Thoughts about playercount
 

What the hell is happening!! Graal is falling =( I miss the good old days. 250+ people on every server. Somthing needs to be done!! I want those days back. Im sure you wish alot of people stilled played. I understand what had to be done, but I don't know. JUST BRING IT BACK! It can be done...somehow

I wanted to reply to this with something like

"keep fighting the good fight"

but if getting back things that arent here anymore was as easy as a post on the forums we would have them back already.

Besides, first post since 2003? If you havent been here/playing recently, you wouldnt know all the bad things that went into putting the game where it is at today.

I just don't use forums that much. I am a current developer on Zodiac. Im just saying I miss the old days where there were no empty levels.

:( Things like these sadden me, we can only hope!

250+ on every server? That only really happened when there was one server.

But yes, constant ideas are flying around as to how to revive this game and get it back. Partially, I don't think it is possible. Other bigger games are around and we've gone from a big fish in a small pond to a tiny baby fish in a massive ocean. But, if some of the ideas (adverts, for example) were taken seriously - graal could certainly gain some ground back.

It's because I can't develop DR :p

But seriously, we need...NEED to advertise.

Your intelligence annoys me.

Obviously you haven't been around Graal at all, considering there was never 250+ on EVERY server.

Secondly, you can't bring those days back, they have been and gone. Please stop the tears falling.

Devil are you on your period or something? Seriously, lighten up!

Here's some old screenshots from the website:

http://www.graalonline.com/community...c/shot1021.gif

http://www.graalonline.com/community...c/shot1011.gif

If you posted some now there would hardly be any comparison. I can understand why someone would miss this, but I agree with you to an extent of, this was the past.

maybe not 250+ on every server but classic was always on top with 250+ and then it went down the list 250,175,150,120,100,80...etc

God that brings back memories :(

Holy crap! That's me! The bottom one with the head30.png!

Haha heres how you revive Graal; Rename it =] Make it look like a brand new game, Then advertise this 'Brand New Game'. -Wink Wink- Stephane, Look at Windows 98 and Windows Me :-p

I didn't have the luxury of being on during that time of the day, but whenever I played classic, there were tonnes of people on in my timezone.

I would like to see a server with gameplay soon.

Don't get me wrong, each server has it's attractive qualities, but the Zelda-like gameplay that made classic addictive long enough to make friends is something that no server offers today.

For a PWA admin, you certainly haven't been reading on an up and coming Zelda server :cool: :noob:

Because it isn't up and it isn't coming.

Oh give me a break Googi, how would you know x_x

Well, there I was referring to the classic servers, which is what holds the interest of most Graal players.

I was having a joke with you ;)

Hmm, changing the name of it is a weird idea, but it might work. Also we need to advertise. I can see how it is hard compared to other rpgs, but i donno. hmm maybe develop graal on a console system o.o get it in stores lol. I think the biggest thing that made graal begin to fall is p2p. I know it was a must to keep the servers running, but right now..they must not be getting that much income. There is also a possibility to just lend gservers to people who are dedicated to host servers. If people dont have to pay for graal, they WILL play and they will spread the word. I think it would be a good idea to make that possible. Example: Player talks with stefan about recieveing a gserver and he gives them a license key. They can only use the key once. This could prevent mass distribution of it, I donno just some possibilities. Excuse my grammar.

b-b-b-b-b-b-burn

see sig: it's been discussed.
My plan - in scattered order:
We need to update the website. Merciful heavens, they're working on that - and by the light may it be a more solid update than the Flashy one we've got now that nobody knows how to work with.
With an updated website to encourage traffic, we can do sommat with advertising. More on that later.
Once we've got newbies visiting the site, we should be able to say Graal is Shareware. So there should be at least 1 decent server where they can save, if only by password.
Once we've got newbies crowding this Newbie Server, we need a way to convince them the game's woth paying for - so the Newbie Server needs to be The Hook, not necessarily the Best Foot Forward, but addictive all the same.
Once these newbies have upgraded, they can start drifting to other servers, which should have progressed beyond being pale imitations of each other - this via Hubworld, Skinned Clients, and the proposed upgrades to the PWA. Graal will be less like the Geocities of Zelda Clones and more like the Wii of Archived Video Games Made Online - One hub connecting Zelda Online to Mario Online, Bomberman Online, Metroid Online, River City Ransom Online etc. Each of which is also advertising itself and bringing in their own newbies instead of leaving it all to Graal's administration. Hopefully all of which are permitted the most rudementary of password systems - input this password for "I beat CutMan," etc.

i know how about somone releases graal 3d?
or mabey the air balloons?
its just an idea but yeah thats all i got besides making graal free...

