It's browser based iirc. You don't have to install a client.

Being browser based actually would make me even less likely to play it. I dropped both Free Realms and Cartoon Network's MMO because they were both browser based. Free Realms was specially poor designed to handle slow connections since it downloads everything on demand, every time it is demanded.

I'm not saying Evony is a good game. I even won't play it on principle (boob ads? wtf?). But being a browser game is a competitive advantage (if your can deliver quality) because your users threshold to try it out is orders of magnitude lower.

I disagree. I believe the user threshold to be higher because it does require a good connection. And good connections are not common.

You may probably have a good (or even a decent) connection to the net, but I have a painful 3G connection that lately have been dishing out a performance worse than my old US Robotics 33.6 Modem.

Playing browser based games nearly mandate that you have both a good and stable connection. Stable being a often forgotten keyword. Connection spikes can kill you easier than the challenges you face, even very small spikes can bother you severely.

However, desktop based game tend to be very network-cheap. Civilization can be easily played on a 56k dialup connection, without much hassle. But the latest batch of MMOs are very network demanding, which is the main reason I won't even bother to try them for a good while, even the desktop ones. Devs seem to be only cattering to the very small percent of the gamers that happen to have good connections.

The kind of browser games I'm referring to are no more demanding on your internet connection than the average News site.

I seriously can't see how you can disagree with this. Having to not downloading something lowers the threshold to give it a try. That's so obvious to me I can't explain it any more clearly than that, sorry.