My final attempt
 

I held off on making this thread for a few reasons.


First off, it is highly likely that this will be locked, deleted, or moved. I've noticed the admins of this game, and those who enforce their will, hold a particular contempt for free thought and speech, especially in an open, debatable venue.

This is not a "future improvement" thread. This is a general discussion about the future, if any, of this game.

The forums ARE the right place to speak up aganist things you believe are wrong with this game. They ARE the right place to speak aganist the administration when you believe they are wrong.

I'm sure we've all sent our forum PMs to the "appropriate staff" and have seen nothing come of them.

I sure know I have.

I myself have offered tons of ideas, my services and help, and much more to this game. Personally, I'm sick of them being ignored.

I've played this game for 6 years this fall. From the time where there was simply one server, with 300 or more players on. When the game was all about the community, all about friendships, guilds, and such. Before the place was divided into many servers. Back before we were expected to pay, and promised that Graal, in some form, would always remain free.

So, what is my point, and where am I going with this?

I'm sure you've all noticed this, but player counts on all servers have been hitting record lows. It is to be expected, afterall. More people are quitting than new players signing up. VIP accounts are surely expiring at a fasrer rate than they are being signed up for.

So, Unix, Stefan, what's your plan?

We have a brand new script language, a great new client, and less players than ever to use them.

We have a system that allows players to create and develop their own worlds, yet not enough players to do so.

We also have tons of free MMORPGS, and MMORPGS which cost a comparable amount to this game, which offer much larger communities, more interactive and captivating game play, and a seemingly more involved administration.

Graal simply does not offer a package that's attractive for your money. Two Servers with a playerbase of 40-60 people each? Access to some semi-active forums? The ability to log onto 100 playerworlds with nearly no content?

Further more, and by far the worst call Stefan has made since making classic servers P2P, is the new "Limited" trial account system. Is it really necessary to drive the nail into the coffen?

I've said it so many damn times and no one seems to care. No one wants to listen. The best thing this game has going for is its simplicity. At it's core, you have a simple game with a community that is easy to get into.

The community is the players. Without them, the game becomes moot. There are no monsters to level off of (GK doesnt count, seriously.). Besides interactivity with other people, this game does not offer much.

So why must the player count be forced to go down?
Why can classic servers not be free again?
Why not give this game a damn chance of survival?

Instead of forcing people to pay just to play, why not offer them a free game, and then make a few servers (Graal 3d, anyone?) pay to play, like it was?

Why not advertise this game? I see adds for games like adventure quest, which is no more than a flash RPG, yet I see none for this on any popular sites a gamer might visit.

I understand the financial issues. I also understand the most basic concept of economics. Supply and Demand. Players demand a product worth their money. Currently, Graal does not supply this.

You can tell me I'm not forced to play. You can tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. You can defend your choices, as poor as most people find them to be, until the bitter end.

While you've been jumping from one project to the next, I've been watching the community die. I've been watching players lose faith. I've played other games. Yet I always come back here, clinging to some foolish hope that perhaps my first online game will restore itself to a fun, large community like it once was.

This is the final chance I will give this game. I plan on making some noise, and I want my opinions to be heard. I know 100 things, all of them very simple, that could be done to improve the community, the player count, and the game itself. Will I be listened to?



Edit: To Stefan.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...9&postcount=23

That means users who do not pay have 2 weeks to play Graal. In those two weeks, do you believe they will become attatched enough to this game to think it worth the money?

Graal Online is at a dudd right now, no one is botherd. I could probably quote several globals who have said something similar.

It works the way it is. Its fairly simple if you take the time to think about it. It is in all likelyhood making money without huge effort or costs.

I hope not.

The thread is very well thought out. I pretty much agree with everything you had to say.

Aye, same.

If a few (or alot) of developers got together to work on a simple, lag free server based around PKing and Events and that, with NICE well made levels and decent graphics when needed, I'm sure something could become of it. Something very interesting.

You've just said what many of us have been thinking for at least 2 years. We've waited and hoped for improvements and the return of what we once had but with each step forward we do at least 3 steps back. I've always said I'd stay until the end but most people don't have my patience to wait. I hope they don't delete this post as all you're doing is stating the views of many who have said it privately many times.

Two words and then some more.

I agree.

