New Graal Website
 

So... everyone knows the website is confusing, unhelpful, and is very poorly marketing Graal.

I am going out on a limb by posting this; but I believe it's completely necessary. Graal is, without a doubt, losing business because of this website.

I will reward (and try to get rewards from Stefan) anyone who builds a nice website template. If you are trying to build one and get stuck, you can post it on here and get some help with it.

Basically, I think a template of a website would be nice, for example; just place a text box for "Account" and a textbox for "Password" that wouldn't actually do anything; the rest could be done by unixmad/stefan at a later date.

I don't have much approval for this project, but I hope that if we can design a decent template then everyone will see the light and understand the reasoning for why we need a new website.

This is a great opportunity for members of the GDT, but anyone is open to the project.

A new website would be very helpful, yes, but it's also important to decide a marketing strategy for Graal: should it be aimed at players or developers? That's one of the first questions to be answered, and the one that the website pretty much needs to be based on.

We can all agree, however, that the current one is awful, but I'm not sure if it's really the website that's turning people away. From my experience, the majority of traffic Graal has ever gotten was from friend referrals.

I personally believe more focus should be pressed on Graal's development capabilities. However, its gameplay shouldn't be forgotten either.

The colors just make no sense at all, doesn't remind me of Graal at all. The old colors made the website feel like 'home.

Mouseover/Dropdown menus are annoying/overrated in my opinion. Collapse/Expand in a main navigation section would be nicer i think.

Next, whether someones disagrees or not, the truth remains. Unholy Nation and Era have obviously been the most successful servers in about a year or so? When guests visit most of their immediate opinions are based off of Zone, and GK. Time to start advertising more of the players work, not just Gold status.

Why should more focus should be pressed on Graal's development capabilities?

That's because Graal has a lot to offer on a development standpoint, plus, we need more developers before we can have more games! Therefore, I believe attracting developers is the most important part, then games is second.

I think it's funny that you can go back to the old site with it's functionality by clicking on the Kingdoms option.

well unholy nation and era are just the best of the worst....its nothing you should brag about on a website. new delteria seems very nice and so does bomy island, classic could be good and zone and gk needs a remake in gameplay to be good. But for zone I really think we should go for a lowpoly 3d thirdperson view it looks so awesome in my head with monsters to shoot and like driving... *dreams away*

If you are planning to keep the example videos of playerworlds, please add a ****ing play, pause and stop option.

I agree, the website would benefit from some graphical improvements and directed more towards the target audience of GraalOnline and not 7 year olds. I also think the layout could be improved to give better access to certain pages and features such as the download and news pages can't be accessed directly from the main index page and I truly believe the news should be on the index page instead of hiding inside the world sections much like it was on the old layout.

This. ^

Yes, I definitely agree.

I have to agree with this, to be honest.

We need to make it more clear on where you can download Graal, and where you can buy/refill your gold. Today these are one of the hardest things to find on the current website. It should be obvious where they are.

and I completely agree with cbk1994, please decide which path Graal should take.

I'm with Rufus on this one. I came as a player and gained an interest in other things. I think those who are interested in developing or have the potential will naturally try it at some point, but they need to play first.

I guess it depends on your belief of whether people would/do come here as developers from the start. I don't think they do.

In light of that, yes we need developers to get more games. But we need players to become developers, making players the most important part, the developers a natural side effect of increasing the player count.

There is no reason why both couldn't be highlighted on the website, but I believe the player aspect is more important. You need to let people enjoy and get addicted to make someone develop for nothing. People won't come with a passion for Graal and a willingness to help for free from the start. A website that says "GRAAL - DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM - NO TANGIBLE RETURN ON INVESTMENT" won't get developers or players any time soon.

Eitherway, I'd welcome a change. I was excited, and now a little disappointed, as I thought the website had actually changed or was about to within a short space of time :p

Well, a lot of people are very interested in "developing their own game," but they don't quite know how. It's very attractive to someone to provide a somewhat easy development platform. Once we get better documentation and video tutorials (which we already started doing on testbed), it should be quite a lot better.

You make a really great point about games attracting people to Graal; which is why I certainly agree with not completely leaving the gaming field, but right now Graal is only advertised as a game-- it should be advertised as both.

