Intro

I used to love browser RTS games. Mid 2000s and early 2010s, it was a hell of an experience to play multiplayer online over browsers, mostly medieval-themed or antic-themed strategies.

A bit of knowledge

With the explosion of the web, the MMO market exploded in the mid 2000s, giving birth to games like World of Warcraft, Lineage, Guild wars and much more.

At the same time, browser based MMO games got a lot of traction.

Playing them was a lot of fun, and my very first experience was awesome. « Massive Multiplayer » experience felt really different compared to what I used to play, it was really time-consuming, but it felt so alive.

When you start being decent and/or good at a game, PvP becomes a hell of a drug.

They were tough games to play; You needed good scheduling, you needed a lot of time throughout your day but in tiny parts. And before smartphones, people working with computers had so much advantages.

They were « free-to-play », which is very good. But, the « pay-to-win » system were really frustrating after some times. If you spawned near a « Whale » player (someone paying a lot of in-game advantages), you would get rect quite fast, and you needed to restart elsewhere. But thanks to the « MMO » part, over time if you were a decent player and playing with some too, you could get ahead and win worlds.

The browser part, while being very good a not installing anything on your computer, the cheating was also frustrating, it was really easy with a bit of JS here and there.

A way to fix some issues; Rhythms

They were difficult games to play in part due to their pacing.

The slowness and time-consuming worlds were hard in the long run. Months and months of play, coordinating things with other players, Trahison and stuff happening all the time too, and the fear of missing out was complicated the moment smartphones were available.

Short cycles are a solution.

It is weird, but not everyone can support long term worlds from such games, and short cycles, or perhaps short worlds are probably very good for the vast majority of people wanting to play classic browser RTS games.

You probably need something like, very short, short, medium and slow type of worlds, popping at different times of the day and or the month and or the year. Some games already do that quite often, and it is probably why they are still played a lot.

Also, gaining experience is probably better on short worlds where you can « iterate » strategies and tactics more and more.

The worst part; Pay-to-win

I understand that the « free-to-play_pay-to-win » is good at first sight, you have servers and employees, it gains you money and whales are everywhere anyway, anyone can start your game. But I think that this is a long term trap.

« Pay-to-win » is hard for your overall player base. Sure, most players will never give you a cent and who cares about them anyway ? But « MMORTS », and probably anything with the « MMO » part, need to feel alive to attract more players, which will make more players convert into paying customers.

There is solutions for a middle ground; instead of having a tiny percent of big whales, what about a more spread number of players wanting « quality of life » add-on and cosmetics ? Something that would not make your game lose its skilled-hardcore players and overall community ?

• Quality of life add-ons, attack planners, multi-village gestion, notification at the player or alliance level through discord, phone or email,
• Cosmetics like customizing part of the interface,
• Pay-to-win but capped to a tiny limit, making whales having an advantage but not destroying everything around before quitting badly,
• Soft rewards after competitive servers,
• System with short cycle and competitive server where you would pay a PAF to eventually win a part of it if you finish in the top players(Impossible in most countries, because it would be like gambling)

The idea is, with a lot of worlds rhythms and multiple way to enhance your game mechanics, without altering or altering too much the core, you can gain money and keep the growth.

The hard part; Cheating

Cheating is hard to stop.

People just find a way, and you have to continuously deal with it, as much as possible, as fast as possible, and even that it is not enough. No system is invincible.

Shorter worlds may help, real-time STR games are harder to cheat for this specific instance. What you can hope is to generate enough money to make process to look at player behaviors and such.

Outro

I loved these games.

It took away so much tho, because of FOMO and because I was crazy about it at times. But I don't regret it, and I want to create one too, lean & crisp UI, simple and focused RTS mechanics. Maybe for 2026 ?

Maybe at some point I will want to try one ?

Details

• I've modified that article in 2025.
• I've heavily modified that article in 2026.