There is no list of requirements because it doesn't exist yet. I think they're still trying to figure out how they want their P2P model to work on existing servers. It's reasonable that their focus is on the iOS community because that's where the money is right now. I just don't get what's so hard about updating the v6 client to have a nicer playerlist, fix the funny way the font looks, and then make all of Graal F2P where you only pay for aesthetics (additional character colors, Zodiac's stuff, Era's stuff, etc).

There's no harm in making a bad server like UN completely free until they figure their crap out either, it benefits the players and only encourages playercount. This increase in playercount will eventually explore Era or Zodiac and spend some gralats there anyway.

Heh, welcome to Graal bro. I rarely do work anymore but when I do, it's small stuff for iClassic. I'm always reminded by a friend that we're not doing things for Stefan or unixmad, we're doing things for the community and the thousands of players who will be experiencing our content. That's slightly motivating.

What's wrong with the font? I thought the issue with nickname bolding was fixed?

I thought it might be an idea to put into words what has bothered me for some time now:

Graal was beyond it's time then. Back then, few MMORPG games exited, requiring expensive costs for credit cards - more or less cutting the european market off like this.
In the beginning, it was free to play and attracted many people, especially fans of old games like 2D Zelda.

What happened?

Slowly, the Market for Free to Play MMORPG's exploded, limiting the playerbase nearly completely to folks interested in development. Furthermore to a point of time, the official interest seemed to slowly vanish, distracting and annoying many more players.
Some examples:

- A Graal3D that never fitted the expectations of the playerbase, "only" leading to torque integration and v3/v4.
- Announced features that have never seen their release, like flying engine.
- More or less complete halt on official development of socalled "Gold Worlds" like GK or Zone, without adapting subscribtion costs to the limited quality.
- Although being kind of a MMORPG SDK, bad treatment of development staff, few updates on staff tools, no possibility to offer free to play content, although you already have to pay for the content being hosted.

I can imagine easily that PC Graal is no Cash Cow at the moment, but if you took the decision to slowly let it die of thirst years ago, it would've been atleast fair to tell us.

But I think I am talking for most people:
Why don't you even attempt bringing bit atleast a bit of attractivity to PC Graal?
A full Free to Play concept, connected with mandatory Mikro Transactions could work wonders, but it seems the time invested on these topics by Eurocenter seems to be insignificant.


It seems that the remains of PC Graal only exist to serve as a mere source of potential cheap designers for IPhone games that sell quite well - I highly doubt that developers who actually created the content get a fair share of the profits.

Darklux all we were doing is making Graal successful, now we have each day 3000 players online at the same time when three years ago it was only 300-400. The PC Graal version is currently lagging a little bit behind the developments in the mobile space, but it's not we are standing still. Many people on the forums don't understand that we will not get tons of players just because we reduce the price a little bit. The observer mode is needed right now to justify the playerworld gold subscription since we cannot check each day if the servers are correctly scripted or so and prices are fair. So there needs to be a "hard" limit somewhere (level cap on Zodiac) or observer mode. At some point we can transform all servers to free-to-play mode but we don't have the tools in-place right now (built-in customization shop and such stuff).

Thank you for at least addressing the issue. Though I still stand by the argument that observer mode is much more than a restriction, and is indirectly having a highly detrimental affect on the ability for trial's to properly experience the game and therefore want to upgrade. As for the issue of pricing and security it would be good to know exactly what is expected, I would assume Classic already has a high level of scripted security and that planned prices are already very conservative.

It's really great of you to finally hold a dialogue with us. The lack of communication between Eurocenter and us players/developers is what's been fueling our anger the most. I still think we've been ignored a little too much though, especially on important matters such as:

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hp?t=134266660

When Maloria became Classic around a year ago, I tried for the longest time to get you to remove observer mode for us, which you flat out denied. We had trial limitations on events, level cap, joining nations, item limits and several minor things. Unholy Nation have been trying to please you in order to have it removed as well, and they've seemingly been largely ignored too.


You also seem to take months to reply to PM's and emails about things that ONLY you are able to be of assistance of, which is just too long.

To put things into perspective, Zone happens to have observer mode removed, and yet the argument can be made that as a result of its essentially dead state, UN, Val, and even a UC Classic are contributing more to Graal.

Disagree with the business model here, but guessing probably pretty pointless to argue. Thanks for responding to this though, at least I now have a post to link people to when they ask me 100x a day on UN when I'm going to make a gelat shop so we have observer mode removed.

That's kind of the point though, they shouldn't cost anything and there is nothing to justify buying a gold subscription to begin with right now. In the past we had free servers and then exclusive "gold" or "p2p" servers like G2k1. Even after Graal went full p2p we still had lifetime Classic accounts being offered if you bought Graal once, which is a much more fair and correct model than what's being offered today.

