Re: Online Clash Of Clans
Josephine Heathershaw
Being a 33-year-old academic, I found it hard to rationalize to my friends and family my infatuation with Clash of Clans, a childish but rather addictive online strategy game, until I met Hosam. While waiting for his refugee application to be accepted, the 24-year-old man from eastern Aleppo spent much of his time online through his Samsung phone, browsing news, chatting on Whatsapp, and playing Clash of Clans. As Hosam explained, fighting in a clan from his Syrian hometown and coordinating battles against clans they were randomly matched with around the globe was one of the ways he maintained spiritual ties with the land and community he had left behind.
Hosam's experience piqued my personal and academic curiosity, and eventually prompted me to explore how Syria's conflict is reflected in the virtual reality of a game, highly popular among Syrian youth.
After some browsing, I joined the "Idleb Heroes," a clan of forty players from my family's province in the northern part of Syria, a region that since March 2015 has come under the complete control of the Islamist opposition.
The clan I found is a strong community of young males between 16 and 24 living in various parts of the Sunni-majority province, playing on cheap smartphones charged by external batteries to keep the game on even during the daily blackouts. However, lack of electricity was not the main obstacle: when the Internet was cut off in the middle of a clan war, many of our carefully devised strategies went to waste. For the clan, Clash of Clans seemed to be more than a simple game, as the chat function was eventually used for reporting on the Assad regime's air strikes, and also to check whether all the members were alive.
Although the clan was essentially non-political, sometimes it proved rather challenging for members to suppress their emotions. Once, after being matched with a player called Hezbullah in an individual battle and scoring an all-three star victory, I shared the video with my fellow clan mates. Soon, warm congratulations arrived with overtones of anti-Shia sentiments, something I had never experienced during the long summers I spent in Idleb before the war, where Lebanese Shia Hezbollah were generally celebrated as a force of resistance against the Israelis, the "Zionist entity" of the state propaganda.
After a month of comradeship, I bade farewell to the clan and began my six-month journey as a lonely mercenary, wandering between the front lines of the Syrian clan wars, joining the war-torn country's most notorious clans.
I chose clans with at least 25 members (out of a maximum fifty) and at least 10,000 clan points (proving the commitment of the core members). When browsing Syrian clans, it was striking to see how the majority of players made every effort to keep the game as a politics-free field, warning would-be members in the clan description to refrain from any talk on politics and sectarian affiliation.
However, an equally significant number of clans proudly declared their political sympathies by naming themselves after fighting factions and militias. Searching both in English and Arabic, I found more than fifty clans calling themselves "Syria of Assad" and significantly more referring to "Asad" (Lion) in one way or another, while the number of politically motivated groups was uncountable.
I chose a loyalist group of forty-five players, where the single condition for being accepted was to declare "For Allah, Syria, and Bashar!" Soon I found myself in the company of experienced players with pseudonyms referring to a variety of sectarian backgrounds, coming mostly from government-held Damascus, Hama, and western Aleppo.
The government-friendly war machine seemed to be effective: in clan wars, leaders and elders donated a Level 5 dragon to each participant to protect the base, something unimaginable in the case of the Idlebi clan, where players could at most only afford to donate archers and barbarians.
Though politics was not a general topic of the chat, emotions ran high when the clan was randomly pitted against groups from Saudi Arabia and the United States, the two main foes of the Assad regime. These battles became matters of honor, with members coordinating attacks more carefully than usual, mocking the enemy, and telling jokes like "boars are effective against pigs," referring to the character of barbarians riding on boars.
While Americans largely proved to be easily defeated enemies, we were regularly trounced by the Saudi gamers who had no qualms about using their credit cards to buy capability-boosting gems from the game store. Or at least that was how members of our Assadist clan explained the defeats, most probably to save face. Still, the explanation was by no means groundless: four of the top ten clans on the global level are usually from the Arab Gulf region.
In the ensuing months, I joined a number of clans with names referring to the Syrian Army as well as ones proudly calling themselves "Shabbiha" (spirits) after the notorious pro-regime militias, generally coupled with references to President Assad or the name of cities and provinces.
