Quo vadis Illyriad? Age of Descent?

What a suckers we are. Waiting for TBL and they are not even working on it. I am quitting and going to play Settlers online.

Still wish devs a lot of success with all the games they develop and a lot of new shiny expensive toys they will buy with Microsoft money.

P.S. You will be forgotten by the world in a blink of the eye.

We've had an influx of many NEW players since the last tourney, can we not have something of interest to teach them too? Building toward new castles and research has its place, but I think offering to old and new players "something" to do is deeply in need.

Dear devs,
I will write this lines to express my feelings concerning Illyriad, a game I once was very convinced of and still believe in  (due to the fact, that I am stubborn):
I began Illyriad over two years ago, and it kind of captivated me.There was so much to do, to explore, to research, to trade, to build build build... and last not least: great helpful people and Allys.
There were a lot of things announced, that made me curious, how deep a persistant world sandboxgame could get in experience. Just out of that fact I ignored the outdated graphics (excusing it with Illyriad being an Indy game).
I read a future roadmap and possible future features (I can't find that link anymore, but there once was a draft by devs, what they wished to implete in Illyriad over time) and was optimistic, that Illyriad would change sandbox history with its deep game mechanics.
Sporadically new hints for upcoming features were given like new spells (at least their icons on IndieDB,G+ or Illyriadshop), which never ever were released.(eg.:https://plus.google.com/104451729662143279050/posts/YfTqivWCmru)
What happend since then:
We had two tournaments since I began this game, a big update with crafting, harvesting, gathering, (which was quite cool, although half of all ingredients still are absolutely useless yet), a new GUI (with a Herald, which nearly never gets updated with Lore or announcements), new avatars (mhh), wildlife behaviour, ocean food sov, trade hubs (absolutely great).
And we had announcements about possible pathfinding, thoughts about ships (a reason why I placed cities at the water, magic, roads, WebGl (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BenAdams/20111011/8561/) intelligent faction AI and...yes... TBL.
What made me curious (although a very patient person in RL): why that long long times, in that Devs stay out of GC or forums? What are they working at, that keeps them that busy? I am not a fan of announcing things and making timelines, which can't be fulfilled. But over the last year it got increasingly quiet around our devs and Gms. Even many petitions didn't get answered. And then, tata...!!
TBL was announced (1,3 years ago...not released until today). I asked myself: Why that? There is so much potential in existing Elgea, factions, which are dead, waterways, which are useless and just colours on the map, Lore to be told.....and devs put work in a new server and continent. Do they have excess manpower? Bored? 40 more factions to create (and fill with lore) with non of the Elgean factions working until then?
Since then I was patiently waiting for magic or renewal of open field battles. Nothing happened until now.
A lot of long term players left meanwhile. What's the good of staying, if you have built and researched everything? To wait to build 20 more cities in TBL?
And then we finally get to know, that devs don't work at 3D WebGl models (http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/11/webgl-experiments-illyriads-3d-town/), pathfinding, waterways, magic, new mysteries, interactice gameplay with Npcs (factions), TBL, but put their efforts into a retro style Arcade game (Age of Ascends), which is not needed at all in game world (in my point of view), as there are 1000s of them with deeper gameplay (even on my smartphone). And a few upcoming awesome (space) simulations like Star Citizen, Divergence Online, The Repopulation, which even offer sandbox gameplay. Why?
Instead of reworking existing Illyriad gameplay (maybe with some up to date and nicer 3D building models, which can't be that difficult to model), fixing bugs, developing new features? As Illyriad was once a promising sandbox and citybuilder with much potential and the chance to be a citybuilder with unique charactistics in that market segment.
Why?
I would really like to get a statement by any dev, what's the roadmap for Illyriad... that awesome game, I loved to play daily for the last years, in which I put much hope and even more money.



Once upon a time...

"The next milestone of the game will be pathfinding, or movement that is literally affected by the environment. Pathfinding will allow for such things as roadbuilding and deeper strategy. Imagine that you are being attacked by an army and can funnel enemy soldiers into a valley pass for an advantage. (Has anyone seen 300?) The feeling of ownership is also something that is important to the Illyriad crew. In the future, alliances will be able to name the land they are in, giving not only that sense of ownership but a warning to would-be troublemakers. Walls can be built around lands, forcing enemies to be funneled into an area or to siege the walls."
Ceo James Niesewand about Illyriad in Beau Hindman's blog, 19/10/2011, Massively.com


"In short: build a quality game with a sensible monetisation strategy, with other people around you to share the good times and the bad times, listen to your players and continually improve the game (if you can), and then... if it doesn't work, and you've stuck with it over a good period of time... well that's just bad luck rather than anything you failed to do yourself.....Different strategies will work for different games, but the key thing is "listen and change"."
Ceo James Niesewand about Illyriad, 01/15/12, Gamasutra Blog

Please listen. Hopefully answer. And change...



Edited by Yeesha D'ni - 15 Mar 2014 at 20:34