Graal used to be very special in the past, but today it's losing its charm. iClassic and iEra work well both because they're on a fresh platform and because it's very cheap (or even free) to play. Ever since you released Graal v5 we were going downhill, and a lot of us were saying that Graal would die if nothing were to happen. Releasing iClassic is the best thing that's happened to Graal since 2006 and we now have players. Use this new momentum to propel the "real" PC Graal forward as well. Many players on iClassic have some interest in playing what we call "PC Graal" or developing for it but don't know where to begin nor do they want to shell out money just to develop for you.

Nowadays many multiplayer games are either going for a "pay once and play forever" model or completely F2P with various levels of microtransaction. On games like League of Legends (a very successful and popular F2P game) microtransactions effect balance, while games like Dota 2 (currently in closed beta but extremely popular, especially in e-sports) will be F2P and only have aesthetic microtransactions. My point is that both the modern and future of gaming relies on either of these models, no longer does it rely on buying limited subscriptions and renewing them.

Zone is actually an interesting example of what limiting the player does. Originally trial accounts weren't saved but could still partake in guild activities and had 100HP. Displeased with this, they later changed it so trials started with 80HP and could no longer join guilds. Zone began to lose some playercount over this and much of its guild activity died off. The moment v5 came out, I declared Zone "RIP" and was quickly proven correct. Zone is such a good server, but it is ruined by imbalances caused by the cash shop and the restrictive limitations that were stacked onto players over the years. I hope iZone revives interest in the server.

I'm astonished Stefan. I can at least say that we appreciate the much needed response that we have been waiting on for ~6 years. All of us are not against GraalOnline as it may seem, we are here to help you. I don't see why you can't discuss with us what you would like to see within the 'cash shops'. Because if there is anything we can do to speed up the process, most developers will take it into their own hands with your approval of course.

I can say being a developer for iEra that we don't get any kind of share of the profits. We're meant to be paid 300 gelats a month as some kind of "thank you" for our contribution of time but not even that happens...
So overall, we don't get any kind of share of the profits nor "thank you". At least we don't have to pay to develop, erhmm yayy!
Being honest, I was never really in it for some kind of reward, I feel my reward is being able to contribute to a game with a semi decent player base but that's where it stops.

Stefan, please tell us a list what you need for removing Observer Mode and we will just do it ? That horrible thing has to go. Valikorlia for example would work great when its moved to F2P because ALOT of people are RPing on the Internet, but at the same time they wouldnt pay for Graal when they can pay for other Games which has more to offer.
So please, give us the requirements and we will work on them. unixmad/you basically have nothing to lose.

Can Val maybe have access to the dev server that was paid for too?

Oh yes I forgot, we paid for a Dev Server and still waiting for 2 months now for enabling it to Classic Status. I mean we lost 2 months of Development time.

If you finally find time for some Graal PC issues, please enable the Server dev_ZazenP2P ...

I think this is something that should be emailed to him, this is totally off-topic.

Well its horrible when the PWAs says they will forward it to him and when Stefan ignores most of the emails and PMs. We already did several times x-x

It's hard enough to get a single response from Stefan on the forums (at least repsonses that we want to hear.) We should just try and avoid jumping on him with demands that are irrelevant to the thread is all I'm saying.

You forgot about terrible managers.

I was there.... it was like watching a train wreck go into a nuclear power plant with explosives.

QFT. He has a point here Cron :D

Zone's managers weren't ace (no names) but they were heavily restricted on what they could and couldn't do by Stefan. You can't blame them.

I don't have the best memory of Zone, but didn't things start going downhill once Supernanny started managing?

Who is Supernanny

To further iterate my point, you simply cannot compare a limitation which allows trials to experience the game but at a disadvantage, with something which causes so much bugs and/or disruption that staff have no choice but to prevent trials from participating with events, trials automatically lose if entering observer mode while sparring or playing something like Classic's trading card game (which lasts long enough for it to be hard to avoid), or are unable to progress within a quest due to a bug directly caused by observer mode.

I agree that obtaining a higher playercount is not as simple an issue as just lowering the price by itself, but observer mode is a game killer, it's like saying "upgrade to not have a terrible experience" or a joke I used to say as a kid "pay me £5 and I won't beat you up".

While it is good to know you have this intention, server staff are not asking you to transform these servers yourself, they are asking you to help them transform their servers themself. For Classic we have our own plans that I have emailed to you for how we can accomplish a sustainable free to play environment, and so I'd like to know what level of possibility exists for it to go ahead, or what (if any) changes would be needed.

At some point you're going to have to learn how to stop *****ing, because believe it or not there's other people who have similar problems to you and are able to keep their mouths shut for longer than 3 days at a time.

Could someone ban this idiot?

So at what point have I insinuated that I am the only person frustrated with the lack of support?
Also I had kept my mouth shut as you put it for a very long amount of time, longer than many developers would even remain active for, and have been developing a server since before you even began playing Graal.
I think you're bark... hissing up the wrong tree here.

