Travian.ae has been blocked in Saudi Arabia a few days ago. This noticeably effected the site’s “alexa ranking” as you can see here:

Here’s something weird that I discovered: there is a Travian.com.sa, a Saudi Travian domain! So why did CITC block travian.ae and not travian.com.sa? Saudi players have been playing on the UAE servers for years now.

Here are the WHOIS info for both domains. This is TRAVIAN.AE:

Domain Name travian.ae

Registrar ID 123DOMAIN
Registrar Name Klute-Thiemann Infomationstechnologie GmbH&Co.KG
Status ok
Registrant Contact ID KT-259733205
Registrant Contact Name Travian Games GmbH
Registrant Contact Email domain_master@traviangames.com
Tech Contact ID KT-037219030
Tech Contact Name Siegfried Mueller
Tech Contact Email domain_adminc@traviangames.com
Name Server ns01.travian.org
Name Server ns02.travian.com
Name Server ns03.travian.net

This is TRAVIAN.COM.SA:

domain: travian.com.sa
organization: Travian Games GmbH
address: Wilhelm-Wagenfeld-Str.22
address: P.O.Box 305150
address: 80807 Munchen
address: Germany
admin-c: SM187-SA
tech-c: TK27-SA
reg-c: TK28-SA
nserver: ns01.travian.org
nserver: ns02.travian.com
nserver: ns03.travian.net
req-date: 2009-05-27
reg-date: 2009-05-30
source: SaudiNIC

Could Travian.ae be blocked just to boost Travian.com.sa’s numbers? The more players on the Saudi server would mean more money from premium Travian players.

What do you think? What other reason is there to block the biggest Saudi server (Travian.ae)?

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