Readers are encouraged to avoid this game entirely. It has been accused of being a spyware program in disguise.
Evony is a Browser Game MMORPG where you start off in charge of a tiny village and build it up into a mighty kingdom.
The game has a strong social element. You are advised to join an Alliance, who can support you in war, can't attack you, and can communicate with you via chat. Alliances are composed of the Host, who is formally in charge of the alliance and has the power to dissolve it if necessary; the Vice Host, who is second in command and has the power to boot members; the Presbyters, who function as diplomats and can form alliances with other alliances; Officers, who serve as recruitment for the alliance and have only powers of recruitment; and finally Members, who have no special powers.
The game is infamous for its banner ads featuring scantily-clad women that were common on websites like LiveJournal, FanFiction.Net and even this very wiki.The game is also controversial for having been accused of being disguised spyware by some, including a blogger
who would later be sent a cease and desist order by Evony LLC, though this was dropped soon after.
The Evony developers launched two sequels: Tynon, which uses the same advertising strategy as Evony, and Evony: The King's Return, which forgoes sex appeal in its advertisements in favor of advertising it as a "pull the pin" puzzle game, though these puzzles are only present for the first few levels, and thus don't technically count as false advertising.
While the spyware accusations have not been outright confirmed, we would still recommend readers avoid this game just to be safe.
Evony provides examples of:
- Ancient Grome: The Europe culture combines Classical and High Medieval aesthetics for buildings and fighters.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: Some of the units are labelled this way. The "arquebusiers" and "Musketeers" are both armed with a bow and crossbow, respectively, instead of gunpowder weapons, the "Trebuchet" is just a catapult with extra spikes on it, and the "Imperial Lancers" are armed with swords, not lances.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can buy in-game coins with real money, which allow you to purchase resources and helpful items.
- The Cavalry: You will be very glad of your allies when they come to bail you out. Build relief stations to make the most of this, especially if you're a long way away from your allies.
- Easy Communication: Mail can reach other players very quickly considering that you're role-playing lords in a medieval setting. Averted in how long armies take to reach distant destinations.
- Historical Domain Character: The generals in the game are based off historical figures, making it possible to have a roster of generals from across eras and cultures.
- Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: Evony's advertisements frequently feature scantily-clad women that do not appear in the actual game. Ex-Trope Namer.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Exaggerated. Evony's marketing campaign is notorious for the amount of misleading and false advertisement utilized.
- Usually, the ads will make it look like a pornographic game, though in actuality it's a clone of another Chinese browser game named Kingory, which in turn is a clone of Civilization where you build and fight ancient cities. The ads for the game actually did showcase things that were actually in the game in some way, such as standard pictures of armored warriors, but would later begin showing ads featuring a woman with a sword pointing into her cleavage with the caption "Save your queen!" The rest is history.
- One ad did show a Civilization-like game. Granted, like nearly all of Evony's ads, this one also had a woman in the foreground.
- Not quite a lie, but none too credible at all: one Evony ad boasts that someone (ostensibly, at first, a critic) claimed that Evony is the greatest MMORPG he'd ever played. The quote is attributed to, in much smaller font, an Evony player. His username was given, but no real name or credentials apart from "Evony player".
- Some ads for the game have used material from other games and media, likely without permission from the copyright owners:
- One ad on Facebook showed a screenshot from Counter Strike: Source accompanied with the caption "Level 2 is impossible!"
- Another Facebook ad showed Gengar saying "Can you beat level 3?"
- Yet another ad directly stole a pinup picture of a 3D model of a woman from DeviantArt user rrward. Said user would eventually discover this and make a post calling out the theft.
- Still another used a Crane courtier from Legend of the Five Rings.
- The King's Return instead opts for the standard misleading adverts that most mobile games utilize, featuring puzzles that stop showing up past the start of the game. Some YouTube ads have also derided other mobile games that falsely advertise gameplay, with these particular ads being considered hypocritical by audiences due to the game's other advertisements also falsely advertising gameplay.
- One-Word Title
- Sex Sells: The game's ad campaign is infamous for showing increasingly unclothed pictures of women who don't appear in the game. Evony would become so infamous for using softcore porn as ads that they would leave the name of the game out on some ads, yet viewers could still recognize them as Evony ads. The same notoriety has led to a lot of parodies (web-based card game Alteil had "She is actually in our game, m'lord!", for example) from similar games and webcomics.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Though it's a bit more complicated than just matching up units, other units support each other in odd ways due to the range stat.
- Tamer and Chaster: The still-misleading ads for The King's Return largely forgo the scantily clad women in favor of endorsements from A-list celebrities and puzzles.
Readers are encouraged to avoid this game entirely. It has been accused of being a spyware program in disguise.
