Story Time: Of Polish Evil Islands servers
This is a very weird one. Evil Islands had a bunch of master-servers for its online component: Russian, English, German, Polish, French, some others. A few years after release, though, none of them were very active. None except the Polish master-server – it had games going on it all the time.
So what’s the problem? Just go to Polish master-servers and play, then! Well the problem was that they’d kick everybody who doesn’t know Polish language out. You could enter a German server and say you don’t know German and they’d be fine, but enter a Polish one and say that you don’t speak their language? A few seconds later you get kicked out from the server. Sometimes even just a simple ‘hi’ would lead to that. I don’t know what is it with Polish Evil Islands community, because, honestly, I have never encountered anything like this neither before nor since.
Months have passed, tons of unsuccessful attempts to play my favorite game with my Polish brethren (hey, I do have some Polish roots in me after all), and I have picked up a few things. Mainly that ‘cze’ means ‘hello’, ‘tak’ means ‘yes’, and ‘nie’ means ‘no’. What more do you need?
So, I’ve entered a server from Poland. And have sent a message in chat: ‘cze’. I was met with hellos back from the players on the server. Everything was fine! We were completing quests, playing together, saving each other from a bunch of crazy Lizardmen… And then something happened. Something that my genius plan to infiltrate the Polish servers didn’t account for. I was asked a question.
Oh shit. What do I do? They specifically asked me something, saw my ‘Farlander’ nickname in the message, but I have no idea what to say. Chances are that it’s a yes or no question, right? I didn’t know any other words in Polish anyway, so it’s not like it mattered if it wasn’t, I just had to choose either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’… so I opened the chat window, and after a careful deliberation decided to send a ‘tak’. A few seconds later the chat was filled with ‘O_O’ types of messages. I don’t know what they asked. I don’t know what they deduced exactly with my ‘yes’. But I do know that a few seconds later I’ve been met with an all too familiar by this point message of being kicked out from the server.
Posted on May 14, 2014, in Story Time and tagged Evil Islands, Story Time. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Stanislav Costiuc 
Haha, I can’t believe I’m reading this. 😀 I even wonder if it wasn’t my server! I think it was actually. Stanislav you wouldn’t believe what was going on in polish community of EI back in the days when I was playing it. That was around 11 years ago. One day I will write a full story in english about it, for now I will give you the short version.
It all started from mods. First polish players that played EI cheated ALOT. They didn’t play fairly, because multiplayer was considered too hard and unbalanced for that. One day a player emerged and he started to play fairly against all odds. He started to convince other players, that this game can be played fairly without cheats. He managed to convince some of the players that it is possible and together they’ve successfully completed all quests in multiplayer without using any cheats. They proved that it is possible and thanks to this achievement, they’ve managed to convince many other players to play fairly. They’ve created the first regulations of fair play in EI. It may sound a little strange, to play by some rules created by someone, but from my own experience I can tell you, that those rules greatly enhanced gameplay experience and that is exactly why we had so many players for so long. Thats how polish fair play started.
Soon the community of fair playing gamers got bigger and a new guy has emerged from the crowd. He was probably a sociopath or surely something similar. We had problems with cheaters coming to the servers of fair playing gamers and destroying their characters. It was extremely hard and time consuming to grind your character by the rules (but also extremely rewarding) and fairly playing gamers were pissed off about those cheaters. This new guy used that and he created a tradition of cursing those cheaters. He convinced many fair players that they should curse those cheaters. When I came to EI, that tradition was already extremely popularized. We literally had our own inquisition there. Modding this game in any way was completely forbidden. Anyone who was accused of using any kind of mods or not playing by the rules was considered a target for foul language, mockery and bans from every fair server. Under this guys pathology, players even started to create sites with lists of nicknames, to list all the players that were not playing by the rules. They’ve called those sites “List of morons from Evil Islands multiplayer”. Yup, they were nuts and hateful as hell. Of course they (especially him) considered themselves the rulers of polish EI community. Everyone who wasn’t agreeing with them landed on those lists. You probably wont believe, but I’ve seen fair players who were wrongly accused, that through various forums tried to prove their innocence in front of inquisition leaders. Many players were terrified, that they will land on those lists and they will have no one to play with (not everyone could create their own servers to play with others) and that they will become a new target for foul language and mockery. I’ve also seen that those pathologic types were using false accusations to get others in line, whenever they wanted to. I’m serious, what I’m telling you here isn’t a joke, it really happened.
