A special guest interview with: Jejune [DEVS]!

Jejune is one of Illyriad’s longest-running and most consequential figures.

Before joining the development team, he was involved in some of the game’s major alliances, from RHY, Night Squires and SIN, through to founding ELVES - launching the player-led Faction Play experiment.

Now part of the Dev Team, Jejune sits in a unique position: former player, former alliance leader, designer, moderator, historian, lore-builder, and is clearly deeply invested in what Illyriad was, is, and what it could become.

We talked about the Trove War, SIN, Faction Play, joining the development team, Faction AI, how Illyriad has changed, gardening, old strategy games, battle magic, and why the future still looks bright for Illyriad.

Let’s start with the basics. Where in the world are you based, and how long have you been involved with Illyriad?

I live in the southwestern part of the United States. I’ve been involved with Illyriad since April of 2011.

I took several breaks from the game, quitting in 2013 just after the end of the Trove War, coming back for a second time in 2014, after the Great War, to join SIN. That stint lasted until 2017. I came back again briefly around late 2018, but finally came back full-time in 2020 to form ELVES and launch Faction Play.

I switched to being a game designer and moderator for the game in February of 2022.

How did you originally find Illyriad, and what appealed to you?

No matter how hard I try, I cannot remember how I discovered the game. I do know that it was not suggested to me by someone else. I found it on my own.

What immediately appealed to me was the metagame and geopolitical intrigue. Even though Illyriad was only about 14 months old when I first joined, it had already experienced a supernova of activity, with numerous wars and several different iterations of coalitions and confederations forming. All of that kind of gameplay was happening at a very high level, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I bet you wish you had found it a year earlier?

Oh yes. More happened in that first year than probably over the past 10 years of the game.

Had you played any other games like Illyriad?

I’ve played some other MMO games, but nothing like Illyriad. One of the reasons why I am so committed to this game is because I don’t think there is anything else quite like it. It is so unique and robust that it can lead to so many different gaming outcomes.

You mentioned quitting after the Trove War. What happened there?

I had some frustration with where I ended up at the end of the Trove War and, combined with me getting a new job that was very demanding of my time, I kind of faded out after the war ended.

As detailed in the Illypedia entry for the Trove War, my first alliance, Rhyagelle [RHY], became embroiled in a conflict with SkB over a Trove mine, which led to Absaroke [Absa], a constituent alliance in Consone, taking their side.

It was Absa’s fatal miscalculation in helping SkB that gave Harmless? [H?] and its Coalition the pretext to escalate the war and target all of Consone. First, however, they needed to get RHY into their Coalition, since up to that point H? and RHY had minimal diplomatic relations and were not even close to being allies.

H? leadership secretly brought RHY into the Coalition and waited to see if more of Consone would escalate, which they did. Invictus [VIC], led by Jasche, started to attack RHY on Absa’s behalf as the fighting intensified. That’s when H?’s Coalition went public with support of RHY and the intention to defend us against VIC and Consone.

This meant a great deal to me. I didn’t take it for granted that the most powerful alliance in the game and their exclusive coalition was coming to our aid, especially since VIC and Consone had the ability to absolutely crush us. The war quickly exploded, and the Trove War became the largest, most expansive and chaotic server war in the game’s history.

So where did the frustration come from?

A few weeks into the wider war, RHY’s leader, Indeva State, announced to the rest of us in RHY’s leadership council that he had unilaterally negotiated RHY out of the war without the advice or consent of any of us in leadership or Coalition leadership.

I was mortified. After the Coalition had brought us into their protection, bailed us out of the war and made us a partner in the war, we essentially betrayed the Coalition and our newfound confederates by making peace unilaterally. It completely undercut the Coalition and weakened their position. Why Indeva State thought it was acceptable to do this baffles me to this day.

Most of us in RHY leadership left in protest and disgust, and RHY imploded in a matter of days.

The war, however, was still raging, and I had every intention of continuing to fight on the Coalition side. Fortunately, one of the Night Crusaders [~NC~] leaders, The Electrocutioner, or ElectroK, had his alt in RHY because he and I hit it off and liked to talk about music. He very graciously added both my main and alt into NC, where I became fast friends with SirBradley, now Stukahh, and the legendary Myr, who was at the head of the Night Confederation.

I was involved heavily in NC’s operations, but Myr also gave me the leadership role in Night Squires [~NS~], since it was leaderless and she wanted NS to be fighting for the Coalition. So I left my alt in NC and put the Jejune main in NS.

