8 Realms. 3 Societies. 1 Dominion.
8Realms was a browser-based MMORTS empire-building game developed by Jagex. Players compete to advance their empire through history, starting in ancient times and progressing through the Classical, Feudal, Renaissance, Imperial, Industrial, Modern, and Future Ages, via military conquest, research, and trade. Players compete to advance through the ages the fastest; the winner is the first player on a server to complete the final chapter by building a Cold Fusion Reactor.
The game was first launched as a Free-to-Play closed beta on May 5th, 2011. However, it only met 10% of its sales targets, and so was shut down on July 8th, 2012.
8Realms contained examples of:
- Ancient Grome: The Classical Age has these aesthetics.
- Easy Logistics: Just feed and pay your troops and organize their movements, and the rest is taken care of automatically.
- Grey Goo: A VIP version released a few months before the game shut down made it so that once one player wins through building a Cold Fusion Reactor, the rest are screwed over by the emergence of self-aware, self-replicating nanobots. Their only options are to either build The Ark spaceship and escape the Earth, or get assimilated if they fail. (Though, all three outcomes will unlock a unique unit for the players to use in their future rounds.)
- Incredibly Lame Pun: From the newspost, "The funniest Settlement names (so far)
":But be warned, you'll have to be particularly clever or witty, because - get this - we just won't settle for anything less! (Sorry.) - Ridiculously Fast Construction: Structures like the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China can be built in a matter of hours.
- Rubberband AI: Barbarians will attack you more frequently as you age up.
- Shout-Out: You can train "Gielinor Warriors" in the first age. They wear the same outfit as the Varrock Guards from Runescape.
- Tech Tree: One where you progress through the seven ages (since the eighth, Future, was never implemented in the beta) by reaching 100% culture for that age, and building a wonder that signifies a transition to the next age.
- Timed Mission: The endgame phase, The Race of Glory, which is triggered once one of the players on the server has managed to construct a Cold Fusion Reactor. Afterwards, they win if they manage to keep it working for 24 hours, whereas the other players obviously try to destroy it, as well as striving to build their own Cold Fusion reactors.
- Top Ten List: The creators themselves once made one: The funniest Settlement names (so far).
- You Have Researched Breathing: For example, having to research "Agriculture" to increase food production even though you can already build farms just fine.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Resources used include food, wood, stone, iron, coal, oil, aluminium, and gold. However, no more than 5 of these are in play at any given time, since some of the early resources become obsolete and are replaced by the later ones during the more advanced ages.
