01 am
everybody runs bots I want a bot where do u get a bot for kingory