Honest Review of Illyriad
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: The Caravanserai
Forum Description: A place to just chat about whatever takes your fancy, whether it's about Illyriad or not.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=10958
Printed Date: 26 Mar 2026 at 23:49
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Honest Review of Illyriad
Posted By: Duran
Subject: Honest Review of Illyriad
Date Posted: 21 Jun 2022 at 03:20
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Hello everyone, So i've been off and on playing illyriad since 2013. I have met some incredible people here. And currently am fortunate enough to kick it with my Dwarves over in Dwarven Lords for a majority of that time off and on. This game has a definite way of always keeping you coming back, and in large part I think it has to do with the community the players themselves have built. I do think there's some definite things that could be improved upon. The narrative I have seen since 2016 when I began playing militarily here, is that "The game is dying, it's on life support." My personal belief. When they upped the city count from 10. It really took away the feeling of completing your journey to city building. And was a cash grab to keep the server running because it encouraged players to keep purchasing prestige. Now I don't know if that is or was the outcome of that. But I imagine it is what keeps the server open for us to continue playing. We had tournaments once a year for some time. Then we had no tournaments, and now we have 4 a year. So that's something to keep the players engaged. Cool. They haven't always been my cup of tea. I imagine it's fairly difficult to appease everyone well enough to keep the lights on. Now that's all the doom and gloom I can think of off hand. There's a lot of good things this game has going for it. I don't think you can avoid giving the community, the alliance leaderships, the environment enough credit. Developers. Please stop by from time to time. Take 5 minutes of your day every week or so. Just interact with the players again, so you can stay relevant and in touch with your players wants/requests. So you can see the state your game is in. Other players who happen to even look at the forum anymore, please add to this with your opinions on Illyriad, and maybe we can get something rolling. D. ------------- "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" |
Replies:
Posted By: lonewolf
Date Posted: 21 Jun 2022 at 03:38
| i agree we dont see the devs very much and hope to see them more in GC to let us know how every things is going |
Posted By: willd elff
Date Posted: 21 Jun 2022 at 03:50
Devs!
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Posted By: LoonieOne
Date Posted: 22 Jun 2022 at 02:59
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Devs? Aren't those the mythical creatures people tell stories about? That people claiimed would mysteriously appear and make pronouncements from above, as people groveled at their every word? And the people would plead for them to preform miracles that could reshape the very world we inhabit? We have all heard this stories so many times that our minds start to play tricks. Starting to believe we ourselves had once actually seen these mythical omnipotent beings. Don't be so easily lead astray citizens of Illy! No such beings exist! To entertain such ideas would be so absurd, so ludicrous as to be downright loonie! William the LoonieOne
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Posted By: Hiei
Date Posted: 23 Jun 2022 at 06:53
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I wish the devs were actually paying attention. |
Posted By: ES2
Date Posted: 23 Jun 2022 at 08:36
We've been saying that for years in my shadow circle and yet the community with new members keeps kicking. Is it enough to keep the game and community afloat? Time will tell.
I haven't been on since I left. and to be honest this is the first time since then I've browsed the forums, but Duran is correct. Over the last few years GM involvement has been minimal. We all want it to succeed (either old players no longer playing or new and current). A show-in every week or every other day would go leagues while you all work your normal jobs. We've been hardcore fans for a decade, the lest those that remain can get is a concentrated conversation every week or so. ------------- Eternal Fire |
Duran wrote:Posted By: Thirion
Date Posted: 23 Jun 2022 at 18:28
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In my opinion Illyriad is an amazing, deep game and there is always something to do, learn and improve. I love it for that. But it also has a lot of unused potential and a lot of room to grow and improve. In my opinion increasing the city limit from 10 was an amazing
change. Me and probably other players probably wouldn't have played the game
otherwise.
