By the way, is there any way to completely get rid of the NPC server?

how long would they stick around?
longer than the spikes on 2k1 and 2k lasted?
a 370 PERCENT increase for 2 weeks, how lovely.

edit: pls fix percent sign

Maybe but which version would they be? I know you prefered Classic way back in the day where as I prefered Classic (GTA) circa 2002-2003. Someone's gonna get burned har har.


Nopers

Such a pessimistic attitude. Do all staff members think along the same lines as you?

DC is an old friend, but it's disturbing that all the people fighting the change are the current staff, esspecially the Dev Admin and Manager. This looks like a job for the globals. x_x

If your going to be realistic then this is how you need to look at it. No matter what the size of the team is, and no matter how long it will take, if you aren’t willing to put in the work restoring Classic then you might as well pack your bags and go somewhere else. Im not trying to offend you in any way because we are friends and have know each other a long time so don’t take this the wrong way. I am just trying to give you some helpful advice. You are just just like Master Storm was years ago in the sense that you have all these ideas and all these plans on how to change classic. But in the end it will all just be wasted. The player count won’t change and all of your effort will be for nothing. And just like him, you fail to see this even when you have all these people telling you what you need to do.

I can’t tell you how many times I begged and nagged him post-NPC Server to just work on restoring things instead of pretty much starting from scratch. It’s just a shame he didn’t listen to anyone who asked him to do the same thing because it more than likely would have been done by now. But to his credit he had no clue it would have gotten this bad. It's not like it can get much worse either. The difference this time will be instead of spending a massive amount of time adding new content and losing a lot of players, you will be adding a lot of new content and the player count will remain the same. Your argument is also similar to the one he had when confronted about restoring everything years ago. Sure it isn’t realistic with the size of the team, and sure it would take a long time. But it’s really the only way. And I guarantee you until some form of Classic restoration is set in motion the player count will never get better.

So if you plan on putting in any work in whatsoever it might as well be towards this. Otherwise you are just wasting your time. In two more years when the player count is the same and all of the Dev Teams plans have failed the same way Master Storms did then this thread will more than likely be brought back up. And the current stagnant version of classic will no longer just be Master Storms Legacy but all of the current Dev Team’s as well who thought they could change it just like him.

I do prefer "Old Main", but I'd rather have GTA over what there is now. :P
Of course, I fully support adding new content to both.
In fact, I believe it would be best to have a server that combines both editions and new content, but unfortunately it's the least likely option.


Is it technically impossible?
Can't someone "accidently" crash it and forget to turn it back up?

There is the ability to turn off the NPC server by saying /npcshutdown in RC.

Whether we take months/years to restore the "old classic" levels, or whether we take months/years to slowly add new content, the main problem is we don't have the development power to do either effectively.

I don't know what projects are specifically planned right now, but things still haven't gotten much better since the PWA decision, whether you agreed with it or not.

Unless a dozen or more people get together and dedicate their time this summer to deving their asses off (not 24/7, but a few hours a day maybe,) no matter what path we decide to take, nothing is going to happen.

Classic is on it's last legs right now. We need a 4th quarter comeback, and to do that, we need some leadership, which we are sorely lacking. I never played "old classic" (my first server was graal2000 when I started in 02,) nor do I know the exact plans the current staff has in mind. But unless we decide which path to take, then dedicate our time to it, classic is going to lose the small (some would say foolish) community it has left.

Then I strongly recommend doing that.

I don't think that is going to solve anything, especially since a lot of the coding used in Graal The Adventure (namely timereverywhere) is depreciated.

I'm not fighting the idea of all the old contentm you're misinterpreting me.
I'm just saying its not the golden ticket you all think it will be.
It would take so much work and manpower that does not exist at even a fraction of what we would need for such an overhaul. So you'd be waiting YEARS for this to happen.
All the while, it would kill all the new improvements in scripting, some of the nice scripts we do have would be wasted, especially some of the intricate GC stuff.
Everything would be GS1, which has a fraction of the opppotunities of use, not to mention its hard to read and understand unless your an old timer like Tyhm who grew up scripting GS1.

For all that effort, do you really think it would be worth all the work and loss put into that? It's been done before with Graal 2000 and Graal 2001, and the result from those servers, who had the SAME strength of an outcry about this, was a no, it was a complete failure.

as a side note, if default HD is what you want, answer me this?

Why doesn't a single soul use the default HD spar room, or the default HD PK rooms that we already have?

You even get 12-13 hearts, I forget, and a level 3 sword, it is the same sparring as you'd have on UN, but you don't use it, but you claim you'd come back if thats how it was?

Excuses not to come back?
I think so.

Yes it is worth it. And it won't magically bring up the playercount, at first maybe. But it will rise and fall like all servers do. But having the original content such as levels, HD, and tileset will really give it a push in the RIGHT direction.

This isn't even the real work that Classic needs. I've been saying this along; this is the start, we still need some content such as events, spar tournies, npcs, ganis, hats, an economy (to name a few). Originally Classic tried to make a guild wars type battle like Unholy Nation has castle wars. This is another form of the kind of development that Classic needs.

Bring it back :(