Holy sh, I didn't even notice.


Best point made so far, that's definitely Stefan.

if you forget about the restrictions on accounts, and look at graal as a game or a developers platform, i think it's pretty exciting :D

i'll never forget when i found out i could make my own graphics and have them used. sure we were all kids back then, but we've learned so much since then. that graal has potential.

he'd be ****ing new players too with observer mode and the current payment policies. (if he even lets pc graal near steam)

I don't know why everyone keeps saying OBS will make graal unsuccessful. Even if you rewind 6 years ago, a playercount of 80-120 was GREAT. Era and Zodiac I often see hitting 80. And Guess what? They had OBS mode too.. Aparently it's not hurting pc as much as people like to complain. Granted OBS has been removed.. tho I oddly have still been getting thrown into it o-O

Alot of the downfall of graal happened when servers, not just N-Pulse, started saying here you logged in so we will give you everything and good luck. I have been playing since 2002, I have seen the up's and down's. And I can see graal has made ALOT of progress with both it's engine, and its strategies.

We still have servers such as UN where you log on and just kinda guess and get lucky where to go, what to do.

Let's wait and see how Classic does before making any negative judgments against graal, please?

You're completely wrong. The reason why it worked before was because you could pay once for lifetime Classic access and never had to pay again. This was also during a time when F2P meant mediocre to **** quality and pay2win. Nowadays games are shifting to F2P with aesthetic micro-transactions.

Downfall of Graal happened when v5 was released, and (in terms of playercount) Graal has skyrocketed post-iDevice release. From a PC perspective, Graal will continue to be this stale and low-playercount until we finally get a better payment system and a more attractive game client.

But hey, what does clueless forum troll Crono know. Only been repeating myself for years. :asleep:

Era and Zodiac haven't had observer mode for several years now. I don't know why you're making the point that they had it at one time. It's not very convincing to point to servers without observer mode as examples that observer mode doesn't scare off new players.

Obviously we can't accurately speculate about the fate of Era and Zodiac if they'd never lost observer mode, but we are in a better position to judge than you think. After the removal of observer mode we saw a significant increase in the number of trials (and later the number of new players who upgraded) playing. Some of this data you can get by looking at the "numbers" threads I make about once a year for Era:

• 2012-02-05
• 2011-02-20
• 2010-02-20

If you're still not convinced how damaging observer mode is to the game, do a few Google searches and see what people who've tried the game say about it.

Nobody is claiming that removing observer mode will fix Graal, just that removing it is a necessary step if Graal hopes to gain new players.

Listen to Crono, he's right. New payment plans please.

If Graal ever made it to Steam then there wouldn't be observer mode since he'd be using their in-app purchases to probably use the same set-up they're using for the iOS versions. In fact chances are they'd probably link them to the iPhone servers and still leave us(and the PC servers) out of it.

They would probably do this, lol.

Then something is bugged with OBS mode, becasue this year, and last year several times I have been thrown into OBS mode.

Also the same with Kingdoms.

Sometimes my window is limited in size, sometimes it goes OBS mode, others it just appears fine. And that applies with lifetime accounts as well as trials these bizzare behaviors. I don't know if anyone else has noticed it but look at the top of your window.. sometimes it says "Trial Mode Upgrade now...." and some times it says "yoru free time has ended".. on at least Era and GK. I can't say for Zodiac for sure because I honestly never played nor intend to.

Might be worth noting I AM using v6, not v5.

You are misunderstanding me, I am saying as of this year 2012 I have been thrown into OBS mode, on both ERA and GK for a total of 2, and 5 times respectively. I haven't played era enough for it to continue happening but it HAS and probably WILL happen again. There seems to be an odd bug (others have mentioned it in other forums with "free time" and not being reset). Sometimes the game will throw you a smaller window, others it just OBS mode's you, whether it's suspose to or not doesnt change the fact, it still does. But I suspose you guys have been playing on trials to confirm even with your lifetime and gold accounts? Where-as I have been using a trial->gold->trial->gold (Graal###) account for the last few years due to restricted access on ll of my other accounts (untill this year when unixmad helped me).

Of course, like they did with Facebook.

Our community numbers would jump up drastically if there weren't such a thing as trial accounts. I don't know how anyone but a marketing/sales person could argue in the positive for paid accounts on a video game. People love free.

Not saing they wouldn't. Of course free would have a much larger playercount. Just saying active players on a server havent seemed to go up as much as everyone say with the "suposive" removal of OBS mode even if it kinda-sorta-sometimes still throws u in OBS..

Yeah I looked at CBK's statistics.. The "unique" players went from 7k to 24k, to 36k... But who cares how many "unique" players logged onto a server? I am refering to active players, actively "playing".. I have watched the playerlist. I have seen it go from 25-45 average, to the 60-80+ average over the last 2-4 years.

Wish this would show further back then just 12 months,
http://statistics.graal.us/server/show/36

the reason for the increase in unique logins but decrease in overall activity is people on the iPhone servers find out "OMG GRAAL IS ACTUALLY A PC GAME?" and proceed to try it, then find out how annoying it is playing as a trial and having to pay and stop playing. Hopefully f2p will fix this.

We've spent hours discussing on skype (in chat and calls), the various plans and attitudes to hold about Valikorlia's future and the thing that cripples our positive outlook each time is the account situation. It stops development from moving forward, it turns newbies away, and that factors into our community spending most of its time away from Graal.

Our server hasn't any quests or dungeons, it's all a community theater bit. If we have events, the numbers spike up, and that's essentially all we do these days. Systems and long-running storylines are stuck at the gate for a lot of reasons and this whole trial business is one of them.

I think Graal on Steam would be good if for no other reason than exposure. I could wait around for the PC client to be fixed on its own but Stefan seems to wait for big events like these before acting.

Are you ****ing serious?

Can Stefan please just hand down PC Graal to someone with a brain that actually gives a **** about his loyal community of over 10 ****ing years?