When I saw this, I got extremely pissed off. I couldn’t believe how easy it is, to brainwash people so hard. I knew that mods can greatly expand the game if only created by fair playing community for fair players, but they were completely forbidden by those nuts. So I decided to create my own clan and change the rules. I was playing on a very similar (almost the same) regulations as other fair players, but my clan accepted the fact, that not everyone like to play fairly and it isn’t a reason to curse them for that. I wanted my clan to be an example for others, that we can live peacefully together, as long as fair players will stick to the fair servers and cheating players will stick to the cheating servers. I tried to teach them respect for eachother, because it was beyond me what was happening there.
Our clan of course got heavily targeted by those nuts and because most players feared them, we were also targeted by many of the others, but not everyone. Some people approved our initiative in secrecy. We were struggling with complete disinformation about us. Those nuts were telling others that we are cheaters and many other lies. Many others blindly accepted that and they didn’t want us on their servers, but thankfully I was able to create my own servers. It went for months like that and I was already loosing hope. One day, I’ve managed to contact the first fair player of polish EI and I told him about my initiative. He approved it, so I told him that I need his help, because I can’t convince them, that mods wont eat them. 🙂 This guy was an authority in this community, because he was the first to prove that it is possible to play without cheats, but he no longer played EI. I’ve managed to convince him to say something about it on a forum of the biggest clan in EI at that time. He did and guess what… yes, they’ve finally accepted mods and some of them started to create their own and someone else even translated russian mod with additional quests (I don’t remember the name of that mod). Yet did they started to respect eachother? NOPE! I had a good lesson there, you just can’t change people’s mentality. Nonetheless there were good players too, which understood that we should have respect for eachother.
So in short Stanislav, you were kicked/banned, because we had our rules of fair gameplay. We didn’t played with those who didn’t abide them, because it wasn’t fun for us to play with someone, who didn’t work for his success.
I’m seriously wondering if it wasn’t me, that kicked Farlander. I seriously think it could have been me indeed, but that was a long time ago and I don’t remember. 🙂
Wow, thanks for the fascinating story! 🙂 I didn’t know what was going on at the community at the time.
I thought it was language based or I don’t even know, because I’d be kicked off anytime I said ‘sorry, I don’t know Polish’ or ‘I’m from Moldova’ or ‘could you speak in English, please?’ or ‘I can speak in English or Russian’ or stuff like that, and the only time I wasn’t kicked off immediately was the time when I tried to fake being Polish. The story told here was the last time I ever tried to play on a Polish server.
So it’s weird to me to hear about being kicked out due to those rules of fair play, cause most of the time I didn’t even get a chance to play, and when I did it wasn’t like I was cheating or anything. Maybe I said that I was, I don’t know, like I have no idea what question I was asked and what the hell I replied to 😀
The guys on Russian servers played original EI multiplayer a lot, we had even a guide on how to efficiently level up in it, so it’s not like we had to be convinced that it was possible to play fairly in multiplayer, we played it fair and square, like, a lot. It’s true that we started to have a lot of mods (and then eventually quite a lot of cheaters, sadly, so a lot of people moved from public games to private), but the main reason was simply because we were getting bored and wanted more variety, mainly in quests. Plus, we started to have rebalancing mods again, not because we thought the original was impossible, but to have more variety and not spend tons of time on grinding particular builds (because you could play the end-game only if you raised your character a certain way).
Anyway, thanks again for this story of what was going on in the Polish Evil Islands community at the time, it’s very interesting 🙂
And if you did indeed kick me out that one time, then no hard feelings. I might’ve been angry at the time, but now, hey, you’re part of a fun story! 😀
Hello and OH! MY! GOD!
This is fun, sad and incredibly interesting at the same time.