After "defecting" from the regime, I joined the "Free Syrian Army," a group of young people, many of whom are now refugees in Turkey. Being an opposition fighter was not easy. It was typical to have a player apply for membership and then, after having been admitted, to curse us, label us as traitors and American puppets, and then leave. Some even went as far as asking for "troop donations" and using the donations for their own individual wars, then utter their curses and leave.
However, just like in real life, some front lines were quite impenetrable. Perhaps because of my Sunni-sounding profile name, I was shunned by Shia clans like "Shiat Ali" and "Ahl al-Bayt" as well as by clans with names referring to Alawite villages on the Syrian coast.
To my surprise, clans like "al-Dawla al-Islamiyya" (Islamic State) and "Ansar al-Dawlah", referring to the Islamic State, were not interested in my application either. Two strong Kurdish clans, both called PYD, referring to Kurdish militants in northern Syria, accepted me only until they realized that I do not speak Kurdish. Speaking of Kurdish clans, it was striking to see how, similarly to the clans of the Islamic State, they set their location as "international," a clear sign of their refusal to acknowledge the national borders of Syria.
Despite the refusals, I did not give up my intention to go hardcore. Luckily, the Islamic State's main rival in global jihad was very welcoming. However, when browsing clans referring to the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, the strongest ones I found were not in Syria, but in Lebanon and Kuwait, two countries with individuals and groups maintaining strong links with the Syrian radicals.
After joining a Kuwaiti clan, I found that half of the members aged mostly between 17 and 22 were Kuwaitis, while the rest were Syrians residing in the Gulf state. For the Sunni clan, fighting against Shias in general, and the Iranians in particular, was always a matter of honor. When pitted against Iranian players in individual battles, virtual al-Nusra fighters chose to launch attacks even if the prospect of booty in gold and elixir were significantly less than the amount invested in equipping their troops.
Tired of wandering, I headed back to my Idlebi clan to find that much had changed during my six-month absence. Although the members were more or less the same, I was informed that Abou Joud, one of our elders, was "missing" in the wake of a Russian airstrike. Still, his name is officially still there among the members. Another member traveled to Turkey together with his brother, with dreams of heading to Sweden, which, however, did not prevent him from remaining a committed member of the clan.
Clash of Clans is a strategic mobile game where players build and fortify their own villages, create clans with other players, and engage in epic clan wars. Harness the power of unique troops and spells to defeat enemy bases in both single-player campaigns and multiplayer battles.
On this page you will see Clash of Clans Live Player Count or the players currently playing the game. How many players playing it on a monthly average playing Clash of Clans each and every month. Together with the number of maximum players or peak players every month.
Above is an estimate on Clash of Clans Live player count we have compiled these numbers using the most recent data from various online sources. Clash of Clans live count player count is the number of players currently playing Clash of Clans.
Live monthly statistics is the summary of the logged Clash of Clans monthly active players. We have also logged peak number of Clash of Clans players. Meaning the number of Clash of Clans players playing simultaneously at the same time.
They get these resources by fighting against others in the form of clan wars. A clan is a maximum of fifty people. The game has unique fighting features whereby it enables a clan to accumulate maximum resources such as gold, elixir, and dark elixir. In this game, gems serve as the premium currency which can be bought using real-world money.
It is not all that easy as it looks on the periphery. It is a multiplayer game and therefore there are several types of attacks and strategies from players from the world over. The game also allows players to conjoin and help in setting up clans.
Players also get busy training the troops to attack enemy troops before they attack them. In this game, gold and elixir help the players upgrade their buildings, train and upgrade troops, and help them buy builders.
Dragons are the most powerful troops in Clash of Clans and the game goes on and on without end. You may play the game on both mobiles as well as your PC. It is a strategy based shooter game and not Steam based.
Destroying enemy territory is one of the most interesting aspects of kingdom-defense games. While there are already games out there about this genre, Clash of Clans PC is still the best contender. You can play against other players from around the world. And it boasts elements of strategy and defense that will fuel your excitement. Try out this amazing game to begin the strategic battle.
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