Also, with the addition of a new website, I believe it could provide more motivation for developers (myself included) to work harder to improve other aspects of Graal too, while the website attracts new players. The other day I showed someone I know the website for Graal, and they were completely confused and turned off by it, if I had not been standing there next to them they would have given up trying to download the client/create an account and would have left the site. I was disgusted to say the least, and it was a huge wakeup call for me.

As you just stated, it's only advertised as a game. I'm sure it would attract more and more people if it was advertised as a development platform. So, uh, been a long time I didn't try my skills at S.Vegas, let's see what I can come with.

Any essential points you'd like to precise in that video?

You mean the video tutorial for developers? You could cover (in three separate videos):

- How to get RC
--- How to use it
----- Why it's needed

- How to get GraalShop
--- How to use it
------ What it's used for
--------- How to upload/use your ganis.

- How to get LevelEditor
--- How to use it
------ What it's used for
--------- How to upload/explore your levels.

Some pages that are using content originally from the graal bible should be updated on the graal website such as the graal kingdoms page here and more of the graal development pages from the graal bible should also be moved to the graal webiste.

Especially when my browser will crash if a video is running while I've got the graal client open. It took me a few attempts to get the link I posted above because my browser kept crashing.

I am all for a new website. The one in place now is like it goes to a totally different game, and is very hard to navigate. I really miss the old one from years ago.

i came on graal to dev. riiiiiiiiiight

With this new website, a portal of some sort for player submissions would be nice. Currently we can submit playerworld pictures, but that stopped getting checked awhile ago, i still have 2 pending. Along with this, there could be the recently discussed idea of global graphic submissions again, a code gallery like on these forums for public use ect. This could all be checked by PWA maybe, instead of relying on a single, inactive person to keep up to date with even the smallest of playerbases.

I 100% agree, the navigation is garbage, terrible.

I like the idea of player-submitted previews, and a "code gallery" for images is an incredibly cool idea if it were incorporated with the website.

This is great, let's get a few more basic ideas for the site, then I can write an outline for a web designer to follow.

I don't know if anybody has brought this up, but it's related to the development platform vs. game thing. Why not have two websites: one targeted towards selling the game, and one targeted towards selling the development platform?

This would be a great compromise.

There's quite a few people interested in purchasing the QuattroEngine, but unixmad has not made 1 reply to any of the threads/posts relating to this.

While it would be interested, I think it's important to represent Graal as a whole community, not two separate communities. I don't know exactly what you had in mind though, it could work out quite well if done correctly, but right now I don't think it's an idea that would benefit Graal.

I was going to suggest this too, but didn't think it'd go down too well. I think it would be an excellent idea, because they're essentially two different markets. I also believe every server that is on the Classic tab (once it has been revised hopefully) should have a home on the Graal player website.

This a good idea, I think each server could have a spot as long as the layout is approved/maintained by someone responsible to ensure that there is nothing bad on there.

Finally the players are speaking because change is needed.

I would agree with this but only under the condition that these servers are forced to improve their quality by the PWA.

Well like you were saying in the other thread, we really need things to advertise before we do advertise, and that's a large part of why games have websites.

Why should paying customers fix CJ's mistakes?

It's their problem, let them deal with it. I hate the fact everyone here thinks they're some marketing or advertising guru and they have all the answers to save this failed project they call Graal.

I hate the fact that people always feel the need to bring others down for trying to do something good.

It's a really good engine. I remember Galdor saying the 3D terrain editor was pretty awesome.

What are you doing good?

Eventually any work you've done will be forgotten about and you'll probably get fired soon anyway. History has repeated time and time again when it comes to this stuff.

Look at all the previous staff members who've worked closely to Stefan or unixmad, you get no recognition for your work done. You're helping someone for no reason whatsoever, when they should be doing it themselves.

They clearly don't care about this game any more.

The reason for doing this isn't about getting recognition for my work, it is simply about helping, and while you may consider it no reason whatsoever, I consider it to be a higher cause, because this game is important to me and I know it's important to a lot of other people too.

Yeah I've heard this before. Then when you get the ass, we'll see if you feel the same way.

'Cause it's fun? :p
I will definitely work on something. Holidays just started here, and I got quite a bit of free time :)

People who dont do things, or quit because they might fail, or it might be for nothing, never get anywhere. It's better to try and fail, then to not try at all.