What classic's all about.
 

Last night was amazing i got to see what thor told me about for month's the beauty of classic it was so amazing it was like all the unholy nation people there were nicer they greeted everyone there was no drama at all just a wonderful time with fun events.It amazed me how people act differnt on classic then they do on unholy nation but for some reason they missed unholy nation breaks my heart to think that everyday can't be like last night.

how to cap flag

Dude im mad they went back to unholy nation last night is what i dreamed of classic being for months don't sweat it tho all the unholy managers quit.

It makes perfect sense though, the servers going down is the only reason that many players were on in the first place. Why leave what might have been your home server for several years for a server which is not on the list or -expecting- to maintain a playercount?

There is still work to be done before the server is ready for similar activity on a regular basis, although I hope to spark some interest towards event hosting on an organised basis soon.

this guy

It's alright tho they will come back.

Should probably use community names in the CTF UI.

Don't get mad, get glad.

Sorry, had to do it

Done.

I know -_-.

At least he's enthusiastic about Classic lol.

To this very day, I still have no idea what you guys do on classic.

PK, spar, events. It's like Era minus the corrupt administrators and broken economy.

This.

Plus quests which primarily follow a storyline and have direction provided to them, minus economy for the fact there isn't one as of yet. We do however plan to eventually disable global guilds and create a local guilds system (which mimics global guilds minus multi-guilding).

There's still the trading card game, laser shooting and snowball arena as well so it's not purely just the traditional aspects of Graal either.

Damn local guilds is a great Idea, go ahead for this!!

Nice, way to add minus points instead of positive ones. :mad:

The fact that there isn't (and essentially never has been) an economy makes sense iterating though, I'm asked "how do i get gralats?" and "can i buy hats?" fairly often.

The minus points I was referring to were the storyline quests and and disabling global guilds. Economy is kind of up in the air, I don't really support a server that claims to be "Classic" to have a real economy. Dropping rupees and buying NPCs with rupees is (of course) alright with me, but not trading items.

These are targeted towards hooking the interest of new Graal players. They may not be to your, older or more casual players liking, but are part of a strategy intended to bring players to the game. This means there would potentially be more players to spar/pk/participate within events, which is a good thing.

Classic pre dates global guilds. Many of the best known global guilds were originally local guilds on Classic, restoring a system which prevents multi-guilding will resurrect some of the factors which made guilds great in the first place. Right now it's technically impossible to even create a new global guild, as well as transfer leadership or be disabled for inactivity. Global guild leaders will be able to create their guild locally, criteria permitting.

You can't make global guilds any more?

You can, they just get stuck in the "pending" list forever or until removed regardless of obtaining 10 members. I recall it being said this is a result of some technical error which is being ignored, rather than just the lack of a guilds admin. You could also say this is false advertisement.

Nobody is updating the lists anymore, you have to send a mail to the support to get ur guild activated, which is just dumb and time consuming. I guess GraalOnline needs a new Global Guild Admin. Whats wrong giving someone permission to activate pending guilds and update the lists?

Why unixmad/Stefan making this to a big deal hiring a new Global Staff. I dont understand it honestly...

No, you assume that a forced storyline + questing structure is going to draw more players in than a server without forced storyline + questing structure. That can't logically make sense, as you even specifically stated that it may not be to the casual player's liking. Casual is where the large chunk of any given playerbase will be. Therefore it's not a "positive" point going to Classic vs Era as opposed to not mentioning it at all.

You could still multi-guild in the past with local guilds, anyway, so forcing people to only one guild isn't really a selling point. And no, it didn't make guilds great in the first place. What gave you that idea?

When you consider that pretty much every Graal server provides little to no direction to new players, and that there hasn't been an established server with a significant storyline since 2004, ofcourse there's going to be a bias in favour of the casual elements compared to questing, because community is a reflection of the content at hand. Think back to 2000, a very large portion of players were Zelda fanatics, even after Graal was renamed from Zelda Online it stood out as a Zelda clone. A lot of players have even said they only found Graal in the first place by searching for an online version of Zelda.

I know very well that the game does boil down to community based content, and this is the gameplay players end up experiencing far more than anything else. For a first time Graal player who is entirely alien to the game however, it's a lot less inviting and more difficult to enjoy compared to designed purposeful content. Expecting new players to wander around aimlessly in order to familiarise themself with the game is very hit and miss, instilling the idea that there's at least something for a player to do and showing them how to get to it increases the probability of them staying online, without necessarily prohibiting their free will.

