Battle Magica!

WHAT IS BATTLE MAGICA

Battle Magica is a popular online webgame that pokes fun at the typical RPG genre. Tongue in cheek humor is found all over the website and one should not be surprised that instead of battling ogres, in Battle Magica, you face "Vicious Choco Bunnies" and other monsters. Irony is the weapon of choice and it is wielded constantly in descriptions, names, and even in simple news updates. Whimsical and funny, Battle Magica is beloved by its fans because it isn't afraid to take pot-shots at itself as evidenced in the description on the front page:

"It is pretty fun though. Well, that's what our advertisers tell us to say. There is a good chance that we suck, but nobody has told us about it yet. (Kind of like that one show with the people that sing really badly and nobody has bothered to tell them until they are already on camera.)"

Battle Magica is played using a web interface and, at the moment, does not require any plugins and relies on AJAX and PHP to bring the experience of Adrilan to life.

The owners of the site are big proponents of Open Source and tout the superiority of Firefox while making their opinions on IE very clear from such quotes as: "Genocide may suck... but so does Internet Explorer!"

There is no real "object" of the game other than amassing wealth, power, rare items, and allies. The game has a "Top" list where you can chart your progress against other players. The game features many collectible items and many players show off their best in their "galleries" while others only obtain them long enough to sell them to other players for a profit.

The battling is similar to pen and paper RPG's and uses numbers to represent health, attack power, and initiative. The game also has a "Choose your own adventure" style text adventuring system as well.

A HISTORY OF BATTLE MAGICA

Battle Magica started out as a minor project by two guys from Springfield Missouri named Scott Blevins and Brad Jones. It was originally created in 1999 and has gone through several periods of inoperability and several major re-writes. The first version of Battle Magica (v1) was a non-commercial rpg parody of many popular games at the time including D&D and Neopets. In fact, the first time most people heard about Battle Magica was from an ad that was posted on Neopets informing people to check the domain http://battlemagica.com on Halloween 2000.

Much like in times to come, the launch of the site was delayed by a few days but was immediately popular and had a strong and loyal fanbase that grew to thousands of people very quickly. The original creators had a hard time coping with the sudden and intense popularity of the site and were forced to shut it down due to rising bandwidth costs.

The site was re-done completely and re-launched several months later, but with a list of missing features. The most prevalent of these was the ability to level-up your character. This was promised to come shortly, but there was still a lot of things that could be done in the meantime, so the site flourished. This Battle Magica, v2, was largely regarded as the best version of Battle Magica despite the few features that were lacking.

It seems a recurring theme with Battle Magica is that its popularity was always too great for its own good because Brad and Scott once again had trouble keeping up with rising bandwidth costs. It is important to note for the purposes of this article that the site has always been free to play and until v4, there have never been any ads on the site. Versions 1-3 relied solely on player donations to keep it afloat. Unfortunately, despite the tens of thousands of players, very few donations were ever received.

Battle Magica went down once more and it seemed this time it was going to go down forever. This was extremely disappointing to many fans who checked the site for 2 years religiously, hoping for some sign that all was not lost forever.

Finally, one day, the site came up again with a splash page and information about plans to redesign Battle Magica again from the ground up. This time, the creators decided to try and emulate some of the best old DOS RPG games and designed a mock 3D system where players clicked and moved in a virtual map. It was similar to the old games "Bards Tale" and "Eye of the Beholder" in its design. It was a step forward, however, by allowing the players to cooperatively battle as well as interact on the map with one another.

One of the large complaints, however, was that with only one dedicated server it was slow to keep up with the rising demands of the players. This version was to be funded with merchandise sold from a Cafe Press account. It seems, however, that the creators had some personal issues that prevented the site from continuing because all the players were one day greeted with a page that said that the site would be gone forever.

Many souls cried out in despair that day. The wonderful world of Adrilan was seemingly gone forever. It truly seemed like the end of the road for Battle Magica.

Then, over a year later, the rights to the domain and the Battle Magica name was purchased by a company called "Board With Nail LLC" with the sole purpose of rebuilding the website. Under new ownership, the site was re-designed (v4) into the current site that it is today. Not much is known about the new owners, but contrary to the old site, this one is updated daily with fresh content and abilities. There is a growing community of RPG fans and it seems like things are finally working out... for Battle Magica.