Sure, I haven't been playing this game as long as most of you. Heck, I've only been playing for what, three years? And I've seen playercounts dropping. I've seen the threads here about saving servers like UN, which have dropping playercounts. A few more I'd like to point out are Valikorlia, and Delteria's has gone down a bit too. I'm sure there are more. Yeah, theres alot of Dev servers out there, hoping to be big. There playercount of Graal in general is dropping, and is it really a surprise? Look at some of these things that have been introduced. I see Classic, not doing well with its new NPC server. I see UN, which has been promised things before. I see Zone, with its not that good weapons being added, things like the red rifle, and its dropping playercount. Graal lacks the ability to draw new players to it, while the old ones leave. It just won't work.

I remember when i started playing graal 3 years ago. Playercount was pretty high especially on school days, and Un was the server i fell in love with. Now there is not any server that can catch any of my intrest, they all seem the same, and these "new improvements" to servers never come true because the owner gives up a stupid excuse for not doing it. The only fun thing i like to do on big servers is argue with other players because its funny and on this community too, corrupt staff ruins everything though. I even got jailed on UN for bashing on Mysti's judgement. What kinda ticks me is the high demand of money for graal, sure classic servers run forever, but only 1 or 2 of them get fun for a while. The VIP has raised 6 dollars and im not sure why they did that which is why i think lack of buying vips is rising. These mmorpg games do not really catch the average gamers eye since there are games like counter-strike which appear more fun and more games that are advertised and have a fun point to them. Advertising will likely raise playercount and get this community more active again, but unix or stefan lack to do this or just finance it. We have some players who try to get hope for this game but they all fail because they cant get the word out so quickly. And mostly why people leave is due to the ignorance of corrupt staff, and the fact that other games(some like graal but not really like graal) have a better community like you said, and more reasonable staff that are mature unlike our young 12 year old staff. The only people graal would get are 12-16 year olds because after that age, everyone seems to go off to better things in their life. This game does have a new lot of things including the new scripting language but thats online and thats whats decreasing scripters. This server will probably be closed as to people going to talk about specific server administration and not just server administration in public.

if anyone says guest mode, ill scream
guest mode makes graal SOOO boring, if all trials were guests everwhere, i would never have started playing. i like the idea of a free mini server, make it save for trials, small, and they can only use it for a short time. this will also decrease the noobishness on the other servers by making an area only for trials, so they'll play here. I like the idea :)

I agree.

I have played this game for 3 years. The main reason I stick around is because of the traces of "community" it has left. N-Pulse has been my main server and I have made some good friends there.

The person who introduced me to graal played Sanstrata when it was up. He told me all kinds of stories about how it was back then. He was talking about how it wasn't the level quality or the flashy things that made Graal fun, it was the community, the people. That obviously isn't the basis for this game now. Players who once flocked to the game for the community refuse to pay for, well, basically, a chat service.

It is hard to develop graal servers into game play that works. I've been staff on N-Pulse for 3 years and in that time I've seen many ideas come and go, being shot down by the players for various reasons.

With that said, I believe trials are a vital aspect to graal. It is true that trials can become annoying, but put yourself in the situation. You play on a trial account, everything you do on the game won't save but during your time on the trial you grow to love the game. So you buy a P2P. This seems like the best money making strategy. Limiting trial accounts even further will not let peoples attraction to the game grow, and they will just move on to some other free mmorpg.

If you're worried about money, keep trials how they are, offer better upgrade perks, and ADVERTISE. I don't think I've ever seen a graal advertisement. I know it costs a ton of money to run this game but I'm positive some sort of advertisement could be arranged. Graal has always had "word of mouth" advertising. Imagine if you advertised through some media outlet and reached 100 people. These 100 people tell a friend. We got 200 players just like that.

There are alternatives to making money and pleasing the players. The strategy now is obviously not working and something needs to be done.

EVERYONE is losing their passion for this game. If Graal is going to survive, changes need to be made.

Who in the world is planning to make trials more limited? It is planned that guest accounts can play for 1-2 weeks, including saving their account, like on many other games. Also we will make it much easier to create accounts and upgrade. We have also planned other things, like helping playerworlds to make the game easier for new players / guide new players (including Kingdoms).

can't people just constantly register new guest accounts?

No only one per computer

Is it by ip tracking, and i think thats what he meant.

I'd find that even more annoying than relogging on with all your stuff gone.
If you can only play for 1 - 2 weeks, I'd love to see the population of the classic servers. Most newbies will come and go in a flash, it'd be heaven for all those idiots who "h8 nubs", but wouldn't it do the game more harm?

What if you've paid for an account on one computer, but your little brother wants to buy one as well? Will that be allowed?