We always knew in russian-speaking community, that polish players were very fond of this game, but never imagined such things.
Stanislav here is one of the few who tried to play with people from Poland. I also tried, but was inevitably kicked but server owner.
There are not so many fans that follow EI these days, but it will be very interesting to tell your story to them. Can I post this on my web-site, that is dedicated to Rage of Mages (Allods) and Evil Islands Universe? It is available on http://allods.gipat.ru and is probably one of the very few fansites that are still posting something about this series.
If you are interesting, please feel free to add me on Skype (rintmaster). Polish players were always a mystery for us and this will be indeed an interesting story. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
P.S. Sorry, Stas, for interrupting such discussion here, but this is amazing and can be very interesting to many people, who still loves EI. 🙂
I don’t know how to edit comments here, so i absolutely meant “If you are interestED”, sorry for that typo 😀
I actually wanted to tell you about this 🙂 It’s just I was at work at the time, and then on the weekend my laptop crapped out (it still doesn’t work properly now, but at least I can go online 😀 )
Thanks anyway, Stas. But you should consider taking a hammer as big as you can find and smash your laptop with all your rage and frustration and buy a new one that will not die, grabbing all your info to the other world. 🙂
@Stanislav
You don’t need to tell me that! This is indeed a funny story and it wouldn’t happen without your blog post, so thanks for that! 😀
There were three barriers that prevented foreigners to play with polish players:
1. Language – Our community was filled with very young people. There were older as well, even around 40 years old, but most of our community was very young. Almost nobody knew english well enough to freely communicate with foreigners. As you’ve probably already noticed, I’m not a great english user myself and 11 years ago I had far less courage to communicate in this language. 🙂
2. Rules – We played by our rules and due to the fact, that most of us didn’t knew english well enough, we weren’t able to communicate those rules to others in a proper way. Nobody wanted to brake the rules because of two things – those were really good rules, which gave us alot of satisfaction from a sense of great achievements coming from hard work and we had huge problems with the third barrier…
3. Politics – As I’ve said before, we had some serious issues with some pathologic types, who were corrupting the whole community with their highly distorted worldviews. Players were literally afraid of playing with foreigners that didn’t knew our rules, because foreigners were considered cheaters just by the fact that they didn’t knew. Anyone playing with someone who was considered being a cheater (not abiding the rules) ended up as a new target for self-established “rulers” (I’m putting that in quotation marks, because it is hilarious to even say such things, but trust me when I say, that we had more than one of this kind of freaks there) of polish EI community.
Typical chat contents after entering polish server were: cze (hello), uczciwy? (do you play fairly/by the polish rules?), ile expa? (how much experience do you have?), so you’ve said “yes” to the question “are you playing fairly?”. 😀
@Evgeny
Sure, I don’t see any problem with that! It is nice to know, that there are still some fans of this game, after all those years. 🙂 You can of course use all the contents of this comment as well and any other about this topic I may post in the future here. I will also provide you with something extra…
Translation of the polish rules of fair play in EI, with my additional explanations:
1. Don’t use any mods like for example “mappack” or other mods created by someone or even yourself, when you play using your fair character. (Exception: it isn’t forbidden to use crack and better camera angles, which doesn’t affect the game balance in any way)
Comment: We considered mappack to be a cheat, because we were hardcore players looking for challenges and mappack was easing the game too much. The exception was added by me – the crack eased turning the game on and camera angles gave me more freedom to admire the game’s graphics. 🙂
2. Don’t play where you aren’t helpful, or don’t play with someone who has too much or too little experience on his character compared to your character.
Comment: This rule was created to prevent players from getting free exp by playing with someone more powerful. The whole point was to earn it by our own efforts and to be helpful to eachother in a fight. Additionally this rule should be combined with the rule number 7. The rule number 7 was a way to make the rule number 2 more precise for more experienced characters. Mages compared to warriors had way more experience on higher islands, however warriors even with lower experience were still able to easily deal with enemies from higher islands (not counting the last island, due to lack of balance [which was caused mainly by the stupid 2% hp regen on zombies -_-]), so the rule with experience was no longer appropriate. That is why the rule number 7 was created.
