There's a big difference between a 'good' server and a 'popular' server. After I quit Bravo Evolved (and it went to crap afterwards by noob staff pointlessly editing my flawless levels with huge staff houses and adding useless NPCs, and gangs), I realized people who play Graal didn't want professionally made levels, detailed and unique quests, and even car customization. But, it turns out they'd rather press the 'D' button repeatedly in your apparently server-standard mine to chisel away at rocks so as to sell the excavated minerals until they can finally afford a hammer to forge the minerals they mine. This, in turn, allows them to make more money from mining by selling the forged minerals so they can advance to buying the neccessary equipment for making bread rolls, followed by farming. Then when they finally get enough money, they run around aimlessly and buy NPCs that in no way make the game any more fun.

Then there are servers like Unholy Nation, which to this day I still can't figure out. It's just a huge glorified chat room for tweens.

Anyways Bravo Evolved bombed, and I quit making levels. I'll stick with my occassional GFX contributions to Delteria.

P.S. - And to all those who said I 'copied' Era with Bravo Evolved. I started long before Era, but eventually slowed down in the development, since I didn't really own a server, and no one seemed interested in hosting someone else's server. When Era came out it merely remotivated me from spite to show people what a 'real' modern-day Graal server should be, so I managed to find someone to host the server. If you're a real oldbie with a good memory you'll remember me posting screens for a new server called 'Suburbana' [my server before Bravo adopted me] several years ago, way way before Era.

I actually wasn't the official owner of Evolved despite the fact that I did pretty much all of the levels, graphics, tilesets, ideas, quests, etc. and my buddy WarGod did all the scripting. And actually, the 'owner' (which will remain nameless) was the reason I quit the server when he suddenly decided to make Bravo Evolved public far too early, and then later told me he wanted to 'restart from scratch' when it bombed.

I'm just a bitter ego-driven oldbie.

What makes a good server?

Good sparring, tipped off with community.

Good points Glub.

Another thing that makes a good server is a constant staff team, that is not forever hiring and replacing staff members. Personally I would much rather be a player than a staff member and when a servers entire playercount is the staff then it really is a put off, this is probably the worst aspect of Shaded Legend.

Why would a server with minimal players require a mass of staff whom exist solely to entertain unexistant players. What a server needs is to be finished by the time it is uploaded, then minimal development staff are required to keep updates and new things coming and player involved staff are a major focus ONLY when the playercount begins to rise.

Then again, alot of players only play servers if they can be staff members and the sad fact is that often the most excitement is truly the drama's which unfold on the RC chat.

Players don't seem to love quality yet quantity and power, they want to be a renown player without much effort... Seems sad because they are missing out on being involved in servers which keep high standards and truly are a fun gaming experience as opposed to a boring experience which is only satisfying as a result of power/being high in the player pecking order.

So what makes good community?
A steady inflow of newbies, a steady inflow of oldbies, good player retention?
My theory is and was the evolution of newbies to oldbies, though admittedly I've never been good at retention. That was the whole point of quests - newbies go OO SOMETHING TO DO!, they do it, they get stuff, then they go "Huh, bored now. I think I'll go back to ___", and lo, there are more people there. Some newbies that need help with quests, some newbies who abandoned their questing status and need to be pwned.
Trouble is, on Classic, the crux was that the oldbies were only there to pick on the newbies. Well, not all of them were only there for that, but most of them were mostly there to PK newbies. Which means less newbies want to stay, particularly when there are other server options. Which means for each oldbie that leaves, there's one less total of the playercount. Which means eventually we wind up with like 10 people total. So we can crack down on PKing (more newbies, less oldbies), or we can encourage it (less newbies, more oldbies). Or you can work around it, which other servers have done to greater effect.

Konidas, definitely.

because UN has everything.
like today I found something that would make some people burst into flames over in level
keikosofficegnok.graal
where the dude leaves amessage talking about his ****** just reaching 13 inches

I saw that the other day when I decided to try UN again...I wont be going back :\

And it is now removed.

Some really good points..
I would like to see more servers which encourage Oldbies to help Newbies or to give Oldbies less incentive to kill Newbies... Maybe a spar-like pking system where you gain less from killing somebody who is new as opposed to somebody who is old...
I suppose that would bring us back to using experience as opposed to kills deaths which would really suck because having how many kills and deaths you have staring you in the face is a really good aspect, encourages you to improve.

Going around in circles though atleast the thread is now back on topic :P

I think I had maybe 20 kills...most of them accidental...something like 1500 deaths before the reset...