New approach to trials
 

I was thinking about trials and I came up with an idea to make a profit from trials, regardless if they pay or not, as well as provide incentives for gold/vip.

Basically, Graal should provide 1-3 flagship servers. On these servers, trials can play and save their account as they progress but are heavily capped. For example, on my current server they would not be able to access certain levels, be level capped and also have a capped amount of items/money. It varies from server to server but the idea is there.

Trials will be able to play more and get a better feel of the game. The cap should be extensive enough to allow trials to really start to love the game but capped enough to make them want gold/vip. The more they play: the more they may wish to purchase gold/vip so they can continue playing the server with no restrictions. This could be extended to p2p players with only no current gold/vip within these flagship servers. Also, the Graal client could add ads to the pm window (one above and one below the textbox) to help make up any losses but I think the incentive for gold/vip should cover it :D

Also, once trials get to know and love the flagship servers, they may be enticed to purchase gold/vip by the fact there are many more servers available for subscribers. These servers (such as current classic list) should have the current trial restrictions. Current gold servers should be totally inaccessible to trials: make them wonder just how good they are.

Just a concept/idea but it could work. An official comment *pokes Unixmad* would be appreciated but what are your thoughts? :D

Why not just add advertisements for trial accounts?

All I can say is...
The Graal Reform.

....Which is where? Information? ><

This is a group package idea...any individual idea could be taken and used though.

you should be able to design your own homepage on graal!

And this is supposed to help them upgrade faster how? You're just giving them a hell lot more than they already had.

I say to enable the guests accounts. Put an end to trials who refuse to pay.

Pester them into paying and if they don't pay make a small amount of money from advertisements. :p

wth? Give them saving abilities and restrictions to a few levels? "o noz, i cant enter the spar arena, whatever will i do".

Most trials are banned from alot of levels anyways.

Making them have a limited time might be good as that was the original intent of the guest account

I was thinking more like "oh crud, i am restricted to this land mass when there are 9 others available if i were to upgrade!".

As I said before, the cap should be enough so that trials can play, enjoy and get hooked to the game but also annoying enough so players really want to upgrade.

This system should only be available on a limited amount of servers pushed forward by Unix/Stefan but I think the ads for trials should be global :D

Its not really like anyone leaves the same 5 frickin levels anyways.

i.e UN:everyone stays in TC, classic: everyone stays by bank or at exodus spar.

If they could go further with the possibility of a few saved things, they would. During this time, they may like the concept of graal and decide to pay vip/gold.

What you people must remember is the fact that alot of trials continually play anyway. Letting them save will have no real negative effect but will give them more of an enticement to what gold/vip status will offer. They may be able to do 12 fun quests but paying for an account opens up like 60+. Trials should also get alot of exposure to gold/vip who have the cool stuff so trials start thinking, "damn! I want that!".

It's just a concept but try and atleast think about it instead of shunning based on a narrow-minded approach :(

VIP gets webhosting....

Theirs a ton of things you can do to pester them into paying but you dont really know what their threshold is one evil idea I had was putting a limit to the % of trials on the server meaning their can only be 2-5trials for every 1classic member or something. If they go over this limit the trials will have to queue up and during the queue you could slam them with advertisements and possibly let them play a game of bomber man on flash or something, and even on the bomber man field on the main floor put an advertisement on their instead of the CJ logo. Thats alot of advertisement and also gives alot more advantage of even being classic. The only issue is, Is such a sinister idea going too far, or are we being too kind as it is. You can't really tell because we don't have a solid demographics of our trial user base.

Even the PWs could help with this advertising campaign for trials by adding ads to certain hot spots that only trial accounts can view.

But an effect of this could be that no one will go to that area or etc or even change servers, But if all servers adopt this strategy their will be no way to avoid the ads and also its not hard to move an npc on graal so even if they move away you can just move the ad. Maybe this idea is evil or maybe not as good as I think it is but I still think their could be some benefits of my idea even if it is not as extensive as the way I think it should be. :p

Which is basically the same thing as the guest accounts but guest accounts are limited time usage. Why cant those be turned on now.

Guests should need to use passwords. Long, complicated passwords that only save the key points of their progress as of the last Password Point: not their appearance or bombcount, just what quests they've done and what key items they've bought. And every time they see the password screen - "Incidentally, registered users can save every detail, everywhere, without having to jot down their password and start all over if they lose it".

But Secret Soon is requiring that all such discussions be cut off immediately. There's a Secret project, coming out Soon, that will render it all meaningless, so trust the admins to have taken anything you could ever possibly think of into consideration and to do what's best for Graal. Your input is irrelevant. -_-

Trial accounts already have it bad. Leave them alone.