When you look at success stories of other games then there is a common ground: Games need regular updates to keep being played. Almost all of the big MMOs/MOBAs are an example for that. But even pure PvE games like Path of Exile show that you can keep and even increase your player base over a decade by providing regular Updates (for PoE thats every 3 month). I think the crafting (Moonshatter and Kerberos gear) updates were a good update. Seasonal tournaments were an amazing change. Faction AI looks really promising and has a lot of potential for future updates and improvements. That said i think the amount and the frequency of updates needs to be higher. A big content update every 2 years (Faction AI 2022, Seasonal Tournaments 2020, Multi-stage Release 2018) might not be enough. I would love to see regular (smaller) game updates like e.g. roughly every 6 (or 12?) months. Seasonal tournaments in addition to a lot of other games (Seasons in e.g. LoL, D3, ..., game updates) have shown that giving the players a reason to return is really important for the long term survival of games. In addition i agree that the game needs a new community manager or at least more active participation from the Devs/GMs. Thanks for an amazing game that has a lot of unused potential! Thirion/Ellania |
Posted By: unplayer
Date Posted: 24 Jun 2022 at 11:27
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Been playing this game for few years after the prestige sell and after the 60citys . But as I see it there are some structure problems
BIGGER Problem is that there is not a gain for the warrior to fight except egoism and saying to GC how glorious he/she is OR if there is someone that fell good for causing damage to an other just for the bad feeling created ( I hope not much)
Before prestige sell I can imagine there was one category BuilderWarior cause you should build a stable account to be able to have an army.
Allow prestige sell make able the separation at 2 categories the Builder and the Warrior . The Warriors no need to care about economy to pay their troops cause they pay with prestige that they sell to the builders ,and more than that the builders avoid to have troops to be able to have gold to buy prestige. Increasing the max cities increase this gap between the the Builder and the Warrior . And more than that it create a new problem : problem is player don t want to loose their effort in the game and been a farm game for such long establish to the player base the feeling that this will not happen so putting more effort make sense since its not in a risk . So if and when someone destroy their effort it hearts deaply their feeling as it seems not right but the wrong was not the destroy it self, not the effort it self , but the feelings that it is wrong to lose your effort. No one likes to losses his efforts .
Which lead as to a Mutation : the NO RISKY TOURNEY players that without risking anything that don’t want to lose the kill troops and the NO RISKY WAR players that without risking anything that don’t want to lose ( having less than 8 cities to be easily replaceable ) .
which increase the gap even more
IMO . The faction play will drastically help the game cause I believe it will be a way to allow the sensitive “feeling” player-base to interact with each-other , not directly cause the player-base is to sensitive for that , but throw the factions with less bad felling and ofcorse without any risk .
There is a resent event that proves how much PtW the game has become . One new account that heavily buy prestige challenge one of the best war players just because of that . ( Ofcorse without risking more that she want to put in ) . |
Posted By: eowan the short
Date Posted: 24 Jun 2022 at 16:45
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"BIGGER Problem is that there is not a gain for the warrior to fight except egoism and saying to GC how glorious he/she is OR if there is someone that fell good for causing damage to an other just for the bad feeling created ( I hope not much)" That's because this is a sandbox... it's a feature, not a bug. PvP players are supposed to set their own goals- landclaim a region, attack player x, whatever. The game is not designed for pvp for its own sake- defence has far too much of an advantage and war is far too costly. I used to argue the game isn't p2w, but tbh it depends on playstyle. I've speed built an account to 9 cities in 2 weeks using a crap tonne of prestige, but I also played the game at a high level for 4+ years without spending anything at all. Sandboxes be sandboxy, and so more meta focused goals that are impossible to p2w are just as valid as mechanical p2w stuff like building 60 cities.
------------- This is the thread that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. Some person started it, not knowing what it was, and we'll continue posting on it forever just because... |
Posted By: Sif
Date Posted: 24 Jun 2022 at 21:08
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P2W and T2W ( Time to WIN) are bad and it has them both... but........ building 60 town s ofcore needs money to be paid so its P2W ( which is bad IMO) but it also need much skills so it not heavily P2W .