Actually there is an interesting story behind those two rules. The rule number 7 was created by the first polish fair player and it was a very good rule which I’ve later used myself in this regulations. The rule number 2 appeared later due to other clans copying the first rules, but in their own way. I prefer the rule number 7, though the rule number 2 isn’t bad too, because we were familiar with the game well enough to tell, if someone can play with us based on amount of his character’s experience and class.
3. Don’t use any items from higher island on lower island, but you can use items from lower island on higher island. (Example: don’t use runes from Suslanger in fireball spell on Gipath, but you can use this fireball on Suslanger)
Comment: The point of this rule was to not make the game easier. The items from higher islands were much more powerful. Additionally this rule made more items useful. “Suslanger” was a polish translation of the third island’s name (the one with deserts). I don’t know if you had the same name and I don’t think so from what I’ve seen in the rebalance tool. 🙂
4. Don’t take any items from anyone for free, including money.
Comment: Same as with experience, so as said earlier, the point was to earn it by yourself.
5. Don’t borrow money from other players if you know, that you won’t be able to pay that debt in the near future, or you know that you won’t be able to pay it at all.
Comment: By “near future” we usually considered 3-7 days.
6. In case that you would like to sell some item to other player using trade, the price of this item shouldn’t amount to less than 3/4 shop price of that item (ready to be bought, not created with item constructor). To calculate such price you have to take a look for how much you can sell that item to the shop and afterwards divide it by 2. Thanks to this you will recieve 1/4 of the shop’s price of this item, which you later add to the full shop selling price to recieve its 3/4 price. It is forbidden to intentionally buy items only to sell them later to other players for lower prices.
Comment: This rule was created by me, because earlier regulations didn’t had any rules covering player trade and therefore it was considered to be a forbidden practice. The seller actually didn’t gain much from that trade (but he still gained something, so it was considered fair), nonetheless this practice was considered a helpful gesture from the players with more experienced characters.
7. It is forbidden to do quests on an island on which you can’t kill at least 3 types of enemies.
Comment: Explained in rule number 2.
8. If you want to play on Cave, you have to accomplish the “Aiset-Bek” quest only by yourself (as a test of your skills).
Comment: That was a little challenge to test if player was ready to play on the last island. The last island was translated to “Cave” in polish version of the game.
9. Play with your fair character only with other fair characters. Don’t play using your fair characters with people which fairness you aren’t sure.
Comment: “Fairness” meant of course a player/character playing on this regulations and that was probably the rule, that has kept you out of the polish servers. 😛
I may provide you with more materials/info about our history if you will be further interested. 🙂
Thats very interesting. Probably no one from our community knew about such things. Thanks for sharing. These rules are very good and fair. I prefer such style of playing, but it was never a rule when we played EI. For example, giving your old item to people you play with was always ok. Fighting cheaters and mods incompatibility was always an issue too.
Well, I actualy have a few more questions. Can I contact you somehow more directly via e-mail or skype or something? It’s ok for me to chat here, but it’s probably not the fastest way.
Now I know why I got the “O_o” faces and kicked out that last time. If my memory doesn’t fool me, my character was late-Gipath in terms of power/experience, but we were doing mid-Gipath missions. So if I answered ‘yes’ to the play fairly question after some missions were complete, that probably was indeed really confusing considering the rules 😀
@Evgeny
Sure, we can contact privately. That last comment took me some time to write and it was already late at night, so I’ve decided to leave that response for another comment. I’m not sure if Stanislav sees my email? If he does, than he can give you that email to contact me. If he doesn’t, than I can post my email in another comment. I no longer use skype for many years now.
@Stanislav
Maybe. though I actually wonder if you didn’t answer “yes” to the question “how much exp do you have?”. That would explain those faces. 😀
Maybe it was. I might have answered a question or two before that, I don’t remember.
Hello Guys.
Too bad that you moved the discussion somewhere, it was such a great read. Of course I am Polish guy and of course I am searching for evil island stuff during sunday afternoon when I recall all the good times that I have with Evil Island.
great read!