This is where I became disillusioned. I could not get the NS rank and file to organize and engage with the war, and it frustrated me. I wanted to be in leadership and make strategic decisions, and because NS was in shambles, I had to basically give up on high-level participation in the Trove War.

The failure of my role in the war and the rise of personal work responsibility really led me to step away from the game for about a year or so. In the time that I was off, I completely missed the Great War, where Harmless? and the Coalition were crushed and the Night Crusaders were utterly obliterated.

When you were a player, what was your playstyle, and what do you think you were most known for?

Leadership, strategy and content have always been the hallmarks of my playstyle, and I think that is where I added the most value to the alliances and groups that I played with.

I was never particularly passionate about city optimizing, economics, trading, crafting and troop building, even though I know how critically important all of those things are in order to have a successful alliance. Having cities and troops was more of a means to an end for me, to hold roles in leadership, strategic thinking and action, and creating new content ideas that could enhance the game for my guild as well as the game at large.

I am a firm believer that if you are an innovator, leader, content creator, or possess unique skills, you can contribute to Illy with a population of zero. The most valuable assets of the game aren’t full-research cities, massive standing armies, or endless piles of gold and gear. The people behind the accounts are the most valuable assets.

Usually, this is why some of the most consequential players are the ones who are most targeted for destruction in war, with their opponents trying to run them out of the game. My advice: don’t let anyone run you out of the game, even if they send you to the noob ring. If you contribute more than just troops to your alliance, you are immortal in Illyriad.

Did you ever feel constrained by not being more economically or efficiency driven?

Not really, because there were so many incredible players in SIN, players who were absolute masters of the game and who built monster accounts. My skillset was very much complementary to players like that.

I am very appreciative that Stukahh, Malek and Tink taught me the tactics and best practices of siege warfare, as being a siege planner was one of my contributions to SIN. We had three siege teams, and I led the “JeJackasses.” I cannot repeat the names of Stukahh and Malek’s team names...

When returning to the game to found ELVES, I was totally committed to Faction Play, and that gaming system did not really require lots of gold, troops, or cities. So it allowed me to make content and lead.

All of this being said, I would probably be a lot less relevant in the game’s recent meta, since it has been largely at peace with minimal conflict. The things that I was good at weren’t really needed over the past two years. However, things might be changing.

Leading others is not for the faint of heart in a game like this. What is the appeal?

You’re right about that. I think that SIN was the exception to this rule, because the 20 core players stuck together for the long term and implicitly trusted one another. It was very tight-knit.

It was also a small alliance that didn’t have open enrollment. You needed to go through The Gateway [GATE], which was an absolutely brutal process. So we had the same core roster for a long stretch, which made being part of leadership a lot more fun.

My observation is that there are some friend groups like that in the game today, but the difference is that they all don’t necessarily play in the same alliance together.

Tell us about Faction Play. What was the intent, and why do you think it fizzled out?

The concept for Faction Play came about in SIN. SIN’s full name was The Hashashin, named after the faction of the same name. We weren’t role-playing the Hashashin faction per se, but sometimes we did take on their persona.

The concept of that, together with the prospect of Faction AI, set into my mind the idea: what if an alliance took on a faction-like persona, and based their interactions with other alliances solely on a ranking system that would change dynamically?

I experimented with building the ranking system while in SIN, but didn’t have the technical chops at the time to do it. It wasn’t until I left the game again for a time and returned that I had the capabilities to build the ranking algorithm, write the rules and criteria for Faction Play, and launch ELVES, the game’s first player-led faction.

I think Faction Play fizzled out for three reasons. First, the participating alliances and players never really took to using the ranking system. Even though it was functional and worked really well, there just wasn’t much uptake. Mainly, all Faction Players were interested in was the role-playing aspect of the gaming system.

Second, I played the role not only as ELVES leader, but also the sole official of the Faction Play system. Once I left to become a DEV, there weren’t others to really officiate the system. Third, I think most players really didn’t want to play within a player-managed system like that. They wanted Faction AI hard-coded into the game. I think all three of these are legitimate reasons why Faction Play fizzled out.

How and when did you end up joining the development team?

In my final stint as a player, I came back with a focus on PvE and limited PvP. As noted, when I was in SIN, I started to have this idea of how SIN could fully take on the Hashashin faction identity and play like an NPC faction, driven by fluctuating alliance rankings with us rather than our own aspirations and biases.

I had always been fascinated with the faction profiles and the ranking system, and thought that perhaps the player base could bring the long-awaited Faction AI system to life.