In Classic's case, the storyline is only forced on players to a very small extent, and does not put players at a disadvantage within competitive gameplay. On the subject of logic, this wouldn't be of any significant detriment to casual style players, there would only be benefit.

What about before the introduction of global guilds?
I'm not entirely sure to be honest, but it's the impression I'm under. It may well be that multi-guilding became a lot more difficult for guild owners to monitor after the introduction of global guilds. Now you can't even see a list of guilds a player is in like was possible in the past.

I didn't say it was the sole selling point, there's a lot of advantages a local system would provide, mainly full creative freedom and an in game control panel. I didn't say we would necessarily restrict players to one guild either, with a local guilds system we could implement different types of guild, limiting players to only one competitive guild, while allowing them to form families for example.

I didn't say prohibiting multi-guilding was the sole reason for this. I was referring to a local guilds system in general. Every guild, plus the amount of guilds would be relevant to the server, which would have more legitimacy than an out dated, massively inflated, poorly maintained system.

I don't want to get deeply involved into an internet back-and-forth (especially when it doesn't directly involve me,) but here are my thoughts on the recent subjects of a 'forced storyline/quests' and 'local guilds only':

Every game needs to give a new player some sort of background/direction when they start. Simply logging onto a server and knowing nothing about the fluff, locations, ways to make money or get items, etc. is a bad influence on newcomers. Thus a game/server should walk the person along for a short time, describing where they are, what is going on, and how to get started. People looking for a true story-based RPG should probably get another game, but giving people an idea of what is going on around them is generally a good idea.

The debate likely comes from how long a person should be handheld by the server (ie: being "forced" to do stuff) before being left to fend for themselves. Outside of getting the sword and the shield, nothing I found in the storyline (after having played through it recently) was impossible to do without. Having lvl 1 gloves or a warp ring was nice, but even the 4th heart is negated in events when everyone is given the same health (I believe 3.) So from what I've seen, after you follow the story to get the sword and shield (along with reading about some of Graal basics and classic's story,) you're free to either continue the story or go off on your own, and thus seems fine.

The issue about 'local guilds' vs 'global guilds', as well as 'multi-guilding' is probably more complex. Personally I like the idea of 'local guilds' that represent something significant on the server (a location, area, idea, or whatever,) but these aren't likely common. Most local guilds are probably friends joining forces to try and become the big shots of the server. I'd like to see both global and local guilds allowed (could also lead to some fun 'invasion' type events of guild battles) but ultimately it doesn't matter that much to me.

Local guilds only is stupid and you should feel bad for thinking it's a good idea.

yep

That's all fine and dandy except in the original post you specifically stated that it may not cater to the casual player, which makes all of this null and void. That's how logical arguments work my friend. I could go on about how a forced storyline goes against what a Graal player desires but that could constitute its own thread.


You could still multi-guild, it was never an issue. An authoritive figure in a guild would PM an Admin or sometimes dedicated Guilds Admin on the server to edit the guild's .txt file to add a particular player and that's it. You also need to remember that families liked to have their own tags too, which could be confused with multi-guilding.


You wouldn't have to disable global guilds for this. Zodiac, for example, still allows global guilds, contains local guilds, and had a "competitive" nation-based guild system going on all at the same time. I'm all for more player control over guilds, especially since global guilds are being handled in such a horrible fashion. p.s "I didn't say we would necessarily restrict players to one guild either" <- you implied that by stating no multi-guilding without elaborating in the previous posts.


You implied local guilds + enforced anti-multi-guilding measures somehow made guilds greater in the past which is not true. Guilds always relied, and still do, on player loyalty. You can't enforce loyalty. It's something players decide for themselves. There are global guilds now that don't have multi-guilding members, and the past was no different.

You forget that more people enjoy quests than those who don't.
You're certainly given the option of playing servers without them.
Classic has quests, many people enjoy them, you don't. go somewhere else then?
Classic will have local guilds, you don't like that. cool, not for everybody, there's quite a few other servers out there. have fun :)

But to bag on something simply because it's not your taste, It's like bagging on Valikorlia for not having guns if you're an Era fan.

I don't know where you get that statistic from but after 12 years of Graal the vibe I get is that players dont really care for them.

Your logic of "go somewhere else then" is not an appropriate attitude, and I'm glad you have no authority over Classic because people like you have killed servers in the past.

