There are just so many problems with this...

You spend hours to pay to upload a shield for everyone to use.

There is just nothing right about that statement.

There is nothing right with charging money for a dead pc graal game yet people still pay, why do you think stefan or unixmad is gunna change it anyway. If people are still paying why would they care?

Well since hats and heads are sold without issue, making them cost money but provide an option to 'Submit for Public Consumption' (include a free to submit not necessarily get uploaded and usable) option and if enough of them are of high enough quality, create a new store and sell them, and as a sign of good faith give the artist a 5-10% cut per sale.

It would actually give the people who spend time making the heads and hats incentive to continue making them. So instead of getting gralats from just one player, you get it from multiple.

Obviously submitting stolen work would be a problem but the end result definitely seems worth it as compared to the system currently proposed.

Shields and swords should be free though, or 100 gralats if you really insist are on charging for it.

It's much easier to make money on Era iPhone, though.

You know that all those shields are lagging the players and by making it free we would get even more of them? It costs money to serve the files, and it costs work to check and approve them, that's why it needs to cost something. We also made it relatively cheap, and most players seem to like the system (costs some money but you get it relatively quickly online).
You don't always need to cry OH NO NOW I MUST GO AND CUT SOME BUSHES TO GET MY BEAUTIFUL SHIELD ONLINE
Prices can always be changed although like I said there is more about it than just 2k hard drive space or so.

Love how you said that, really. Though yeah i agree, its not much work cutting some bushes.

It is when it takes 10 hours to accumulate the amount needed.

Holy hell, Thats long. 10 Hours bushcutting.. why do you still play that game?

when your a real iNoob time has no meaning :P

ppl like to just sit around and socialize. they're all young teens (like we were when we started Graal) so it's not like they have anything to do.

hell i dont either i should be playing iphone :cool:

got ffm?

Usually, when one goes into the online gaming business, they have servers that can appropriately serve that purpose.

It does cost money to host files on a server, but definitely not 1$ per image file.
And 'relatively cheap' as compared to what? The actual price of the game?
If thats your measure, then yes. Uploading shields is cheaper than buying the game itself. (Not by much, mind you)
And I dont know where you get your information that players like the system. I read through countless complaints on facebook.

Your right, you don't have to. But how else do you get money....oh right, theres that convenient little purchase button that puts money into your account. Brilliant alternative.

Prices do need to be adjusted.
Thor had the best idea, making an upload pack for players to purchase...then you get money for server space, and people dont pay an arm and a leg to upload shields.

I think everyone should remember how rarely we get to discuss these things with Stefan, and how sarcasm usually doesn't do much except make things confusing and heat up the discussion. It's best to think critically and utilize this opportunity we have to make a point.



Let me throw some information around to orient the discussion:

• Graal is for-profit. They want to make money.
• Graal is private and by law doesn't need to reveal to us how much money they are making.
• It costs money to run Graal. It isn't a small amount of money judging by the number of servers required, mentioned by Stefan.

Of course, on the other hand, it's also worth mentioning that the PC community has felt 'gypped' for a long time and there is trust lacking that when Graal charges for something, it isn't just trying to bludgeon all the money out of its customers.


Something that has always contributed to this sense of being gypped is that players often are charged for doing things which help Graal out. Such as:

• Players getting charged for rights to develop.
• Players getting charged for servers.
• Players not getting any money back for running Classic servers.

(I'm not saying any of these are necessarily right or wrong, but that they exist.)

So charging for player uploads, whether it's good or not, definitely doesn't look or feel good considering Graal's track record.

Many probably think: "Who's to say that they aren't just trying to do the same dance that makes us pay to do work for them?"

Whether it's micro- or mega- transactions, the sense of being gypped won't go away if these sorts of charges exist.




The way to fix this problem is to:

• Be more transparent, and let the players know exactly how much it costs for bandwidth and storage of shields, so they don't feel robbed when they pay for one, but instead that they are holding their own weight.
• Start giving back. It makes sense that people need to pay for a server when they start out: because it's making Graal lose money. But once it goes Classic-tab, the server should not only be free (as it is), but the staff should get paid, with actual money. Developing is hard work, and no one likes being robbed for doing work. Pay a percentage of sales back to the developers (possibly based on server population).

I don't think this feeling of being gypped is a hard one to fix, it just requires some time to figure out the numbers. If that time is invested, expect a good response from the playerbase. I think this investment from Eurocenter is a reasonable thing for all the players to ask for.

Either way players keep the PC version alive both as 'players' and 'developers'. Despite the worst, a lot of us kept going.

You're welcome.

You get money from sponsers, events, quests; just to name a few.

On iEra if people help us develop something we also give them a free upload or if we do a competition and get everyone involved on the server we also give other freebies.

We understand that players are funding everything so we have a lot of fun with them we constantly participate and get involved in events on the server to make it more enjoyable for them.