I didn’t have the skills back in SIN to make my idea a reality, but by the time I returned to Illy, I had the tools and time to create Faction Play, which was a player-led initiative where a set of alliances would function as player-led factions and interact with other opted-in alliances based on a ranking system based on the game’s data feeds.

The success and sophistication of that idea caught GM Stormcrow’s attention and, after several consultations, he offered to bring me into the development team as a designer for finally getting Faction AI off the ground.

Any regrets about having to put an end to your playing days?

Such a big part of “the game” for me has always been making content and rolling out ideas and initiatives that can make the game more fun for others. So being a DEV really crystallizes one of the things I used to do as a player.

That being said, I do miss playing. As the geopolitical intrigue of the current game continues to ramp up, I miss it even more, since that was my domain.

You must have known this was coming. When can we expect Faction AI, really? And can you share anything not yet released to the public?

We’ve already talked about how Faction Outposts will be a factor with Faction AI, so that occupying them and claiming sovereignty will have an impact on the occupying player’s alliance’s standing with the associated faction.

We’re also looking into additional designs centered around faction locations and other locales on the map that are not necessarily related to Faction AI, but that could encourage the need for dialogue, diplomacy, coercion and even conflict in order for alliances to dominate local and regional areas that would benefit them.

These designs are seen as a way to potentially diversify conflict so that siege warfare isn’t the only lever that players and alliances have to pull, while also providing some concrete incentives for fighting and winning. So far, we’re only in the design phase, but we are working on this alongside the completion of the Faction AI MVP launch.

I suspect that Faction AI’s initial launch won’t be much longer.

How does Illyriad differ today from when you started, or from when you played most actively?

The style of gameplay among the players has changed dramatically from when I started playing, as well as when I was most active.

Today, many players regard the central crux of the game to be building cities. The challenge of optimizing city builds, configuring sovereignty and managing the logistics of utilizing resources is what occupies the typical player. A small subset of these players have effectively finished building cities and are now using them to accomplish other goals, such as crafting, trading and building troops for tournament play.

In the early game, building cities, training troops and trading or crafting all redounded back to the larger, more strategic gameplay that characterized Illyriad. Alliances had high levels of engagement, with even the rank-and-file players having a direct stake in the ascension and power that their alliance projected.

There was also a much stronger emphasis on establishing multi-alliance confederations and coalitions, and establishing political power blocs that provided alliances and players with a strong sense of identity and citizenship. In the early years, the game was much more focused on strategic conquest, not only of regions on the map, but also of controlling the hegemony of the game in general.

Do you think expanding beyond the 10-city cap was ultimately a mistake?

I hesitate to call it a mistake, because so many players currently in the game absolutely love building cities. It is “the game” for them. It also takes a lot of skill and dedication to build past nine or 10 cities. It has become the overarching goal for players in this meta, and I think it delivers a lot of fun and satisfaction for many players.

I do think that expanding beyond the 10-city limit led to some unintended consequences. The focus on one’s cities leads some players to be less inclined to risk them in war, and I think a different kind of player plays Illy now than when cities were simply a means to an end.

Before the expansion, you’d have a whole roster of players with maxed-out cities, brimming with troops. They were essentially locked and loaded and looking to their leadership, saying, “okay, what’s next?” This is what gave rise to leaders creating strategic content.

Now, the grind to build cities keeps most players from feeling like they have arrived at a fully-built account, which tends to discourage the kind of gameplay that defined the first half of Illyriad’s history. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it did contribute to the reduction of strategic warfare in the game to an extent.

Some people would disagree with me, of course, but I think strategic conquest and warfare was an incredibly fun aspect of the game. Illyriad was more intense, more serious. That being said, the friendly nature of the community and the willingness to support new players was always present. That characteristic has never left.

I am hoping that Faction AI will provide a new PvE gaming environment for players who don’t want to battle other players. And for those who still have strategic conquest in mind, we are looking to diversify the way alliances go to war and what they fight over, with the aim of making siege warfare slightly less focused upon.

Based on the dynamics we are seeing today, can you see more conflict in the next one to two years?

I think so, yes. I think we cycled away from conflict over the last two years for a number of reasons: there are far fewer players, so less friction; the push toward large rosters of cities has made the meta more about city-building and players more sensitive about losing cities to war; and the previous two wars were very long, drawn out and had a lot of drudgery associated with them.

At the same time, the game added a lot of new players beginning last summer, and there are more maturing players looking to engage in PvP today than there were two years ago.

Recently, we saw two limited war declarations based on some PvP grievances, which led to some kinetic fights and sieges. This could be the entrée into a new era of Illy warfare. We’ll have to see.