Yes of course, but you cannot "create" another guest account

I would say most players on trial accounts either buy an upgrade or don't play more than 2 weeks. We still plan to make it possible to connect to Graal, but you need to create an account, and the number of servers will be very limited.

I'm pretty sure that if there were a guest mode, more people would pay to play.
I'm sorry, but the trial account issue right now is totally out of control (from a staff viewpoint).
There are so many members who use trials to cause trouble, get banned, then just keep getting new trials to do the same crap. It is rediculous.

How to help Kingdoms: Allow staff to modify more things on the server and leave it alone. Lord knows it's been left to rot. :whatever:

Incorrect.

My goal here is to get you to listen to me. I understand you have your idea of how things will work out; but we're the ones playing the game, Stefan. We see this stuff every day.

Someone makes a trial account. They play for awhile, and one of the following possibilities will occur:

A) They decide the game does not offer enough for them to continue to play as a trial. They quit.
B)They decide the game offers enough to continue on as a trial without upgrading
C)They decide the game offers enough content to be worth the upgrade, but they do not have the available funds to pay. They continue on as a trial.
D)They decide the game offers enough conent to be worth the upgrade, and they create a P2P account.

Only one out of 4 of these options ends with you making money, however, 3 out of 4 leave you with the possibility of the player ending up on option D in the future.

Now, with your new trial idea, your outcomes change to this:

A) They decide the game does not offer enough for them to continue to play as a trial. They quit.
B)They decide the game offers enough to continue on as a trial, but are forced to quit.
C)They decide the game offers enough content to be worth the upgrade, but they do not have the available funds to pay. Trial expires, they're forced to quit.
D)They decide the game offers enough conent to be worth the upgrade, and they create a P2P account.

Now only 1 out of 4 options will possibly give you money, instead of 3. After a player quits, or is forced to because their trial expires, chances are they will go on to one of the many other free games out there. As I've stated before, what do you believe Graal really has to offer compared to all the other free, or inexpensive, games out there?

You do realize most trial players can not, or are not, willing to pay the money for a P2P, correct?
They're not on trial accounts because they want to be, they're on them because their choices are limited. In effect, you're not making it more likely for them to upgrade, but less likely, because they will no longer be playing the game, and will thusly find a new passtime, and forget Graal. Think.



Stefan, I want you to address ALL the issues I spoke of, not just one.

All of us want answers to these questions. We've played this game for years, we've kept silent.

Now we want results. Results we feel you've had time to give us. Results we believe we have payed for.

-What state of development is Graal 3d in?
-What are you doing to remedy the low player count?
-Why are some members of Global Staff allowed to "get away with murder" or be almost totally inactive, and keep their jobs?


All of us have ideas about how to remedy situations that have been killing this community for years. It's time someone listened to us, and honestly put our thoughts into action for once.

I don't want to hear your defences, and I don't think anyone else does. We simply want to discuss how we can improve the future of this game, and we want you to listen with an open mind.

You're telling Stefan what is correct about his own game? I think he knows the stats better than you do, seeing as he has the logs and you do not.

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. A p2p account costs next to nothing per month. I think I paid around 45 canadian for a year of VIP. That's 3.75 a month, I spend more than that on coffee and food every day.

the guest mode wouldnt let the player explore enough to buy a p2p. Trials cant pm or do noting so how can they cause trouble? Hurting somones feelings? The guest feature will not work out. But just watch as the playercount will stedily drop. If players liked the game enough, they would buy it as a trial, so guestmode wont do anything except force the people to quit. This community is really dieing due to people finding better games with better administration, heck this community is getting boring to me. No new updates are ever made to servers that are populated. I dont even know what was the last fun new feature Un had except that pet thing. Itd be nice if you guys funded for advertisement, you wouldnt lose money but gain more. And i dont get why you guys raised prices of the vip account, all people wanted it for was to make guilds and playerworlds.


This game was meant for the people who play it and hes trying to do something so this community will rise again. Freedom of speech bud.(at least following inside the rules ;) )

Hey, bud, this is the internet, not the United States, there is no freedom of speech.

He is doing what *he* thinks is right for the game, and guess what? *His* opinion matters.

Graal knew when they went p2p that they would lose some players. But guess what? There are enough players to maintain the game.


You all need to stop complaining. Graal is doing as Graal does. Players come and go, its all cyclic.

Was that supposed to be an insult? Because you failed. Good job.

I'm afraid that this game is ment for what Stefan wants it to be ment for. Players who donate content do it for their own satisfaction and enjoyment.

i meant for the players enjoyment and yes it was also made for us too, i didnt say what type of game it was. Logic my friend;).