Ex-Classic players have already stated their distate for forced local guilds. It's obvious Thor wants to cater to both true Classic players and new ones alike, so it's important that someone speaks out with reason on how he could improve the server he's been working on for over 3 years with criticism that could lead to positive changes to the server for all.

Are you implying that I'm bagging on Classic? That comparison isn't even valid anyway, so try again.

I disagree, most people that run through quests don't usually "enjoy" them as much as you'd believe. A lot of players, Unless you're a memorable drive, will usually find quests in Classic to be more seen as "That quest I do for my X-Item here.".

Well I'm glad to read that.

This seems rather negative, Also I don't believe he was entirely against quests in the first place, If I read everything right.

More negative antagonism, extremely bad PR right here.
Also just bad for the community to see this. If we're segregating like this with attitudes, we end up diluting the overall enjoyment of what Graal is. Which is what I truly believe killed Graal in the first place.

I also find this rather unusual as a comparison, validity as Crono placed it is questionable, but not improbable.

That's all I have to say on this particular argument.

As for the actual Global vs Local Guilds matter.

Local Guilds >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Global Guilds 150%

1. Local Guilds can be handled JUST as easily as global guilds, especially if scripted properly for accessibility.
2. In theory, with proper handling, Local Guilds are also more viable as a choice then Global just due to the fact that the servers that operate Local guilds would also have more control as to what a guild in general even MEANS.

Hypothetical Example #1 (One and only): Billy Bob "Cotton Eye" Joe Harris decides he wants to have "The Farmer's Guild". He pays or does whatever is necessary for that guild to be created, an excessively creative server could have it where that you go to the "Guild's Headquarters" and fill out some "paper forms" in a clever GUI appearance, once that is done, a guild administrator could literally read and review said application right in front of you, interview you based on the answers of your questions given from the application, Once everything is fixed, finished and ready to go, you get your "Guild Certificate" and then you could be asked if you wish to also buy a Guildhouse for your brand spankin' new guild.

The idea of guilds is an extremely flexible and also enjoyable aspect, Global Guilds are just nametags, Local Guilds could literally become what a server IS, If you know how to create content friendly to the feature itself.

I would also like to simply add to the fact that if we've seen from what the Scripted RC has shown to everybody else, that also means that having Local Guilds as a barebone script on its own is also a viable way to eliminate the need for Global Guilds at all, considering that it could even become the new Global Guild System itself.

Thank you for burning your retinas on reading my paragraph.

You obviously don't understand so i'm not going to bother refuting you, i might consider it if you could go a minute without resorting to insults for a lack of a proper argument.

Remember to remain objective, Npulse is a good example, it didn't offer anything new (among other things) and it subsequently died.

Classic is and always has been a questing server, that's one of it's major points of interest. you wouldn't remove guns from era.

Thank you for this useful and informative post.

Oh ok I guess all of those old players who thought Tyhm's Classic was a relic and the greatest designed server Graal has ever seen are null and void. I guess the 150 players who have completed the castle quest, the 300 who have done the tomb quest and the 560 who have done Zol's toilet (not bad for a UC server) are null and void.
Now I think about it casual players are null and void on iPhone considering most players are idling in Graal City asking for a girlfriend or for someone to adopt them. Guild forts and spar arenas aren't catering to their desires right?
That's how logical arguments work my friend.

Is it really that difficult to conceive the idea there can be a strategy for bringing players to the game (by actually presenting it as a game with a purpose, and providing direction), as well as a strategy for keeping players on the game (by having competitions and activites on a level playing field), working in tandem with eachother?

Spar/PK/Event type content is much easier to develop, hence why it is in relative abundance, and already quite strongly positioned on Graal.
Solid permanent content such as Quests are much harder to develop, hence why it is something of a lost art on Graal, and so a large un-tapped reserve.

Once again, the storyline is only prohibiting competitive content to an incredibly small extent. Unless you think legitimately new players will log on for the first time, head straight to the spar arena and enjoy getting slaughtered it is not causing any harm. The idea that "no one cares about quests" is utterly ridiculous, it would be like me saying "no one cares about buying hats", which is something I find quite funny, yet clearly it is something some players care about on other servers.

Keeping global guilds enabled would render some of the advantages of local guilds redundant, and this would also require a greater amount of work. Using one system allows us to keep all guilds relevant to the server, ensure all guilds are created to the same requirements, provide the opportunity to obtain perks to all guilds, and provide all guilds with the same tools and capabilities.

