A persistent browser game has to decide what happens to its world over years. There are three broad answers. The world ends and restarts on a schedule, as in Planetarion’s rounds or a Travian server. The world stays, but competition restarts in seasons. Or the world never resets, as in Torn. The first gives everyone a fresh start and a finish line. The last rewards long investment and makes latecomers start far behind. Seasons try to have both.
What our index says
About one in five games we list carries our seasons or rounds tag, for worlds that “reset or new servers start regularly”. We also record a reset rule for a game, but only when its own pages state one, and fewer than one in five listings has one. Of those that do, just over half run fixed-length rounds, seasons or ages, from a few days to a year or more. About a quarter say the world never resets. The rest split between worlds that end when someone wins, games that run a permanent world beside seasonal ones, and betas warning of a wipe before launch.
| Model | Example | Documented rule | What carries over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed rounds | Planetarion | About 7 weeks, then “the universe is reborn” | Unused paid credits |
| Full wipe | Ultimate Assassins | “The databases are cleared” | Points and VIP bought in the last 3 months |
| World ends on a win | Travian Kingdoms | Ends when a Wonder of the World reaches level 100 | Lobby prestige, unused purchased Gold |
| Seasonal realm beside a permanent one | Epic Idle Quest 2 | Seasons on a fresh realm | Season characters join the permanent realm |
| Leaderboard seasons | Titan Conquest | “Nothing resets” | Everything |
| Never resets | Galactic Tycoons | Galaxy “will not be reset or shut down” | Everything |
Rounds that end
Planetarion is a space war game played in numbered rounds. They last about seven weeks, and “after each round the universe is reborn, and everyone starts afresh.” Miniconomy runs three-week trading rounds. Ultimate Assassins is blunter: when a round ends, “the databases are cleared and the player data is deleted”, login included.
For players, a round is a fair race with a finish line. Everyone signs up at once, and a bad start costs you weeks, not years. The price is that nothing you build lasts.
For builders, rounds solve onboarding with a calendar. Planetarion announces rounds two to three weeks before ticks start and opens sign-ups in between, so most players begin together. Someone who joins mid-round is still behind. Planetarion’s paid upgrade answers that with a bonus that grows with each tick already played. Rounds also clear out inflation, abandoned accounts and broken balance on every reset.
What builders must decide is what survives. Planetarion assigns unused credits to your new account if you sign up with the same email. Ultimate Assassins lets players retrieve points and VIP bought in the three months before a reset, and deletes the rest. If purchases vanish at a reset, players have a reason not to buy late in a round.
Travian-style worlds that end on a win
Here a world runs until someone wins, then closes, while new worlds open beside it. Travian Kingdoms runs six-month rounds. In the endgame, seven Wonder of the World villages are revealed, NPC Natars attack them, and the world ends when the first Wonder reaches level 100. Tribal Wars ends worlds by holding a set of Secrets, by dominance or by points thresholds, depending on the world. After a win, the world “will automatically go to peace settings and will eventually be closed.”
For players, this is a campaign with a real ending, where a tribe or kingdom can win. Age of Banners, a game in the Tribal Wars tradition with fixed six-week Ages, states the appeal plainly. Its Ages give “enough time to build a Kingdom” but “not years to catch up with an established empire.”
For builders, closing finished worlds caps server costs, and opening new ones gives latecomers a fresh start. Travian Kingdoms adds speed worlds at x2, x3 and x5 for shorter commitments. To keep people between worlds, it keeps a lobby account that “records and preserves your global prestige, achievements, and a list of your completed rounds”, according to its account page. Unused purchased Gold moves to the lobby when a world ends. Inactive avatars are deleted after a set period, and anyone who returns before then gets a return bonus.
Seasons on top of a world that stays
Seasons restart the competition without deleting anyone’s work. Epic Idle Quest 2 runs seasons on a separate Temporal realm where everyone rolls a fresh character. Its Eternal realm “never resets”, and at season’s end your seasonal character moves to the Eternal realm. Ragnarok Oblivion Idle runs a Seasonal server that restarts every six months beside a permanent Regular server, and seasonal progress “eventually” continues there.
Lighter still, Titan Conquest’s help page says that at a new season “nothing resets”. You need a new hero to appear on the new leaderboard, and old heroes play on. The Rockstar Game’s FAQ says its community voted against resets: “Seasons come and go for the awards, but bands, records and history stay.”
For players, a season gives a finish line without losing your main. For builders, it is an onboarding tool. Epic Idle Quest 2 calls each season “a great on-boarding window” in which “new players can catch up to long-standing Eternal-realm characters”. Folding seasonal characters back into the permanent realm keeps that realm growing, at the cost of the inflation a permanent world brings.
Worlds that never reset
Torn’s beta ended in November 2004, per Wikipedia, and it has no rounds or seasons: the same city keeps running. Pardus, also from 2004, advertises “a vast, persistent universe” on its about page. Galactic Tycoons’s FAQ promises its galaxy “will not be reset or shut down”, and that new galaxies may open while “all existing galaxies continue indefinitely.”
For players, this is the long-investment option. Years of training, items and friendships stay put. The cost lands on newcomers: a daily cap like Torn’s energy bar limits how fast anyone grows, so a veteran’s lead does not close. Torn does give lapsed players a little help. Its energy page describes free “inactivity refills” earned for each week away, “as an incentive for players to return.”
For builders, a permanent world has no reset to clear out inflation, so the economy needs its own controls. Galactic Tycoons documents its own. On its Exchange, a Federal Reserve sells essential tier 1 materials at fixed prices, “which act as a price ceiling”. When the economy runs short of cash, the Fed buys from players’ sell offers “to inject money back into circulation”. The FAQ calls the Reserve “a safety net to ensure new players always have access to essential resources”. Distant planets hold richer deposits, so there is room to grow away from established players. Anyone who wants a fresh start can use a “Reset company” button.
Storage grows for as long as the world runs. Pardus’ rules delete accounts after a year of inactivity, except any account that has ever had a paid premium upgrade. Deleting the idle keeps the database in check; the exemption keeps faith with people who paid.
A never-reset promise is also a promise to keep backups. The Rockstar Game’s history page is candid about this. In June 2026, during a rewrite, its old database server was left open, every database was deleted, and “there were no backups”. The permanent world it now runs was relaunched from scratch in July 2026.
Nexus Clash sits between the models. Its rounds, called Breaths, typically last a year or more, “but you can jump in at any time.”
The trade-offs side by side
| Model | Latecomers | Inflation | Server costs | Keeping old players |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed rounds | Wait for the next start, or a catch-up bonus | Cleared each round | Bounded: worlds are replaced, not added | Carry over credits or cosmetics |
| Worlds that end on a win | Join the newest world | Cleared per world | Old worlds close | Lobby prestige, transferable Gold |
| Seasons over a permanent world | A season is the on-ramp | Builds up in the permanent realm | Two worlds to run | Season characters join the main roster |
| Never resets | Starts behind for good; needs safety nets | Needs sinks and ceilings | Data grows for ever | History is the reward |
Choosing a model
If you want a fair race and can commit for weeks rather than years, pick a round-based game and join at the start. Our seasons or rounds tag collects them, and most sit on our strategy and space strategy pages. If you want something to build on for years, look for a game that says in writing that it never resets, as Galactic Tycoons does, and check how long its world has actually run. Torn and Pardus have run since 2004. If you want both, seasonal realms beside a permanent one give a fresh leaderboard without losing your main.
If you are building one, state the rule on a public page: how long a round lasts, what ends it, and what carries over. A player deciding whether to register needs that answer, and our submit page asks for it.
