What went wrong with Ilum, and why haven't they fixed it?

[Chiricahua]

Traditional warzones are very lame, and I don't enjoy them at all. I want open world pvp with 50 vs 50 players. Twenty-five at the minimum.

[GrandMike]

Engine cannot support more than 8vs8, iirc 12vs12 was still playable, 16vs16 and up everyone got a slide show.

[Sanctioned]

Ilum slideshows were great, weren't they?

[fungihoujo]

People weren't pvping there- all ilum was was one side running around gathering boxes. What pvp did happen was zerg vs zerg and ended up being the side with more rolls the other side.

 

Simply put- nobody enjoyed it. Sure, we can look back with rose tinted glasses- but this forum was packed with people saying how much they hated having to do it.

 

Ilum was taken out because the fans wanted it taken out- they did try a fix to their credit- but it was a bad fix and after that they decided to do a rehaul of the entire thing.

 

 

... and then, the game fell apart after 1.2 and they lost all their developers so pretty much every project was put on hold.

 

So- they haven't fixed it because the game's a flop and there's nobody left to fix it- their only teams now are maintenance (which from the bugs now, even that's bare bones) and a cartel store team.

[Vibby]

PVP Dev's response on Ilum

 

'Ilum was one of the last things we did'

'Targetting in January doing an 'anniversary event' in a light hearted manner'

 

AKA They are not 'revamping' ilum in jan/feb/march...they are simply adding a 'haha we screwed this planet up huh?' event.

 

He also said in this interview that cross server wz's are not even in their sights right now.

 

yay for lack of vision

[Mawduce]

lets be honest, at best it was a linear zone for zergs. it looked like something that came out of warhammer online. i didnt mind the idea but having everything line up like that was bound to fail. objectives need to be spread out over nonlinear grids.

[GrandMike]

People weren't pvping there

 

We PvPed there....when it wasnt a slide show, so very few people, as i said max 12vs12. It was good way to kill time between WZs.

 

And if you missed the daily zerg, getting daily done was a major PITA.

[JaltuStele]

What went wrong?

 

The gear-grinding, PvP averse, WoW idiots that infest this game ruined it. First time I arrived at Ilum, having just dinged R50, I went to the middle objective and climbed up on a rock overlooking the centre. Whilst stealthed, I watched 6 players from either sides riding around in circles looking for crates. I asked in chat why no-one fights and someone replied that there was sort of a gentlemen's agreement to leave each other be and just collect the crates for the Dailies/Weeklies.

 

Plus, if you did get fights, 6v6 turned into a slide show! I played WAR with 48v48 and had no problems.

 

 

Why haven't they fixed it?

 

Wrong game/player-base if you're looking for good PvP. People here want more dungeons and crap. Guess where development goes?

Edited December 17, 2012 by JaltuStele

[CrimsonOrigin]

I completely agree with the post above when he concerns about the former WoW players.

 

WoW players that went to this game are one of the biggest problems in SWTOR. Like always, they were the kids that jumped into the water, screamed that the water was too cold, then ran back to their own pool that they grew up in.

 

In short, WoW players are idiots. They are the loudest of the bunch and because of that, people hear them more than anyone else. They jumped onto SWTOR expecting a WoW contender without using their minds at all. How could a 1-year MMO be on the same level as a 10-year MMO. Not only do MMO's need plenty of time for the community to develop, but also requires the developers to grow. They don't recognize this and try to ruin the game. Again, idiots. I am proud on SWTOR at the moment. Sure, they can do things better, but it takes time. MMO players, more than anyone else, should understand patience. And yet, somehow, they are the more impatient of the bunch.

[rawfox]

sometimes it needs pictures to understand ..

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/5/diesel-engine-explodes-at-tractor-pull-729364

[Totaltrash]

Ilum died because of the Hero engine - that's all. Forget about it.

 

There will never be epic large-scale combat in this game, unless EAware wants to rewrite the entire code (which isn't profitable, so it will not be done).

[NoTomorrow]

Don't blame Ilum failure on WoW. The territory and objectives were arranged in a way that did not allow for random single, 2,3 skirmishes. It was only zerg vs zerg.

[Joesixxpack]

Seems my opinion on it's been covered already: Zergfest, lagfest...

 

If you wanted to get some chintzy farming done it was good. Unless you were the lone pub whose travels were announced in big letters to the bored imp hordes.

[anstalt]

Apart from the technical limitations, the major fail was the lack of purpose for the players

 

Ilum as a zone isn't too bad: there are plenty of cliffs, corridors, bridges, open spaces for everyone to have fun. Its fairly bland, being entirely white, but as a physical contruction its OK. however, there was nothing to do except collect boxes in the middle or roam!

 

Whilst I had a lot of fun 1v1 fights, the majority of the time you simply couldn't find anyone else roaming so everyone would just end up at one of the bases zerging. This, ofc, reduced the fights to ranged AoE fests as well as being a slideshow. Ilum just didn't give us the tools to make anything meaningful. There wasn't really anywhere to take or defend, no reason to do anything there except zerg the enemy for valor. Even then, valor rewards were screwed up for most of the time.

 

Whilst WAR may have had many problems, objectives and keeps focused the battle lines and gave us something half-meaningful to fight over. Ilum lacks objectives and thus devolved in to zerging.