Preventing multi-guilding can just as easily mean limiting players to 3 guilds as opposed to 1. That was just your assumption.

This is a romantic idea in theory, but in practise has been complained about for a decade. Having a system which enforces it will mean guilds have to put in effort to recruit indecisive players over other guilds, which is more conducive to a competitive environment.

This is fairly common in online gaming as well as other Graal servers throughout history, but if you've played through Tyhm's or the current Classic quests this is far from the case, there's a lot more design towards them than simply being generic chore like errands as an excuse to give an award.

The design is fine, I've played some of the current quests, not a lot of them though, but from what I feel, they aren't that much to me. That's my full and honest opinion on them. If you want me to elaborate, I can't, sorry.

I don't understand? lol, ok man.

I see no logical argument in what you posted. My very first post was poking fun at the fact that you consider a forced storyline + questing structure as a positive point, while even you responded that casual players (that constitute the majority of any given playerbase) and older players ("such as myself") might not find it appealing.

If you want to talk numbers, Classic was the de-facto server and held onto a large proportion of the playercount prior to full-p2p back in 2002. When full p2p was finally unleashed, its playercount inevitably dwindled. As early as 2003 servers like Era (which had no quests), UN (really horrible quests), and Valikorlia (no quests) dominated the top 3 server spots. I don't know if you're aware of this or not but there was never a golden age of questing outside of Classic on any servers.

I'm not against having a storyline, structured method of introducing new players to servers, quests, or any of that. Forced quests themselves aren't even that bad. Forcing a storyline + questing onto players on a multiplayer game, however, isn't ideal. To describe why I'd have to get into the whole characters-being-forms-of-self-expression and how a forced generally linear storyline alienates their avatars. It's why you never have forced storyline on other multiplayer games unless they compliment the normal gameplay. You claim quests are permanent content, but they're only done once and never touched again by a player. I also never claimed that no one cares about quests, I claimed that over a decade of interaction with players from dozens of servers indicates that quests are not important. Logically they are simply obstacles to the "end game".

Bro, if you have an awesome local guild system planned out there's nothing wrong with that. The problem I had was the multi-guilding prevention coupled with local guilds. Your posts only stated that multi-guilding would be prevented. Being in more than one guild is multi-guilding. My assumption was based on the information you gave me.

People will multi-guild if the guilds in question are weak, that's just how it works. There are some guilds that never had or still don't have issues with multi-guilding (Veracity, MHX, TNR, BTK, SNC, US, and so many more) and some guilds that were only built as either alliances or "jokes". If someone is legit multi-guilding in your guild, it's a sign of disloyalty and you simply kick them out if you have a problem with it. That's how it's been for so long.

I think the biggest issue with local-only guilds is if they are defying the "real" global guild's members & hierarchy.

Just to add to that (since my first post was so informative and useful) what about family guilds? I know most people don't seem to take them seriously anymore, but if I have to create the local guild for Bloodvayne and then still want to be in SNC and such, would I be prevented from doing so?

If so, then that is just plain ****ed up, as are local guilds in general.

I addressed family guilds somewhere in one of those posts but yeah, that's one of the reasons why I was questioning it. Family guilds aren't as common as they used to be though, I can only think of Bv and Heartless that are still active. I would mention Dionne but let's face it, the real Dionne is dead. ;p

Saying questing may not appeal to casual type players is not contrary to listing questing as a positive point. The original post was highlighting the aspects of the server, inwhich casual players are not the only target audience in the way that your post suggested. You seem to like using the word logic an awful lot yet many of your statements are illogical, or only looking at it from one perspective.

It's not surprising, when you consider there was this trial restriction of not being able to save, it was impossible to progress far on Classic when every login you were completely reset, that was a terrible model for a questing game. Not only that but there were so many quests that it actually took a long time to obtain all of the hearts and equipment, so trials were not on a level playing field competitively, and it wasn't viable for them to re-obtain their stats each time they logged on.

Completely irrelevant, I never said there was and yet it's still a statement some may disagree with.

They are permanent in the form of being available and welcoming to every player who ever logs onto the server in future, which is the whole point. The idea that quests are pointless because they take so long to make, you play them once in a short space of time, and then you're finished with them is a massive misconception. Quests are not there to keep players occupied, they are there to hook the interest in the game to begin with.

