It would be fairly easy to position a gun to my head and pull my index finger towards my palm, that doesn't mean it would be a good idea.
It would have been fairly easy to prevent trials from going North of the bridge, but it would not have been a good idea to limit them to about 1% of the server's quests and away from the areas most players interact.

Stefan (rightly or wrongly) gave Era and Zodiac as examples of why he doesn't want more PlayerWorlds using their own restrictions.

Simple, add stuff to the south of the bridge.

Either way, do you see either of those two servers complaining about the restrictions? No. They've got on and dealt with it, and look where they are now

Are you seriously suggesting that after spending a few years developing a server towards a design (something no other server development project has made anywhere near as much progress with), we should have agreed to cut trials away from that content and come up with an entirely different development plan?

No I don't see Era and Zodiac complaining about the restrictions that they proposed to Stefan themself and aren't limiting trials to about 1% of the server's content. I first proposed a similar set of restrictions and more, had that or a compromise been agreed I'd have got on with it too.

explore Era and Zodiac on a trial. You're limited to a lot of things.

As I said, add stuff BELOW the bridge to make them want to upgrade.

If the story plot for Classic was interesting enough, I'd upgrade. Ask yourself, is the plot up to crossing the bridge interesting? If not, add something which will want you to upgrade.

Nowhere near as much compared to Classic restricting trials to below the bridge.

Lets just put this into perspective, stopping trials from going North of the bridge would:

• Prevent trials from playing all of the quests. Obtaining the sword is a essentially a couple minute long errand which isn't considered to be a quest. This would also prevent trials from obtaining Bombs and the 4th heart (a 2 hit disadvantage when PKing on the overworld, plus those who obtained Beer can heal)
• Prevent trials from being able to obtain the shield, and therefore remove one of the ways to customise appearance.
• Prevent trials from reaching the GC Studios. This conflicts with one of the main reasons observer mode should be removed in the first place. We could have let trials join through the event warper then find a way to warp them to below the bridge afterwards, but that would be a bit silly.
• Prevent trials from reaching SuperNicks Arena
• Prevent trials from reaching the main area players have always congregated in.

The only significant thing you can do from below the bridge is obtain Trading Cards, which as a multi-player minigame is somewhat hindered when you're closed away from where most players have always congregated.

The vast majority of the planned content for Graal City was situated above the bridge. The reason for this is quite simply because the northern section is the iconic area of the server, whereas the southern section has always been relatively baron of substance.

bored of this whole thread now to be honest.

thanks for the work you put in classic anyway

It sounds like Thor had lofty goals for Classic. I can respect what he intended to do. That being said, I can't agree with his attitude and behavior. I could tell you what I would change right now to make Classic trial friendly, and I bet it would take a month of work to pull it off. What is a month after years of development?

Like what?

I wrote a post on my phone but it was deleted, will try to answer again when by a keyboard.

Just small things:

I don't see why you couldn't make several player / NPC hosted events south of the bridge (small little things, like bomber arena by the wedding chapel, or small races around the southern parts of the GMAP).

I would also see no harm in removing the GC studios and just using a GUI interface for warping to events. You could use the old lounge as the event hub and give the GCs a slick interface that would allow them to setup events from there. Players would get warped back to Sister Gertrude's after an event is completed.

I would restore Swamp Town and Babord to give the players a little more to explore.

Again, small stuff, but it solves these issues Thor deemed massive hurdles. If you want large picture post the quests and rewards currently on Classic, and I could go into quest expansion.

I had also recommended adding more quest's south of the bridge too. The point is, removal of OBS was pretty much offered based on map restrictions? But I was also told it wasn't an offer it would be forced? Either way, sounds like the jackpot you guys were waiting for removal of OBS mode. Because you could have (and had plenty of open area) added more content south.. I really recommended adding mining but since Classic never was a "grind" server.. Or economy based. Which is fine, but the mines, were south of the bridge too :(.. I used to love doing that on N-Pulse.. on GK alone I spent 2 weeks solid in the mines to win a prize, and it was a proud moment. A server should feel people with happy, proud, memories that they can take on with them in life. =/

Exactly. The south could have been opened up a bit more to include a few quests, small events, possibly a spar arena. A summon /warp system would also allow trials to participate in events as well. You would have a small slice of Graal pre P2P, but you **** it all away.

It should be noted that this whole "suggestion" was infact nothing more than a one-off 'maybe' backed up by no actual thought or details, from someone who had never actually logged onto the server and seen any of the work. It made complete sense to try and persist proposing the original set of plans, as these actually had thought put behind them from the makers of the server, wouldn't have set us back a large deal of time, and were similar to what Era and Zodiac had already successfully implemented.

It was never anything near a concrete offer or something we'd been given any type of guarantee for removing observer mode, Stefan never actually rejected our plans but kept claiming he hadn't read them yet. Claiming that we rejected a concrete offer to remove observer mode is heavily over-scrutinising.

Maybe I am missing something but doesn't discontinuing it and having someone else take over also set you back a large deal of time. What did arguing with stefan actually gain you? He obviously was interested in giving you 1 of your demands, but you wanted to change all of his.. that's not fair. I would have been a every day player literally as I do with GK and the thousands of hours I have logged, but I did everything there was to do on the server. Questing is my heart and soul. When I started playing graal I played N-Pulse.. for the quests. since I had a friend IRL who showed me some of them. Granted the lack of direction made it quite difficult. You have to admit that the quality of Classic was second to none. The problem was that the second you start shouting your not gonna continue yes your gonna scare people off.. At launch you had 100+ people (thats better then Zone iPhone). Players even stayed on long enough to do ALL of the quests again. I was impressed how fast some of them did it. But once everyone that was all hyped up for the server did all the quests the only update we received, was TCG.. we didn't logon to play TCG.. we logged on for the questing.. thats why we did them immediately when we logged on. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had another quest been added. But since it never happened we will never know. And the sad part is the staff there kept saying there no point, nothing in it for them. And I offered to pay them (up front) to continue to work on the server.. not for my own personal enjoyment, but for the enjoyment of all of us who pay for graal monthly. You guys didn't even give classic a fair, or proper chance.

Look, I know I have come across as an ass in the past. And I am sorry for that, but when your told that graal does not deserve a server of such quality, makes no sense. Who is graal? What is graal? I say its a community of players, a community of developers. Or simply put its a blackbox with a scripting language. But put that all aside, we the players... who paid... do deserve quality content.

Who should take over as Classic's manager?