[cycao]

Ilum was just a mess at the start of the game. I mean my first "real open world experience" was standing in a group with 10 imps looking at a group of 8 pubs taking turns blowing up objectives at mid. They changed that to crates and what not but it was a huge zerg fest.

 

Honestly with population imbalance I don't know how they can make Ilum work again. I like open world PvP but it just never quite worked out.

[islander]

Combination of lack of real rewards for not warzoning, and baaaad bad game engine that dies once you get past 12/12 in the same area.

Lack of factional balance is a contributor, but that COULD have been fixed by a queue if that were the only thing holding Ilum back. Honestly, with servers condensed, I doubt the populations are THAT far apart . Although I don't know, it seems around 55/45 or so Imperial on Pot5.

[TonyDragonflame]

Ilum died because of the Hero engine - that's all. Forget about it.

 

Ilum died cuz faction imbalance -the first great fail of BW. Forget about it.

[Simbr]

LLLLLAAAAAGGGGGG

 

Unplayable, depressing, crap version of Restuss from SWG a game developed 10 years earlier.

 

Why haven't they fixed? Apparently due to their 'tweaking' of the hero engine they can't, but hopefully they will find a way to give us mass world pvp, otherwise please roll on the next SW mmo, i mean we want Wars right? Not just conversations and laserquest over and over again.

[GrandMike]

Anyway, they should have looked at Lineage 2 Castle sieges for inspiration. those were great, had purpose but nothing game breaking, mostly prestige stuff.

[TUXs]

Ilum died because the developers can't think things through and their creativity is limited to 3 nodes. Non-gamers/PvPers trying to create a PvP area.

 

The faction imbalance can easily be corrected by using Bolster or neutral/factional NPCs to offset it. The lack of meaning was a direct result of a lack of PvP experience on the team.

 

But Ilum had tons of other problems as well - the 30 minutes minimum it took to get there from the Fleet is a huge one - the loading times were atrocious! Lag! Lack of any purpose, no benefit, no reason, no incentive, nothing to do at the base...just 2 bases, 3 nodes...how original.../yawn

[DarthOvertone]

Ilum 1.1.5 was actually really fun. All the Valor zergers disappeared and peeps that didn't want to OPvP could finish their Ilum dailies via WZs. The result was that only players interested in actually PvPing showed up in the zone and we had a blast. Lots of fun fights during that time. Very different from the zerg on zerg that existed prior, even though that was pretty fun too as an underdog Pub.

 

I would just roll to Ilum while doing my WZ dailies. Helped to break up the monotony of Instanced PvP. Removing the incentive to go there was unnecessary imo, even with its flaws.

 

The slideshow part varied depending on player/comp. My system, which is not great by any stretch, would only start to hiccup a bit when 60+ players were in one spot. 30v30 ran well for me except when an objective would get flipped. Things always sort of hung up when that occurred.

 

Anyway, can't wait to see Ilum back in action. Was good times even with all of its shortcomings.

 

RIP Ilum Dark Reaper: http://bit.ly/JIlREj

Edited December 17, 2012 by DarthOvertone

[Aaoogaa]

and why haven't they fixed it?

 

Half the team was fired...sorta cut down on development time.

[Asvarduil]

Ilum died because of the Hero engine - that's all. Forget about it.

 

There will never be epic large-scale combat in this game, unless EAware wants to rewrite the entire code (which isn't profitable, so it will not be done).

 

Bold is a problem that permeates the entire game. Yes, Hero lets you set up a MMORPG. The problem is, the graphics performance is so horrid, even top-end machines lag like beasts. (Thus I prefer Unity myself )

 

Since people have mentioned WoW a bit, bear in mind that the original WoW engine was actually a heavily-modified variant of the WCIII engine; 2004 technology that had to be upgraded in roughly 2008/2009 to remain visibly competitive...and even then, the WoW engine is approaching its technical limits in audio capacity in Blizzard's own words. Graphics are just looking dated, even with the shader work that went into Cataclysm. All of that, though, is to say that comparing WoW and Hero from a technical perspective are comparing apples (custom engine) and oranges (generic commercial engine); it's a poor comparison to say the least, but something to be aware of.

[Yeochins]

The Engine.

• Cannot handle large quantities of players on modest hardware
  
• Cannot handle extremely large quantities of people on good hardware (full illum instance)
  
• Network code issues
  

 

Faction Imbalance and population.

• Not resolveable naturally (bolster would only alienate PvPers)
  
• One faction ultimately won
  
• Very difficult to keep players engaged at illum, you would get fixed hours during the day when enough people were on to PvP, and the rest of the day it would be dead
  

 

Forced PvP for progression.

• Biggest issue, you had to PvP on illum to complete dailies.
  
• Placed further importance on faction balance - only imperials were able to complete dailies/weeklies on most servers.
  
• Made illum another daily to be completed and disregarded.
  

 

Most people only ever went onto illum to complete a daily/weekly. That is why it failed. The rewards were too big to justify completion by anyone who was aiming for gear progression. Now that rewards are non-existent there is no justification to wait there for PvP to happen.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Yeochins

[Mawduce]

Anyway, they should have looked at Lineage 2 Castle sieges for inspiration. those were great, had purpose but nothing game breaking, mostly prestige stuff.

 

.... this....