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Posted By: Thirion
Date Posted: 25 Jun 2022 at 10:29
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There are different definitions of P2W - thus we should talk about that first. In my opinion P2W is a game where you have an advantage when you invest money compared to others that don't. With that definition both the building and the war part are P2W in Illyriad. The impact of the P2W aspect can be quite different though. For the most active builders like me and Quentin the P2W impact is quite low - Quentin bought almost no Prestige with real life money (at least as far as i know) and for me it was ~20% of the Prestige i used (because i wanted to support the game). I could have gotten to max cities without buying Prestige at all (it would have taken me maybe a year longer). I had to completely rebuild all of my cities maybe 5-6 times - i wouldn't have needed to do that with pure P2W. For the average builder the impact of P2W is bigger - as it is harder for them to do both the building and the Prestige/gold acquisition - thus not having to do one is a huge advantage. In my opinion the biggest P2W impact is in the war game (or PvP) though. There not really caring about gold means the biggest problem for non-P2W players is gone. With enough gold you can run crazy 0% tax production setups and you can also sustain your army that you have been building for x years now. As an example. If i would P2W then i could almost double (!) my current production and i could sustain a 1m Cav army that i have been building for years. You can do that without P2W too - its an insane amount of work though. The P2W player gets that for "free". That said i think both P2W aspects are necessary to keep the game running. I really don't like it - but i rather play a game with P2W than not have the game to play. |
Posted By: Asvenger
Date Posted: 27 Jun 2022 at 03:29
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Love the game and will keep playing even without Cerb and trivia 1. active faction play (is it close?) 2. some tips on undiscovered mysteries - sadly most everyone has given up on them 3. alternate tournaments such as olympic style multiple events; fighting NPC invasions; finding unique herbs/minerals/creatures/buildings Thanks Devs!
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Posted By: unplayer
Date Posted: 27 Jun 2022 at 22:53
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PtW is bad but there there are 2 categories 1) buy pres with real money and use it ( which can have limited effect to the game) 2) buy pres with real money and sell it for Gold (with leads to unlimited advantage since you can pay with $ the gear or the troops …….and buy the efforts of others ) This (2) leads to some people that don’t want to PtW or cannot , to not play an aspect of the game which recoires gold to be able to buy Prestige which is even worse than PtW because leads some people make huge invest on time and effort to have more cities without pay real money, so this make them very sensitive to any chance of losing their effort ( since putting efort and time was the only thing they was doing for that time ( so its like Canceling their game ) ofcourse they have fun throu this )
From the other side players with no effort /time placed just $ ( even ignoring most aspects ) to Win . But don’t get me whrong been the game separated to builders and Warriors is not bad by itself ( it is good ) bad is the way its sepatated ( throw pres) for me it would be good to be separated bonuses to each other example builders bonus to build and Warriors bonus to troops cause saparation without Pres Lead to force co operetion which is good things since we play a multiplaier not a single player with chat
Life is a sandbox as well but you still want to take more money.
Huge benefit the Defenders against The attacker is good NOT be a reason to use this troops to Defend or attack is Bad . i also like this game and i enjoy playing thats why we are talking because we care about it. |
Posted By: Hiei
Date Posted: 27 Jun 2022 at 23:05
| This game is trash... Quit while you still can before you are addicted. |
Posted By: unplayer
Date Posted: 28 Jun 2022 at 06:44
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Illy is awesome game it has very good mechanics , a very well designed economy ,a very depth at all aspect , it is very balance at all aspects (except pres use) . That is why people that come to play the game thinking it as a multiplayer still play it even when they realize that is a singleplayer with a chat.
