Utopia is one of the longest-running online games in the world. It began as a small web project in 1998 and has changed hands several times since. This page follows the game from its origins, through its owners and engines, to how the rules themselves have shifted from Age to Age.
Timeline
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Before 1998 | Mehul Patel writes a run of multiplayer BBS and web games, including Barren Realms Elite, Falcon's Eye and Earth: 2025. Utopia grows out of that work. |
| 1998 | A series of betas (players call them the First Beta, Long Beta and Short Beta) leads to Utopia going online on 9 November 1998. The first Age, the first generation, runs into 1999. |
| 1999–2000 | The publishing company changes its name twice: Solaria Games becomes Echelon Entertainment in 1999, then Swirve.com in July 2000. |
| July 2008 | Mehul Patel sells Swirve.com to OMAC and steps back from the game. |
| 2009 | Brian McDonnell and Sean Blanchfield, later of Arcadia Games, take over stewardship from OMAC. They relaunch Utopia on a from-scratch engine, called New Code, in July 2009. |
| February 2017 | During Age 70, Muga Gaming, run by long-time players David Cannata and Jeff Terkowitz, buys Utopia. It is still the owner today. |
Numbers last updated 26 Sep 2026. Changed? Help keep it current.
Origins
Utopia was written by Mehul Patel. He had already built a family of interconnected, turn-based BBS games in the dial-up era. Utopia took the strategy of those games and put it in a browser, with far more emphasis on working as a team. It proved even more popular than the games that came before it.
From the beginning the game ran on several servers. World of Legends became the main one, and Genesis later became the place where new mechanics are tried out, with much faster ticks. Battlefields was the third original server.
Ownership
- Solaria Games, Echelon Entertainment, Swirve.com (1998–2008). The original company under Mehul Patel, renamed twice along the way.
- OMAC (2008–2009). OMAC bought Swirve.com but found the old software hard to operate.
- Brian & Sean (2009–2017). They rebuilt the game from scratch while trying to reproduce the original rules exactly.
- Muga Gaming (2017–present). Both founders were long-time players, and the sale was announced with plans for mobile apps, a return of the test server and better onboarding for new players.
The wiki's older summaries give 2011 for the Arcadia Games purchase, while the owners' own announcement dates their stewardship to early 2009. This page follows the announcement.
Old Code and New Code
The original engine, known as Old Code, was a single application that stored its records in plain text files, with no database. It ran from 1998 until July 2009. Its best-remembered flaw was the “CGI error”, a failure that could take a server offline for up to a day, often in the middle of a war.
New Code replaced it in July 2009, and the first Age to run on it was the Age of Change. It was written in Python, and its developers set out to reproduce the original rules faithfully while giving the game a foundation that could be developed further.
How the Game Has Changed
No two Ages are identical. Something changes every time, so the game you learn this Age will not be quite the game of the next. A few of the larger shifts:
- Races. The game began with five: Dwarf, Elf, Faery, Human and Orc. Avians and Halflings arrived in the Third Age and Undead in the Sixth. Since then races have come and gone between Ages. Dwarves, Elves, Humans and Orcs have been present in every Age.
- Personalities. These did not exist at first. They arrived in the Era of Mystery, with nine to choose from, and the list has changed repeatedly since.
- Geography. The first generation had 17 islands, separated by ocean, so nobody without boats could attack from outside their island. The number of islands grew to 49, then the ocean dried up in the Seventh Age and horses replaced boats. Later Ages cut the number back down.
- Science. The original set of sciences has been renamed, merged, added to and removed. Medicine, for example, existed only briefly before being banned for good, and the way you invest in science has been redesigned more than once.
Where to Next
- Ages lists every Age and its name.
- Utopia Time explains the calendar, the tick and how game time maps to real time.
- Getting Started is the short introduction for new players.