I would also suggest learning the difference between begging/sympathy seeking and persuasive arguments.

I don't know, but you do post an awful lot about the same issue and it isn't going to get you anywhere, and you're making yourself look like a fool.

But it actually has finally gone on to get some form of response, which while not a very encouraging one, is pretty much what one of the main problems was in the first place.

I couldn't care less how it affects my "reputation". I've already made a lot of sacrifices to it for the sake of long term progress, though I don't think it appears as foolish as randomly snapping at someone with a common goal, offering no form of constructive input, and making out that you're some kind of victim.

The only one that's made himself look like a fool in this thread is you, and you're doing a mighty fine job at it right now.

:/

Fine, I'm sorry :< @ Thor and everybody else who read this thread.

First of all. Thanks to the honest reply.
And to state this again: I like graal and this is no anti graal thread - the very opposite. I am an IT Professional myself and accept the fact very much, that the Game has to be profit orientated.

YET: The thing I am trying to state and many others too is, that the course PC graal is running does not seem to be a good direction, as we are loosing the playerbase - and in the end, the goal of development is to entertain you and others - yet the others seem to be running away, keeping the stiff concept that has many problems, competing with the many free to play games.

Sadly, I cannot agree with this. The IPhone Game's only have a loose connection to PC Graal - it is not even linked on the eurocenter page anymore. The games would need to google to even notice, that there still is a PC version of this game.
There are few developments on the v6 client (yet it seemss to see no final fixing and no release).
The productivity tools for other topics than scripting have no seen development in years. If gconsctruct would have been finished, it would have been no problem with the level editor, seeing the development has ceased and its still very buggy, this is a problem.
The level editor for example only adapts very badly to the new big resolutions - still being somewhat stuck in the year 2001.

I agree that the free-to-play concept is a very big step but it seems to us - as there is no visible progress - that nothing is happening.
But I don't get why you don't use the massive player workforce on graal on this? No attempt was taken to ask us. For example, why don't you just add an api for this and enforce signed code? For example there could be an requirement for scripts touching this api to be signed by an certificate - easy protection against manipulation.

Maybe I have sounded a bit greedy with my last post, that was no intention. What I men't is that there seem to be 3000 active players on iGraal, spending money on the app and microtransactions - yet nothing seems to be flowing back into the PC Graal community, that has created alot of the concent - and this is the point which seems to be unfair for me.

I think this is stating the problem quite well - as the free experience is very limited compared to the lot of free mmorpgs, many people won't even consider upgrading for this - although graal features a rich experience with cool gameplays in very different ways, so I think that Eurocenter is somehow underrating PC Graal by themselves - like I stated, it's not even linked.

man if i were stefan, my will to read the last couple pages would be non-existent.

Like I stated, I highly doubt that you can imply anyone of us to be anti graal, or against the game. The opposite, I would like to play a more lively game again, with the chance to offer our content to even more people.

I actually do agree that many of their concerns have an element of truth, however it ultimately stems back to the bad decisions that have plagued the game over all this time. In a way it is failing to accept responsibility and punishing those who try to.

No, it was specifically right after Graal v5 was introduced.

Supernanny (Possibly Stephen) and before were heavily restricted. I do not blame them and shouldn't of been restricted as much as they should have. The others after though, weren't restricted as much as the previous ones have been. The only thing they were not allowed to change on the live server was the cash shop.

We saw terrible content under those managers and nothing out of the current. We saw PowerProNL create a terrible new deathmatch map and releasing it and making it the one the players are forced to play for a number of rounds before the old one comes up. We also saw a new CTF, which was released as unfinished. We then saw a continuation of the planet point system (Which I find absolutely stupid).not sure if it was PPNL or Codein

Pez took over and failed at balancing weapons, and further additions to planet points. He didn't change any of the previous content added by PowerProNL and refused to work from not being able to touch the cash shop (which from what I understand, you can nerf the weapons and add the stuff to the in-game shop while keeping everything on there).

One last thing I'd like to add in response to this particular post is that the longer the current pricing scheme remains in place, the more talented developers and reliable server staff will quit. As experienced people fortunate enough to have a lifetime Classic account gradually leave, it's harder for them to be replaced by people of similar experience/maturity due to the fact the unfortunate newer people are having to fork out for a subscription every year. Over time this will make it even harder to improve the situation than it already is.

We're really running off topic but Zone was dead well after those guys were appointed manager. Once Zone died it became almost impossible to revive it. The players that had played it either moved on to other servers or quit Graal all-together. They were initially chased off by the restrictions directly prior to v5 and then afterwards.

We do have some hope @ iZone though, I just hope we can play it on our v6 clients and not have to use crappy Facebook. :(

v5 did kill it, but even then it had a small active community.
OFFTOPIC SHALL REIGN SUPREME
If Stefan stays true to his word, then we'll see it D: