💬 How would you compare the original version of Travian to nowadays Travian: Legends? What are the most significant changes and improvements that have been made?
Today there exist three different versions of Travian:
- Travian Classic (Travian 1 – 3) from 2004 to 2011 and a new upcoming 2024 version
- Travian: Legends (Travian 4) from 2011 until now
- Travian Kingdoms (Travian 5) from 2014 until now
While Travian Classic was more minimalistic and had a bright comic like look, Travian Legends had a more serious art style and got more features like an extended hero and quest system. Travian Kingdoms kept the more classic art style and was focusing more on cooperation. As a King of a kingdom you not only raid your neighbors, but can also benefit by protecting them.
💬 Reflecting on the past twenty years, what achievements or milestones are you most proud of?
🔷 For me personally it was a big step to grow from a one man project to an established gaming company with a lot of skilled and passionate colleagues who work for Travian every day. Our Travian: Legends team consists of 30 people from Development, Art, Data Analytics, UX Design, Game Design, Project Management and Quality Assurance. Many more work from different countries in Customer Service and Community Management to cover as much local languages as possible. Travian Kingdoms is a little bit smaller, with a team of 10 people.
In general our fast growth and internationalization was something really exceptional. Working with a lot of local partners we were able to keep a good player experience. Travian is very competitive and rule enforcement and bot prevention was always a big topic to keep the game fair and meaningful. As players invest a lot of time in the game, it comes with great responsibility to keep the game low on critical bugs and offer reliable support in case something goes wrong with your account.
💬 What are your future plans for Travian? Are there any upcoming features or updates that you’re particularly excited about?
🔷 Even so I invented Travian, I am no longer involved in the new features coming to Travian: Legends. I think the mobile app and the lobby system where big steps forward to improve the player experience. We were quite late with both and I wished to have it earlier. But the limited coding experience I had at the beginning made it quite hard to change it later. We have a very skilled and passionate team for Travian: Legends and I am sure further improvements of the game are guaranteed.
After Travian Classic, I worked on Imperion (similar to Travian, but with spaceships and planets) and Travian Kingdoms. In the last years I worked on our new Game Port Liberty. It is a completely different, more peaceful game. It’s a mix of Colonization, Rail Nation and Anno. Its first release will be soon, on September 24th 2024.
💬 As a veteran game developer, what advice would you give to aspiring game developers who are just starting out?
🔷 Having passion for games is a good starting point. When I started making games, there where not much study programs at universities. This has changed a lot and I would recommend to check if this works for you. For me, being a Game Designer and Developer was a perfect combination. Learning both enables you to prototype your own ideas without the need of a bigger team. While it’s good to be able to work alone, you should always be open to work with a team. A good multiplayer game needs Game design, Art, UX and coding skills. You can’t be excellent in all areas, so you should understand a little bit of all of this, but also specialize on the things you are best and most passionate for.
Over the next few weeks we will provide more insights on the Travian adventure and history as well as the interview of Travian: Legends game director, Ecki.
