Where's the Good Versus Evil?

THE KING BENEATH THE MOUNTAINS 

The King beneath the mountains, The King of carven stone, The lord of silver fountains, Shall come into his own! His crown shall be upholden, His harp shall be restrung, His halls shall echo golden, To songs of yore re-sung. The woods shall wave on mountains, And grass beneath the sun; His wealth shall flow in fountains, And the rivers golden run. The streams shall run in gladness, The lakes shall shine and burn, All sorrow fail and sadness, At the Mountain-king's return.  J.R.R. Tolkien

Albatross wrote: I saw the subject of this thread, and thought of a response, then I read the posts. I think the Illy dev, and one other poster touched on my thoughts, which can be distilled as: Why impose a polarizing morality, when polarization will occur naturally [given the many social variables that Illy encourages]? People will always find excuses to 'discriminate' on attributes, rather than actions. Let's not enforce false reasons to do so here. We don't want to exclude friendships [social networking] where friendships are possible. Devs can provide other mission-oriented tournaments to provide additional goals, or exercise gaming skills.

The core issue here is a lack of conflict.

This is after all, primarily a war game.

The lack of war is due to players unwillingness to risk core assets. This (as has been discussed and imo) can be solved by the introduction of non-core assets to fight over. IE  pseudo-tournament like square's which hold some merit/value etc. The proof is in the tournament pudding and would alleviate the growing tide of player restlessness which pervades Illyriad and, imo, is the underlying current to this thread.

I think it would be worthwhile to introduce some themes or campaign elements to the game, as well as allowing the players and alliances who seem to be social focused go that route if they choose...The lore already developed for Illy has the potential for countless epic storylines and motivations...

With four different races in Illy currently represented, the idea of racial goals and quests has lots of possibilities. So also does some sort of arc based on how you wish to play the game, i.e. magic, military, diplo, trade, etc. Establishing trading guilds, mage schools of different ethos, mercenary companies, all along side or within the current alliance structure.Hopefully factions will go a long way to resolving some of this...

The one thing that is a concern to me is what I've seen ultimately happen to players in other games, myself included. When the game basically boils down to just attacking other players, at some point enough is enough, all interest in doing the same thing over and over is gone. Without new elements, stagnation will set in at some point. The social community of this game goes a long way toward offsetting this at the moment, unlike most other chats you see. There are good players here who care that others enjoy the game and stick around, and that's a rare thing in the browser gaming world...

My sole concern and dog in this hunt is that I love this game I stumbled upon just 2 short months ago, and I want it to be around for a long time, without losing that special something which I think we all recognize it has....

Kilotov of DokGthung wrote: warmongers will not prevail.

No one is suggesting they will prevail Kil.

But what is missing is that aspect of Illy. It is undeniably a prominent component which currently is almost completely unused.