There is nowhere near enough support for Steam. The client isn't being upgraded, there's no formal support teams, the subscription model is outdated and doesn't entice players to join the game. Even if all of those points were not issues, there's still a lack of new content because ultimately the only people maintaining these worlds are doing so on a voluntary basis and sporadically at that. No game is sustainable under those conditions.

Technically the game is free now. There was a Facebook post in December 2013 proclaiming that trial restrictions will be removed "over the holidays", and to much initial confusion this was never reverted. However the old subscription policy is still reflected on the Graal website and unless one can contact a global staff member to do them a favour then Gold is required to obtain a community name.

While the other points are valid unless something drastic such as the promise of Steam access does occur, there never will be much of an incentive for anyone worth their salt to maintain these worlds.

All the more reason to shut Zodiac down, cut the losses and move on to something else. If the dev's don't care to maintain the game, then why keep it around?

This, it's what I've been trying to tell the Zodiac community for years and yet they fall off or are slack jawed in trying to find reasoning behind my words. It's why I gave up on their forums and moved the discussion over here. It'd like to see an official word from MD himself though on the situation of PC Graal/Playerworlds in general and what the state of affairs is going to be with them in the future. I don't see Graal lasting through the year at this rate. Perhaps it's high time PC Graal as a whole was laid to rest.

Launching a new server with the same name won't "bring back" the old high playercount.

What you are proposing is the exact same as just making a new server and having nothing to do with Zodiac.

Which also wouldn't work.

That was the initial idea. But we're at the "last resort" which is to shut the server down. That's where I stand currently. I'd rather just pull the plug on Zodiac.

Going by this logic they might as well shut down every PC Server. I'm not suggesting that it's entirely down to a common realisation that a prolonged serious effort on this platform would be a fool's errand, but nevertheless the lack of such action is apparent globally.

Sadly I believe it's safe to say that the continued silence on this front is worth about ten thousand words.

There is usually a slight rise in global playercount once the US school holidays begins, even on Graal the Adventure while remaining hidden we randomly had 10 - 25 players each day participating within events, but a lot of that was down to the hype surrounding the promise of a Facebook launch (which has now been broken). I can't speak on behalf of each listed server, but what is there for players to look forward to or to motivate developers to make a prolonged serious effort?

That's the thing Mike, there is no effort. Stephen is making money off unpaid dev's to do work for him. It's a thankless job with no benefits to it other than running your own server. Sure you can kick/block people as you please, but in the long run that kills your playercount.

Why keep a game running when it's not going to bear fruit in the process? No matter how hard you try to cultivate it to success.

That's pretty unfair to say the least...Hours of work gone down the drain and kinda disappointing for people who have been waiting for it to come back for a while.

To "the powers that be" I have passed on numerous such sentiments & quotes, in addition to sending numerous offers of a compromise, developmental partnership, additional non-Classic related work etc, but unfortunately they simply refuse to be reasoned with. This is despite a lot of patience, messages being kept in a respectful manner and details being kept confidential for the most part.

I assure you however that I shall not stop banging on their doors until I can provide a credible explanation to those who care about this. I do not care how long it takes, at this point it is simply a matter of principle.

Okay but to make a new server you don't have to shut down Zodiac

Uhh excuse me. Have you not seen what they did to Delteria? It literally was shut down and revamped. That right there is proof enough. Also N-Pulse went down and is being worked on. So I'm trying to figure out where in my statement I am wrong since the proof is right there bud.

Delteria was being worked on as a reboot by its own community, slowly but surely.

Then it was gutted and taken over and its assets were cannibalized by a third party - who had previously been kicked off the team for clearly not understanding the direction that Delteria was going in - and what actually happened was that a completely new and unrelated server was released, using the name Delteria. The semi-successful server that you're calling Delteria is not what Delteria was doing, and none of the community is from Delteria. Its "success" could've been achieved with any other name. Maybe recycling Delteria's resources had a hand in its success, but that wouldn't apply to what you're talking about because the only resources that Zodiac has could only possible be used to make the exact same game that Zodiac is now, a tired and played out MMORPG-lite.

Creating a new server with an old name, whether it's Delteria, Maloria, NPulse, or even Zodiac, is pointless. There is no large community just waiting to see that name pop back up. The new Delteria didn't bring in the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, it brought in new players who had no idea that that word "Delteria" had ever been typed before.

But it was still reworked, was it not?

It's a completely different server with the same name and (essentially) stolen graphics.

So no. Nothing was reworked from the earlier live Delteria. Old Delteria was nothing like the private development server, which is nothing like the current iDelteria. Not in terms of gameplay, not in terms of design (by that I mean direction, not graphics), and the final straw was not in terms of community or development team, it was essentially UN with more profanity and mostly nicer stolen graphics. Even if the original rebirth went along as planned, it would still be a the same server in name only. But as it stands now, it would've met the same amount of success with any other name. The only reason that the previous Delteria is relevant to the contemporary Delteria is that they scavenged the beta resources.

The point is, Delteria did not reinvent itself into a better server.
It was in the process of reinventing itself, failed, and the pieces were reused by a more competent development team who just happened to want to carry on the Delteria "legacy" (because lore writing is hard)

Well we're getting off topic. My original point of getting rid of Zodiac however still stands. It was already said PC Graal is on life support in a comatose state. I don't see how getting rid of one server would effect it any less.