What kind of odd sense of logic sees an insult in there? Darlene159 doesn't let people insult people around here.

Dunno just thought you were insulting me in some sort of way. Its late at night im really tied.

She doesn't let people argue around here as well. ;(

First off, I started in mid-2000(mid 1.3's) and was a part of the newbie rush on the Main Server so I remember alot about graal.

This guest mode thing IMO is gonna drive so many trials away that would probably p2p down the road.

For the short term guest mode will be a slight success; more people will buy a p2p account. But looking at the big picture Graal is going to lose alot of players that could have paid off later if they weren't forced away after a short time.

I like to think of Graal as that small mom and pop store; a small business with a tight, knit community. Guest mode would be a big step in the other direction; it's most likely to be slightly profitable in the short run, but going the other direction and trying to compete with the bigger mmorpg's isnt the best step to take...and its apparent to me that Graal is trying to take that step.


-People who play graal need real incentives to pay.
-People need to think that there is a sale going on.
-Offer less Gold time for less money(Have a bronze and maybe even a silver package as a limited time offer.), but have that big bulk deal that looks a million times better but isnt much more... And then have your "VIP"'s.
-On those Bronze and Silver Packages maybe not offer lifetime Classic membership, only do it for Gold and VIP.

All those may be good ideas but probably not, im just trying to help out by throwing out ideas and stating my belief which is that guest mode is a bad idea.

(man its late, sorry if that was incoherent)

Yes exactly, the suggested system by the MODs that never works, you sir are correct.


Correct again, this is how graal was published in game magazines, it was known as one of the few good games you could play without paying any money.

No argument here, once again you are right.

One of the big problems of graal was expanding to creating your own playerworld when it wasn't ready to do so. There simply isn't enough players to make a quality server (with few exceptions). Even the respected "quality" servers that for some reason people got all hyped about (Zenkou, Oasis, GRAAL2001,TOT and Faheria) all fell because of lack of staff and eventually everyone gave up (Yes that may not be the reason for all servers).

With one server ages ago with 300 players and increasing, it allowed players to actually play the game and limit the amount of staff jobs. When a player became staff it had actual meaning to it. Now anyone can buy their own server and TRY to make a low quality server, but eventually just quit graal because they get tired of DEVELOPING and not playing. So once players started buying their own playerworlds they concentrated on that, which cut down on the amount of players big time.

Yes, there is a simple explination for this and we all know why the community has been destroyed :rolleyes:

Yes once again I agree and your explination is along the lines of mine. If graal was cheaper I would upgrade to gold, but the amount of money for a package now is getting ridiculous. I would love to post on these forums more than once a day but no way am I going to pay $40+ to do so, I'd rather use that money for food for a full week.

I read about this in the "Future Improvements" sections and I was amazed by the amount of GOLD players who wanted a limited trial system. A GUEST SYSTEM is the same thing as a limiting trial accounts. Some of my old friends on graal still use a trial and simply don't have the money to upgrade and don't have a reason to do so (goes along with nothing attracts them).

I'm sorry to the people who think it's a very important issue and getting out of hand that all trial users are incompetent asses who are just annoying, but I could say the same about all the new GOLD players. They are part of the game too and just because they don't want to upgrade doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to play, GRAAL is known as a game you can play for free and ages ago put up a good reason to upgrade and some of those reasons were...

1. Growing Community
2. Constant Updates
3. More Freedom (ex: look at the amount of closed threads for no reason around here, half the time I can't post on a thread because it's closed for no reason).
4. Logical Staff (staff now just beat around the bush and send you to one staff to another. It takes over a week to sort out a problem which could take literally 4 seconds, and don't tell me it has always been like this because when Contego and I were account admins it was required to fix the problem first rather than say "Let me look at it tomorrow" or "send me a forum PM")
5. LESS money for a game that should be for less.

Fully agree again.

It would be nice to have classic servers go free again, but we have to remember the financial costs of the servers. Personally I don't mind the one time fee to play CLASSIC servers, but even that has increased in price (was $15 originally). Personally I think Gold should be $15 a year, I would upgrade instantly because it's only worth $15 a year.

Seemed graal was doing better when the system was like this too.

Well it used to be advertised as a FREE online game which got a lot of attention, that quickly changed though.

Yup agree with this, explains what I was talking about earlier.

I also keep returning as well, but each time it's disapointing but I put forth some kind of effort each time.