The game has some some negatives : 1 PtW as said 2 TtW 3 Lack of reasons to interplay i disagree with anything that would make it easier (like help for mysteries ) cause its difficulty is not at the negatives but at its positives |
Posted By: Thirion
Date Posted: 28 Jun 2022 at 13:32
First: Getting a lot of cities with buying Prestige with real money is still a lot of time and effort! Buying the Prestige with gold makes a bit of a difference - but the effort required there is usually a lot less. For builders buying Prestige with real money is an advantage but you can do it without too! Second: It is in my opinion really important that it is possible to buy Prestige with gold. That also means that 2) is necessary. Not beeing able to buy Prestige via gold means that you HAVE TO pay money to grow. Then not the player that is most skilled or puts in the most effort/time is doing well but the player that pays the most money. And that would be horrible for the game. I don't play games like this (e.g. Diablo Immortal). And if you read the developer statements they do not want it either (see https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/7-prestige_topic183.html" rel="nofollow - https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/7-prestige_topic183.html ) I also disagree that people putting time and effort into something are less willing to lose something then people paying money for it. It depends on the person and i am sure there are players on both sides (some value time/effort more, some real money).
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Posted By: Sif
Date Posted: 29 Jun 2022 at 07:39
| Things change from when the Dev s make that anouncement . |
Posted By: Dungshoveleux
Date Posted: 30 Jun 2022 at 05:03
| The Devs got side tracked trying to produce the next best game Age of Ascent. I put a question on the Age of Ascent forum and no Dev has replied to this yet. I think they have all gone AWOL, probably because there is no money to pay them. Lack of development = dwindling player base = rampant multi accounting. Its a self feeding downward spiral into the event horizon. I have given up expecting anything now, and only log on to see if the server is still being paid for. I rarely do much building, only a little hunting and accumulating stocks and prestige. I have almost had it with their attitude of feeding us sh!t in the dark and not communicating. |
Posted By: Leahostran
Date Posted: 18 Nov 2025 at 15:34
Sounds incredibly frustrating — without communication or development, it’s no surprise the community feels abandoned and the game is spiraling.
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Posted By: Thorfinn1
Date Posted: 18 Nov 2025 at 16:47
This is not the same anymore, there is plenty of communication and development happening. Feel free to join here: https://discord.com/invite/au8yPX7254" rel="nofollow - https://discord.com/invite/au8yPX7254 The pace of updates is not ideal but things are happening and proper moderation is occuring. We had over 400+ multi / password sharing accounts banned within the last 13 months.
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Posted By: Smopecakes
Date Posted: 19 Nov 2025 at 00:03
| Yup, AoA has been shelved as far as I know and Illy has had a lot of dev action for well over a year |
Posted By: Remy
Date Posted: 19 Nov 2025 at 16:48
| Illy is pretty epic rn |
Posted By: Almost Balanced
Date Posted: 21 Nov 2025 at 12:21
| Let's not kid ourselves. Sitters keep the game above water. My humble opinion. |
Posted By: Thorfinn1
Date Posted: 21 Nov 2025 at 20:02
The game would be better off without them, no account deletion should happen unless lower than a specific number of towns so the ppl who don't stay are automatically removed would be great. People being able to have 6 accounts effectively controlled all the time is awful and is what allows people to acquire way more power than they should have when you need great effort to work with others to achieve something, 5 people can wield 30 accounts. Regardless, the game will continue on, I think you're just a hater like your previous forum post a few months ago
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Posted By: Remy
Date Posted: 21 Nov 2025 at 20:38
Very real
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Posted By: Almost Balanced
Date Posted: 22 Nov 2025 at 13:29
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What I hate? Regardless, the game will continue on, I think you're just a hater like your previous forum post a few months ago
[/QUOTE]
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Posted By: Thirion
Date Posted: 24 Nov 2025 at 13:48
Or spend a few thousand on the game and (almost) instantly get 10x the "power" that an average player gets in like 10 years or even a player with 4 sat accounts (which is still work to maintain) gets in a few years. In my experience the majority of sat accounts are not even used to feed other accounts (maybe with the exception of some war alliances). The point i am trying to make: Yes, this is a problem. But in my experience this is not getting abused too much (in contrast to multi-accounting and handing over accounts) - thus in my opinion there are more important problems to fix.
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Posted By: Thorfinn1
Date Posted: 24 Nov 2025 at 18:14
I agree with you there and as I said above, they cleaned up the mess that was caused due to inaction. The updates, also as mentioned could come quicker but stuff is being done
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Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 25 Nov 2025 at 09:43
| Holy AI, Batman. |