What are some experiences people have had with the IGNOU exams? Are they difficult and what level of preparation is needed or can one be a bit easygoing?

The truth about IGNOU is that it does not care about you, and its success rate is much lower than that of other universities. IGNOU will be much more difficult than any other university; even your regular course may be much easier than what you will experience at IGNOU. It's not so much the degree that you'll get from IGNOU as it is the experience of how harsh and demanding life will be, how things will go wrong and you'll have to make them right. The terms provided by IGNOU may appear simple, but soon everything will begin to unfold; there will be success and setbacks. You will have to rework things over and over again, or you will fail. Exams are easy but they become tougher as you progress. You might get (low) grades as you've never gotten before, just because IGNOU is a miser in terms of giving marks. 

Even though IGNOU exams are not difficult, here are some factors that contribute to their difficulty: The study material is never delivered on time; if it is, you will not receive your entire syllabus for the current semester; frequently, the study material arrives in the following semester. The exam schedule is appalling. There will be times when you have two exams on the same day, times when you have exams on consecutive days, and times when you only have one exam at the end of the month. Exam papers are not difficult (if you know the subject), but the point is that there is no specific standard that IGNOU has set for its marking scheme. As a result, even if you have answered questions correctly and to the best of your ability, you may still lose.