@Thym: Yes the website is horrible and seems to be translated badly? Who calls the Account Managment, and Download Center "Online Store"

No one forces you to stay here, the forums aren't a place for you to voice your silly concerns like this.

Be nice, it's a fair point (or at least the censored version is). The website as it stands flows poorly - thus less newbies actually bother going through the long and admittedly terrifying process of
Downloading
Submitting personal information, including email ("Great, because I don't get enough Spam, surely this game will sell my email address to mailing lists")
Checking their email to confirm registration
Installing the downloaded game
Unpacking and downloading whatever patches are necessary
...all to play the game. Granted, it's probably no better anywhere else, but with as many steps as we ask Newbies to take on faith - "Trust us, you'll love this game!" - it should be as clear a process as possible, with as few opportunities as possible to back out.
Hell, they probably shouldn't need to register when they download - "Here's the game, register if and when you want, it doesn't matter 'cuz you can't save anyway, may as well go on as 'Guest' with no password." That'll at least ramp up the number of Unregistered Newbies - and if even 10% go on to become Registered Newbies, that's still an improvement. If 10% of THOSE go on to become Classic Accountholders, that's money in the bank - and a permanent increase in Playercount.

But first, methinks Unixmad needs to rescind the orders to string up any PW Owner who dares issue passwords - even end-of-quest passwords - to keep the newbies playing.

Oh please you're acting as if downloading Graal is like sawing off an arm, don't be like that Tyhm.

Wtf do people expect? "IF YOU PLAY OUR GAME WE WILL PAY _YOU_".

I'm just saying, it's more complicated than it needs to be - and if Graal's goal is to have as many subscribers as possible, it should be as simple as possible. That's all. If Johnny156 sees an ad for Graal, it should be *click* - "Happy Website! Download here!" Okay! *click* - Download - Install - Play. Not three pages of disclaimers, warnings, etc. as you make an account to download. I've got like 3 half-made accounts to various sites where, on the fifth or sixth page of Please Input Personal Information, they wanted my credit card and social security number, or it turned out "Free" meant "7 day free trial, after which we'll charge your credit card directly unless you cancel with 3 days notice", etcetera. Graal doesn't do that, but Newbies don't know Graal doesn't do that, and I percieve that's where we're losing most of our Potential Playercount - people that go to the site and don't wind up registering. I'd show you numbers if I had any - they could just set a counter on page 1 of Registration and see how many people start the process vs how many new accounts are actually made, if anyone on Graal has that power...I doubt they would though, since they're just gonna replace it all, hope-hope.

[edit]Conversely this could be read as a Population Density Problem. I ran into this a lot on Classic - the more people you have in a smaller area, the more your playercount appears. The more levels you have, the lower the population density, the more abandoned a server appears. That in mind, the ideal Playerworld, from a levels perspective, is one that narrows the level selection based on playercount - the Forest Shortcut is only open on really busy weekends, the rest of the time you have to stick to the path (where you're more likely to run into the three other people on the server). The trouble of course is that every level is a potential Destination, a potential place someone Wants to go, and you don't necessarily want to forbid people from going where they Want to go, just dissuade them from it...route them towards the other players...*shrugs* Some sorta system of floodgates, something like that.

I'm still not swallowing the tripe about it being too hard to download Graal.

There isn't a million pages to go through, and if you lack the attention span, or are totally brain-dead and can't manage to find it takes barely 5 minutes to get the game and start, then you need help. It's fine the way it is.

Well, in my opinion, the flash webpage is not really all that useful. It is confusing for some people; there should be fairly defined "Downloads" and "Subscriptions" buttons on the main page that you shouldn't have to find through navigation bars.

I agree to a point, and Spark at one point was working on a "new player guide" of sorts... kind of a "get the client here, pick a server like so, enjoy!" sort of thing, apparently fairyland has one?

Anyway, I agree the project should be completed, and it would be nice if the client supported registering without visiting the website - I don't imagine that would be very hard, and usually games I download that have this feature I always create an account for.

Noone cares.

An easy way to subscribe, some noob tutorials (in game, or flash would be cool). Flash tutorial for ganis, scripting, level designing, etc, all accessible from either the home page, or the client.

Not a bad idea there, that last bit.

Mine says 2006.
and i created this account in 2001.
and my very first account like 2 years before that.

I joined the forums late.
and there were more than 250 ppl online on classic.

If you find a server with gameplay tell me for I can download graal again.

