For those considering playing, my opinion

tai101587

This game has had a lot of problems, yes--and for the first couple of days after the 1.1 patch, I was incredibly disappointed with the illum battles (virtual respawn camping etc).



But after several radically epic battles (~40v~40), I've felt compelled to create this thread (I read the forums regularly, but haven't posted anything yet).



For awhile, I've been looking for a game with open world pvp, at least 20 vs 20 man battles, where real strategy can be used, with the "right amount" of consequences. I won't discuss too deeply other games that I've played or why I didn't enjoy their versions of open world pvp, but I will note that I've played (a whole lot of) mmos for about ten years.



And with the sense of epicness, the fact that I have actually begun to despise the republic (and have to remind myself they are also just gamers), tactics centered around scouting; hiding below cliffs while others attempt to kite into our group; breaking into groups and flanking etc; I am deeply satisfied. Yes, getting to 60 valor is "grindy", but while wz's get old quickly, the amount of randomness--where, say, we have just seemingly won a battle and are chasing, and two new groups of republic players come from opposite sides, and we get slaughtered--contributes to a continual feeling of awe (coupled with progression).



Dying is unpleasant particularly in big battles because of the loss of potential valor, but not so pleasant that it sets one back to the extent of an mmo with pvp looting; I suppose I wouldn't mind increased risk/reward, but for now, I am (surprisingly) content.



I suppose there are probably (many?) more empire players on my server (anchorhead) than republic, but in that past couple of days, it hasn't been particularly noticeable--that is, while it's hard to fully gauge who "wins" some of the battles, I'd estimate that I'm probably at about a 55% win rate (this was indeed surprising at first--and it may just be that they are more clever than we are).



My experiences (particularly with the illum win rate) may not be indicative of that of an average player on a miscellaneous server, but I just felt an urge to write this post.



The main point is that for all the bugs/frustration, the current illum experience makes the effort worthwhile.



tl-dr: ok

dubyahite

Ilum is not there yet, but it's getting there.

Faction imbalance is still really bad on my server, splitting Ilum into instances sea o have helped.

oddly enough I'm seeing waaaay more republic there now than before 1.1. I had no trouble gettin my dailies done the last few days with no kill trading or other such nonsense.

monoth

Illum is definitely a work in progress... I have to admit I did have some fun once the sides had even numbers, there were some epic battles out there.  But the whole concept is kind of dumb at the moment, having walkers just shooting each other and doing no damage is kind of lame and feels like your at Disney land...