Would the DEVS be open to discussing sponsored or facilitated events?

We’ve discussed it internally, and it’s certainly something we could do. It remains to be seen if it’s a good idea to potentially disrupt the sandbox aspect of the game by having opt-in events and games.

As we’ve seen with allowing players to build more cities, it had some unintended consequences. We’d need to think through the possible consequences of a move like this as well.

I think there is a desire among the player base to experience the wider world of PvP, but not to risk their cities. If we can effectively diversify PvP to include other battle options, it could meet this demand without having to disrupt the sandbox environment. We are actively working on designs with this goal in mind.

Are there any plans to ramp up the marketing? There seemed to be a flurry of new players a few months ago, but it feels like this has tailed off.

It’s a big challenge to keep marketing and promotional channels optimized, especially since there are so many points along the way where a new user might drop off.

It is difficult enough to drive new users to the game. Among all of the ones who click on an ad or link and arrive on the site, you then need them to decide to create a new account. After that, will they have a positive enough experience in the first five minutes of the game to do all 23 steps of the tutorial? From there, will they keep playing past the tutorial, and will they log off and come back?

At every step along this conversion path, you are losing users, so only a small percentage of the clicks end up being engaged players.

Our first steps were effective, but long-term we’ll need more content marketing and SEO to gain additional visibility among search and social media. These kinds of organic channels convert the best for the game. I’d also like to see if we can partner with MMO-focused Twitch streamers to potentially shed light on the game to their followers.

What is something people might be surprised to learn about you, unrelated to Illyriad?

Over the last 10 years, I’ve really gotten into gardening, something I was otherwise never interested in.

I did see your recent post. Very impressive. For the green-thumbed among us, what do you grow, and what is your biggest gardening tip?

I grew up in the northeastern part of the US, which is good for growing certain things, but the growing season is limited. Now that I live in zone 8b, I can grow a lot more.

I’ve had success with lots of different berries, peaches, plums and some varieties of pears. I also grow a wide range of vegetables.

The biggest gardening tip is mulch: mulch around your plants. It is the best-kept secret to keeping them healthy, hydrated and minimally affected by insects.

Tell us more about Jejune outside Illyriad. How do you spend your time?

I will have been happily married to Mrs. Jejune for 25 years in August, and we have three children, two of whom are now at university. I work in digital publishing professionally.

So these are my two biggest focuses in life: my family and my professional work. Outside of that, Illyriad is by far my biggest hobby. Outside of that and my gardening obsession, I’m also a musician.

During the mid- to late-90s, I played guitar and sang, or screamed, in the post-hardcore scene in the US, with my band gaining a bit of minor critical acclaim in that very small, noncommercial music scene. So I still make music with that group sometimes as well.

One time, ElectroK, ex-~NC~ and SIN, and I worked on a song together remotely. Perhaps the first, and only, Illyriad music collaboration in its history.

Is there a piece of advice you once received that really helped you, or that you feel is still relevant today?

I think there are two kinds of people: people who are looking forward, and people who are looking backwards.

There seems to be something dangerous about frequently looking back into the past. It seems to be governed by pain and sadness. Even fond, happy and nostalgic memories can make you feel sad and wish for them back. I think that, while you can never forget the past, it’s always better to be looking ahead.

I had intended that as an Illy-specific question, but I like what you’ve done with it.

I think it applies to Illy as well.

In the years that I played in SIN, Stukahh and Malek styled that group to be antagonists, villains. We were not well-liked and played with a swagger that was meant to trigger and incite conflict. It was all by design, of course. We were playing our parts in creating content for the server.

When I returned years later to create Faction Play, I had to put down that past persona and build new relationships. It took some work to shed that persona, especially with veteran players who we fought against in the SIN years. It can be done, though. It’s just a matter of looking forward.

Which player or alliance still active today do you admire, and why?

There are a lot of them. The gaming community today has immense talent and passion, and we now have people of varying age and background playing, all bringing their unique insights to the gameplay.

I especially like what Sheograth has done with his Chaos alliance. He’s created an alternative lore for the game, adds a good deal of roleplaying into his account, hosts dynamic events, but also seems willing to mix it up with PvP if need be, all while running a small alliance.

I’m a big fan of small, scrappy alliances that aren’t afraid to get bloodied in a scrap. Chaos seems like they could be one of those.

You earlier mentioned you have played some other MMOs, but are you generally much of a gamer outside Illyriad?

I’m a Gen X’er, so I grew up in the golden age of gaming.