Quests are not of direct importance to players who only play to participate within competitive content, something which has always been in relative abundance on Graal. Quests are not seen as important on other servers, but quests have rarely been developed to a decent quality and/or quantity on other servers. The server we're talking about here stands out as an exception, as such many of those who considered old Classic as their home server also consider quests to be important. Otherwise I wonder what all the fuss that occurred within the first years of post NPC-Server Classic was about.

By that definition, being in both a warring guild and a family is multi-guilding, when many including yourself if I understood correctly would not consider it to be. There is a goal to prevent multi-guilding generally speaking, there is however different ways to accomplish it.

There's no reason we can't have global guild recreation require ownership of the guild, or some form of manual confirmation of leadership. Ranks + rights can also be created for local guilds.

This has already been addressed. One of the advantages of having a local guild system is that it does allow for the separation of guilds according to type. So yes, you could be in both a competitive guild as well as a family.

Your compelling argument shall receive strong consideration.

You really should stop breaking down posts into a billion quotes, makes it really hard for people to follow and hard to respond to.

No, many of my statements are flawless yet people still manage to think so otherwise. My very first response was poking fun at the fact that I don't consider forced storyline + questing as a positive point for Classic over Era. My arguement is that the server's appeal would be narrowed down (a view which even you acknowledged) with the presence of such a feature.

Wasn't a problem for UN, Delteria, Babylon, etc that also had initial quests. In Classic's defense, it had a really awkward time when the NPC Serv was introduced.

You referred to it as a lost art, as if there was a strong questing presence within the development community.

Yes, I obviously know the purpose of a quest but to have long drawn out quests and then claim it's there to initally hook players in is rather...strange. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't have a storyline or that you shouldn't have quests, but I disagree with forcing both together. Post NPC-Server Classic (someone correct me if I'm wrong) broke a lot of the NPCs/systems so they had to be re-done from scratch. Classic had a large playercount of players who had already completed all the quests, so if a lot of the trials had left then the only people left didn't have any quests to re-complete, so there would be no fuss from them would there? Perhaps the server was reset and everything was still broken, who knows.

I wouldn't say warring guild, I would just say a normal guild. Families like to have tags because it's a sign of legitimacy, otherwise they just add the family name after their own followed by whatever guild they're in.

Yep, sounds fine.

Arrogance is not a persuasive argument.

See, by inserting the phrase "I don't consider", that is distinguishing the belief as an individual opinion, as opposed to stating it as a matter of fact like with the original post. I can't argue against questing not being a positive point for yourself, nor do I hold it against you personally, I can however argue against that being the same for many of those who considered Classic as their home server in the past, as well as many of those who have played through the existing quests.

I didn't acknowledge that in the way you are insinuating though, you're twisting my words entirely out of context, and picking and choosing different parts to suit your argument. I acknowledged that in the context of an existing purely casual player, and alluded to the fact that questing is primarily targeted at legitimately new Graal players.

These servers did not have a long chain of questing to the extent Tyhm's Classic did. In UN's case obtaining all the hearts and equipment, while still a chore, could be done in a much less relative amount of time compared to Classic. Babylon is a bad example, for whatever reasons it may have been it had problems which caused it to fade out within this time period.

Not necessarily a strong presence, by referring to quest development as a lost art I was emphasising the higher frequency that occurred back then when compared to the very low frequency of it that occurs now.

To have a set direction and objective pointed out to a first time player is more likely -in general- to keep them online and interested for longer, compared to leaving them to wander around aimlessly with no given direction or objective. At the same time however, once the sword is obtained at the very start players are not prevented from wandering around aimlessly according to their free will. So even if you refuse to believe it can have a positive effect on long term playercount, it's only to a very small extent it could possibly have a negative effect.

Only if there was a server filled to the brim with playable content almost everywhere that can be explored might it then be sufficient to leave the game entirely down to exploration, Graal just doesn't have servers which come close to offering this. If most of the levels are waste levels which offer no incentive, exploring them is less likely to be interesting. With what we have on Classic though, there's a stable foundation of linear questing that can branch out and gradually become more flexible.

I'm not sure what time era you're referring to here, post NPC-Server Classic began as a complete wipe around January 2005. There were no quests other than a simplistic maze and a pushblock hell hole until the Castle quest around a third of the way through 2006. By the time the next quests were released playercount had already dropped much lower, a lot of the pre NPC-Server players had left, and v5 had been implemented.