A fun game where we live in 1457. Cooperation rather than competition. I'm now on my second character: after a long career, the super-sweet, nice, innocent "Marya" died in battle, and I decided against hitting the "ressurect" button as such. In RP terms, Marya is dead. Instead, I've changed name, and now play as "Aggnes", her mother, and a nasty piece of work.
Way back at the beginning, I started off in the little fishing village of Liverpool in 1455, and after a week or so, had my very own pig field, with four pigs in it. Then I acquired a corn field to help feed them (and myself), I bought a boat and went fishing, I eventually bought enough Posh Clothes and got enough cash that I was accepted as a respectable citizen, and learnt the trade of blacksmithing.
It's a simple game to start with (once per real day, eat something, and take a job to earn money), but it builds up, and there's yet more player-generated depth on the forums. In-game, there's a complex economic system, there's taverns that act as chat rooms (and where the process of getting drunk is simulated: your chat starts getting filled with "*hip*" and your ability to carry out game actions drops), you can travel, and possibly get robbed (yes, by other players), there's armies, and wars... and in the forums, there's a legal code, lots of interaction, NPCs, competitions, romance, noble and not-so-noble ranks. Complex? Well, if you break the (forum-only, player-written) Law of each county, you can be prosecuted (in-game). Trials are recorded, and if you think the Judge got it wrong, you can go to the (forum-only) Court of Appeals, to which each county can provide Justices. It's a responsible job, being on the Court of Appeals: the question of "who watches the watchmen" is "they do". So when the CoA is accused of corruption, then the Houses of Parliament (consisting of the in-game elected Council of each County) ask the House of Lords (forum-only titles, for which you can be nominated if your Duke or Mayor thinks you deserve it) to set up a Committee to review the CoA. In the past, I've chaired that committee, and went through various intricate legal cases, each tried under a different set of laws, to see if I could find evidence of corruption. Yes, it's quite a complex game....
I moved from Liverpool to Lancaster, the capital city of Lancashire, and spent some time as the Mayor there. A tricky economic problem, that: a very small town with few sources of income, and outgoings are fixed for each town. It's an interesting challenge. Then I went off and played armies, which is even more complicated when every single member of the army is a real player, not an NPC.
Useful links:
Here's a chart I did for people who have trouble figuring out timezones (though it's in winter time: in summer reset is an hour later):