These days, I don’t have the time to play any serious games, but growing up, strategy games were among my favourites. I remember playing Starflight and Axis and Allies on PC, and on NES, games like Baseball Stars, Nobunaga’s Ambition and Genghis Khan. All of these games are highly influential on my game design for Illy.

What message would you like to put out there to the Illyriad community?

I was a player like you. I played the game for a lot longer than I’ve been a DEV. I also played during the “Dark Ages” when the game was largely unmoderated, rules were not enforced and there were no content updates.

It’s remarkable to me that the game survived those years, and its resilience is a result of two things: the sandbox nature of the game, and the passion and creativity of the people who play it.

Sometimes, you’ll hear Stukahh say “just play the game as it is” in GC, and I think that’s the right mindset. Though many of us are veterans who are waiting for new content overhauls and systems, even at its minimum, Illyriad has deep, immersive systems that offer limitless gaming opportunities. Even if we had never updated one more thing in the game, Illyriad as a platform has everything a gifted player needs to create amazing content.

That said, there has been a lot of development work in recent years. What stands out to you?

In the four-plus years I’ve been a DEV, I think we’ve done a lot.

We brought in Duran and Malek to the DEVS. Duran cleaned up the multi-accounters and re-established order. Malek revamped unit production and movement speeds, first for the non-siege units, and later for siege engines.

Illy’s social media accounts were rekindled, and we also launched an official Discord server, which has been popular.

Faction Outposts launched, together with all of their new lore. It accounts for 155 new map locations, 15,000 new original words of lore, 88 new sub-regions, 37 new lore characters and new map art. It represents over 100 pages of new code to the game.

We launched and overhauled factions, such as the Dragonkin, Dragons, Kanchalka, Eaglesbrood, and the new cyclopes faction, Omma Monoeides.

We introduced two new faction races: Mythical, which includes the Dragons and Eagles, and Gigantes, which includes the centaurs, ogres, trolls, cyclopes and giant humans.

With these updates, we brought Dragon and Giant Eagle units into the game, both of which were winnable in last year’s Dragon tournament and this year’s Eagle tournament. We’ve also started to give away faction unit keepsakes, like the diplomatic Envoys and Dragon Priests, which will someday come to bear on new content and systems.

Illypedia, Illyriad’s official blog and wiki, launched in September 2025 and includes over 2,600 wiki entries that cover playable content and expansive lore, including lots of new material.

In October, Illypedia published “15 Years of Illy at War”, an expansive library of war entries for every significant PvP war fought in the game.

Terrain bonuses were modified this past spring to address the plains meta issue. The number of concurrent siege engines that fire on a siege or direct city attack with siege engines increased from a maximum of 30 to a maximum of 40. Last summer, we also started dynamic marketing and promotion campaigns to bring new players into the game.

And what is still coming?

Battle Magic is set to debut in September at the completion of the August 2026 Dragon Magic Tournament, where winners will receive the White Wyrm dragon unit, the first playable military unit to ever feature Battle Magic that players can wield on the battlefield.

We’re proud of these updates, but as a developer and ex-player, I am far from satisfied. The longstanding promise of Faction AI looms large for me. Launching it will be a catharsis, a reckoning. It will be the fulfillment of a covenant promised by the DEVS to the players that dates as far back as 2011. Faction AI will happen because it must.

I am very excited about this MVP launch of Battle Magic, but this is only a taste. Access to dragon and battle magic needs to move from tournament prizes to production. That is a 2027 initiative.

Finally, I have another new system in mind that would substantially diversify the PvP in Illyriad. It is still in the design phase, but if we can bring it to bear on the game, we will have brand-new systems for PvE through Faction AI, PvP through Battle Magic and this new idea, and continued support of tournaments through fun, unique prize offerings.

The future continues to look bright for veteran players of Illyriad. It is up to us to shepherd new players into the fun, since there is so much content for them to ingest.

Finally, who would you be interested in reading an interview with, and what would you ask them?

I would have chosen Agalloch, since I think he is one of the greatest War Chiefs in Illyriad’s history. However, I’ve heard that he has gone inactive.

Among active players, I would like to see Eternal Fire interviewed. He goes all the way back to the foundations of the game, and has been a catalyst for conflict and intrigue since his early days. Ask him about the coup that he led against Roman Empire and the ensuing chaos that unfolded.

Huge thanks to Jejune for taking part in Voices of Illyriad.

You can find Jejune in-game here: Jejune’s Illyriad profile.

Comments are welcome, but moderated before appearing. Please keep it civil, constructive and Illy-focused. Spam, bait and personal attacks will not be published.