A look back: The Travian Annual Special History Pt.1

Today, we take a stroll down memory lane and ask ourselves: How did we celebrate the Travian Annual Specials in the past?

Before 2013, we did not yet start special servers to celebrate the birthday of Travian but we sure celebrated with you, our players. In 2011 we gave away some gold during birthday promotions, in 2012 we focused on a few more interactive events. You were able to take part in several ways: The more creative among you were asked to bake, build or draw something and send us a picture of it. To see, what type of game world would be among your favorites, we asked all countries to wish for their most desired game world and rewarded the 8 countries with the most votes b granting them their wish. Active users were also rewarded: By logging in each day during raffle time, daily active players had the chance to win some cool prizes. Of course, we also used the infamous blue giant and asked for a few likes on Facebook, starting with 500 likes for our raffle posts, we gave away gold and other prizes.

The era of the Special Servers

Starting with the year 2013, we began to run Special Servers on all domains of Travian to celebrate the annual event. Back then, we still called it the birthday server or the birthday world. On the ninth birthday of Travian, we turned our community’s feedback into special Feature Sets for the first time. Among those were: Modified Items, changed celebrations, a mix of T4 and T3 attributes, new beginner’s protection, doubled resource production, daily quests, 50 gold for the second village, trade routes to artifact villages and Wonders of the World as well as to villages inside their own alliances.

On top of the Special Servers, we also gave away a fancy Travian amulet. Pretty, isn’t it?

In 2014, we finally started Ancient Europe, our first Special with a proper name and the use of the Europe as a playable map. With a fictional version of the old Europe as a setting and some changes in game mechanics, this Special was different indeed: Ancient Europe did not feature Wonders of the World during the endgame, some cities had artifacts with short-time boosts for the player.

Come back for more Travian History when we return with the second part of our look back at the Annual Specials of the past years and make sure to share your memories, stories and pictures of past Travian birthdays. We sure would love to see them!