Heresy of the day:
I don't think Classic Ever had what it took. I think we all started playing it because it was free and we didn't have anything better to do. Then there were plenty of bug-filled and mislinked levels to explore, as long as we were bored - and some of us compiled lists of things to fix someday, and some of us critiqued, and some of us PKed, and some of us made vast websites about whatever our view was, and some of us tried to improve it - but mostly because Graal was like Solitaire, but more interesting.

Then it moved into P2P - thank the gods with a One Time Fee, so it was in the neighborhood of Nintendo games instead of in with City of Whatsits and World of Warboats and Final Fantastic Online (I know what they are, I'm being sarcastic) - "Well, I could dust off the old SNES and play Zelda3, or I guess I could play Graal instead...bah, I'm already online and there's less wires involved."

That's why I think Gold never really took off. That's why I think the playercount hasn't rebounded, no matter how good the content gets on any given server - and mind, none of the servers thus far have been PublishMe good, they all get mired down by competition - not least competition for Stefan's attention, everyone clambering for tools they can't do without (or would rather not script around just to find Stefan makes the tool they need two months later, smoother, cleaner, and with less lag - like Projectiles and Move Scripts after we'd been using x+=0.5;timeout=0.05; forever and a day)

But that's a little mean. Can Graal produce a game that can compete on even footing with other one-fee MMOs? Can Graal produce a game that can compete with Monthly-Fee MMOs? Probably, I just don't foresee one rising out of this particular petri dish. Maybe if the servers worked together...Maybe if Graal had a united front again...in some utopian Graal world, where you could hop on RC and ask the #GScript channel "How do I do paralax?" and they say "Hang on a sec...okay, here's a function UseParalax(x,y,image,ratio), and if Stefan ever hardcodes it you can just delete the function and calls to UseParalax will work the same way." That'd be nice, but I can't see anyone volunteering that much time and energy to the ether - and I can't see any PW giving up their closely-guarded secret to their rival servers, when Graal doesn't encourage any servers to call themselves Brothers.

But I talk too long. I have answers, I have said them, and now I question in circles...but when Graal gives servers their own frontend to bring players in, it will all begin.

You know what'd be nice? To develop for any server you want, whenever you want. To start off making a pirate baddy, screw up the movement script slightly and wind up with one that slides around the world, and instead of abandoning it as a screwup you finish it as a Penguin baddy for a different server...maybe it's just me, but whenever I was working on Classic I noticed everyone had ideas that were decidedly Not Classic, but if they didn't make it there they weren't gonna make it anywhere. Little things, like fixing the eischerian (you can see all 4 walls slanting off) overhead view of houses...not Classic, but not wrong. Yet it wound up on Classic anyway, and half the houses were Eischerian and the other half were BomyMoon style.

I dunno, maybe servers can forge alliances. It'd be cool if like, I dunno, FutureWorld and MidevalWorld and CavemanWorld and JumpmanWorld worked together. "If it's useful on both servers, upload it on both servers. If it's the wrong perspective for Futureworld, maybe the other worlds want it. If it's too high-tech for CavemanWorld, maybe the other worlds can use it..." But that might not work either, everyone playing and noone taking responsibility...nobody willing to develop what the server Needs, only what they Want to make...

i agree with tyhm's point about pre-p2p

Seriously Tyhm, wakeup from your dream. Organize your thoughts instead of mindlessly rambling.

I don't feel like reading your novels you call posts.

Let's look at Google...
google Graal, you get Graal... wonderful, nobody would ever think to type in Graal though.
google Zelda, you might eventually come upon how Zelda Online became Graal Online, etc.
google MMORPG, you won't really find any particular MMORPG. Instead a lot of websites that link to MMORPGs, and Cyberjoueurs has already visited them.
google the title of a graal server, you can get something with valikorlia, delteria, zenkou, maloria... etc. However, once again, who's going to look for that?
google UGCC.... yikes

look up graal fan sites... uhhhhhh, that doesn't look pretty.

I think that people originally came upon Zelda Online fairly easily (Zelda is a good search word, and Graal was linked to by many Zelda fan sites). The fact that it was free also helped. Hey, why not try something if it's free?

Right now, Graal Online lacks fansites and comparisons to other games, something that it used to have. So it's quite difficult to run upon Graal Online anymore. I mean, promoting Graal Fansites needs to be a priority for Graal Online. It would actually be beneficial to Graal for fans to mention other games they like. Maybe make a contest for best Graal Fansite with some kind of prize?

Look up four graals on google... hmmm... this is interesting...
http://onewomansmind.net/west/celts.html