Is war the sandbox endgame?

Moved from a wartime thread where it didn't belong:

Epidemic wrote: Those of us who are true war gamers consider Illyriad as retirement and want to explore the social, lore and mystery part of the game.

So here's the thing. Illyriad is fundamentally a PvP sandbox. It's an empire game that is part city builder, part trade, and half military. It's got some bolt-on modules for hunting, gathering and crafting as well, but those are minor. The main gist is building troops--all your main city buildings either produce units, reduce the cost of units, or produce items to build units. You can use sovereignty to boost the speed of producing units, or boost the speed of producing items required for building units. There is some nuance in the variety of military and diplomatic units and their interplay with defenses and terrain, but basically this game is about units.

Tournaments provide a temporary release for the pressure that builds in many alliances. End game players have tons of units, and basically nothing challenging to do with those units. It isn't a PvE system. Blasting NPCs is super simple and unrewarding after the first few tries. So players dump their units into tournaments, but let's be honest, the single-square King of the Mountain format is pretty boring. The only real dimension of skill is in tuning your cities for extra unit production--apart from that tournaments are just a bulk battle without any subtlety or strategy.

The warfare aspect of Illyriad is, however, fairly developed. It is simple to learn but provides lots of room for strategy. I believe that all the units laying around are basically dry tinder. The tournaments are an attempt at a controlled burn, but they don't always work. Sooner or later, the huge stockpiles of items and units will intersect with a clash of personalities (including ego, revenge, boredom, gaming approach, or whatever), sparks are thrown onto the dry tinder, and wars will erupt. I think it's the natural cycle in a sandbox game where ultimately there is really nothing else meaningful to do but construct units for battle.

Maybe factions will change that by providing robust PvE for individuals and alliances. Maybe not. Some people will probably still crave the challenge and excitement of PvP. Broken Lands will have the Care Bear Forest for non-PvP players, but ultimately, I don't think you can turn a game of empires into a 100% PvE system. If nothing else, that would require constant releases of fresh story content, which implies a significant ongoing development budget. Slow as Illyriad might be, I find it curious that many influential players hold a fervent belief that everyone else on the server is going to adopt PvE and tournament PvP as the only methods of entertainment in an otherwise fairly militarized game.

Added:

I should be clear, I'm not taking a pro-war or anti-war stance. I'm just saying that I think it's inevitable given the sandbox setup. I don't believe there's a permanent equilibrium point where everyone just lives in peace. The variety of quests is highly limited, and there is no player authoring in the sandbox, so once tournaments fail to satisfy the interest of endgame players, conflict (in its various forms) is pretty much all they've got left for entertainment.

City building. Tournaments. If you are interested in one of the sidelines: crafting, trade, hunting, gathering. But having explored all four of those, they get stale after a while. I chased the crafting mystery for quite some time, but that got boring, too. There are many interesting things promised by the faction descriptions and map locations, but AI is tough to write and quests take a considerable time investment to author correctly.

The Illyriad endgame is unfortunately not very engaging to many people (hence a proliferation of large permasat accounts).

I have to agree that the warfare aspect of this game is far more detailed than most non-stop war games out there. If the builds and researches were at seconds and minutes instead of hours and days I wouldn't care about wars.

The extremely long build/research times is the #1 reason why this is no wargame. This is a sandbox social game with a complex warfare system.

I'm hoping that the factions and story arcs will keep everyone entertained for good.

This is not the END..

OPTIONS are floating all over the place.. and up for grabs..

Note: PRIDE will not make you fat, you can eat it anytime. :D

This war is in no way an "endgame" in my opinion and the motivations for war are varied just like our player base.

If anyone who feels this is the end of the game is actually involved in the war (and why would you feel that way if you are not), then why are you involved in it?  No-one is forcing anyone to fight, other than perhaps some extremist alliance leaders.

If you are part of an alliance involved in the war and you dont want to be involved then let your leaders know, if they order you to fight, then leave their alliance, it really is that simple.  There are many neutral alliances in the game and you can always form your own alliance as a number of players have done since it began.

Many people have posted on the forums with the rather ignorant opinion that the cause for wars in Elgea is simple boredom or frustration at this games slow progression, this I believe is a major falsity.  People are involved in the war for various reasons, I for one am happy to be involved as it may result in the ability to play this game as a sand-box game (as it is intended),  rather than  having to play it according to the rules and morality of a few dominant players who have laid down their law with an iron fist for so long.