I also thought about this a little more and I remember when a certain game came out (YES I WISH I COULD SAY THE NAME BUT APPERENTLY IT'S ILLEGAL) and it had a free trial account thing like this, but the game had a HUGE community before it started using guest accounts. The game had more than 3,000 players on at once, that was a minimum playercount sometimes it would be at 6,000. Right now it's 1:40am and according to the playercount on graalonline.com there is approximately 121 players on, now according to the RC server list 24 playerworlds have 1 or more players on. Lets do some simple math here...

121 players divide by 24 playerworlds averages to be 5 players on each.

12 of those playerworlds are PRIVATE/HOSTED with a total of 41 players out of the current 121 players logged on. 80%+ are idling RCs...

So for trial users who consider this time to be morning/afternoon they have a good 4 people to interact with on each playerworld, is that seriously going to convince them to upgrade?

During the day graal only gets at tops 600-700 total players and peak time. Divide that up with the amount of private servers graal has. Usually UN and Era have 100+ and sometimes GK has a high playercount (nothing extraordinary still).

It really is time to re-think some of the things going on with graal...

Might not be that way too long congress has their grubby little hands and is sending proposals all over to be the world internet police or what not o_o. But trials are annoying but UN will lose 25-50% of its player count. ^^

I have 30 or so friends on other communities who are dying to play graal, simply put - they cant afford it. They played the trial, they LOVED it, but they just cant become p2p.

Free games are good games. (Sorry for the nubish attempt, but here it goes)

Runescape is a prime example. I remember playing it when 100 on one server was an all time high. Nowadays it's an average of 1.1k per server, and there's 89 servers X_X

Why? A huge portion of the game is free. Then there's a huge member section, double the size of the free. Its 6 bucks a month, and 1/3 of players are subscribers. Bingo. Do the math. 32633 subscribers, at six bucks a month. 195800 a month. Woah. In a year, 2349600. Lots of profit.

Easily pays for rental/server costs, with plenty to spare after wages and such. Why doesnt graal start advertising and doing this? It's a great game, it's just too damn expensive for what you get.

First thing, Stefan said he presumes that the actions of a normal trial user are as he said. He did not say "According to my databases".
Even if he statistically does have how often trial accounts are used, do these "logs" account for trials made by people with P2Ps, trials made and never logged on, ect?
Personally I know tons of people who have used trials for over 2 months, forget 2 weeks.

Well, I'm certainly happy to know your financial situation reflects upon that of the entire world.

However, now back to reality, as Raeiphon just stated, there are TONS of potential players out there who would play, but can not due to unavailable money.

Believe it or not, there are people out there without 40$ to lay out on an online game, be it no access to a payment method, bills that must be payed, pesky things like food and rent, ect.


Which also brings me to a new point.

Let's take the average trial user. Probably a 12-16 year old, with no bank account, nor credit card of their own.

Which, as a parent, would make you more likely to lay down the 40 bucks for this game?

"Mom/Dad, I've been playing this cool game for a week, and I need 40$ to upgrade my account before I can't play anymore!!"

or

"Mom/Dad, I've been playing this cool game for a few months, and there are tons of features that a VIP account would unlock for me!"

Personally, I believe the first situation just seems like the kid has found a new toy that he wants, that he will most likely soon grow tired of. Why pay for a year of something for your child that you believe they will grow tired of before the month is out?

As a parent, seeing your kid sticking with something for a long time would probably compel you to invest your money into it over something that they just found.



Well, so far I have a lot of people completely agreeing with everything that I have wrote.


Willing to listen to me and talk about this yet without excuses, or are you really willing to ignore what the players have wanted for so long?

Someone just stated that it takes tons of money to run this game.. How? I mean.. What the hell, the only thing they pay for is the hosting since all the people that work on it do that for free?

...or breathe loudly

I was lucky to get my account upgraded, but you are right.. At my age when P2P came, most people quit because they can't pay, we dont have an credit card and we cant get one.. Parents usually deny the youngster who wants his account uppgraded, because they dont know what they are paying for.

I had to plead for almost a year (pausing for toilet breaks and sleep). My mum was just too scared to use the internet to buy things. She simply couldn't trust this "New fangled payment system.". Less likely for most parents these days, but I doubt their parents would allow their kids to pay for something, and if they see Graal, I'm really certain that they'd snort and say "Rip off."

No offence, but I've seen this happen to so many people.

Graal should be free, graal is not worst paying, graal have no content, graal downfall is coming, graal managers are dumb, I will leave the game if nothing change.

Your should really change your disc.