Don't bother with trying to come up with ideas on directions Graal will go in.

Graal has, and always will continue to go in the direction unix wants it to go; for good or bad.

I tried once before. The oldbies know what ended up happening there lol.

What do you mean their the only form of cancer worse then classic accounts on graalonline.

What the HELL are you trying to say?

Im saying classic accounts are cancer, They are accounts walking around putting no money into Graal and just taking.

So really your saying, Let's make classic accounts up needs to keep paying to save!

this comes as a one sided advantage for the trials.. If they bought these types of accounts, wouldn't it be smart to put a limit to how much days they can use it? Many of them would most likely stay with these account and never upgrade.. Think about it, if the cap were a measly 30 quests that these account couldn't do, I bet you the person wouldn't care less.. but if his time was about to run out and he's experienced 12 good quests in this time period I think it would give him a faster edge to buy a premium gold account.. But nevertheless, this Idea is a positive step and it would be a good idea.

Classic accounts paid once, so get a limited account (they can't go everywhere or do everything). It makes sense.

They barely miss out because classic servers which is also another cancer are the most popular.

You're ****ing cancer.

Shut the **** up.

Dude you're retarded if you think that Classic servers are a cancer. CLASSIC SERVERS IS WHERE MOST OF GRAALS POPULATION GOES TOO

They are the most popular because they are classic servers. I wouldn't say there are any Classic servers up at the current time that I would dream of paying regularly to play, the quality and gameplay just isn't there. Even GK is lacking in gameplay and has been for awhile without any updates.

Classic accounts miss out on a lot. Gold servers, obviously, classic accounts cannot access - more specifically Zone. Hosted servers too are of higher quality than their classic counterparts and generally have more playability. Endora's playercount seems to be over 30 everytime I look at it lately. And probably most significant is access to the hidden UC servers, there is a lot of junk but there is also a lot of stuff that people are working on that is really amazing.

Ok fair enough its popular. But how does it produce money?

No they're not.

Do you even know where classic accounts come from? You obviously don't, so shut the **** up.

Trial accounts are going to be replaced with guest accounts, or at least that's what Stefan has mentioned before.


All of these ideas you guys are coming up with is just a waste of time if trial accounts are going to be removed as a whole.

You have no way of knowing how much money classic accounts have put into Graal. Some may have upgraded more than once, and just stopped, and some may have upgraded only once. Regardless, they are just as important as the rest of us in the progress of Graal.
Do you know how many of those Classic accounts have done tons of work, and made tons of content for Graal? Obviously you don't, and every little bit counts, even if it is only one thing.

Part of me agrees with guest accounts, a member having a limited time, then the account stops working unless they upgrade, but another part of me also agrees with having trials only be allowed to one playerworld (Classic), and just not being able to save everything. I would let some things be saved so they get the feel of saving, but very limited, and maybe limit how much of the overworld they can see of Classic, maybe with a nag screen that comes up when they try to do/see things they cannot unless they upgrade. That nag stuff has made me buy programs before, as it is very annoying. ;)

Ideas are never really a waste of time, afterall "ideas" are what keep Graal going. :)

So they want to kill Graal even more? Yay.

No, they are a company that has put a lot of work into a product, and they want to make money off of the product that they have put a lot of money and effort into, to make.

Why'd you say "no"? I understand that they have to profit and everything but they killed off a lot of members back when they put the whole "p2p or trial" thing and will just kill off more players by doing this.

Like I said, I KNOW that they need a source of income and such. Instead of trying to force everyone to upgrade, they should give people a reason to upgrade.

I said "no" because they are not trying to "kill Graal further", and I think you know that.
If they had not of done the p2p thing years ago, they would have had to shut it down eventually because of lack of money to keep it going for free.

As for giving people a reason, I am sure they are working on upgrades and stuff. You can only go so fast when there are few paid staff, and I am sure they wish they could go faster.

Alright but what happened in the past doesn't always help the present. It seems like trials just keep joining and no one continues to upgrade so who is paying for it then? Graal Servers is the only thing that comes to mind and the private development team.

I agree that the trial system needs to be changed. Trials are not the same as Classic members.
The purchase of Graal servers, and upgrades is their source of income, therefore letting trials continue to play limitless hours, and with no limit to overworlds on classic servers, does not benefit them financially, because a lot of people don't seem to mind that they cannot save.

Force them to look like Fun Si Yan then. ^^

But that's what they're doing, even if they don't intentionally mean to do it.

You know, ever since 2002 it's been us players giving anyone a reason to upgrade...

I think UN and Zodiac should be moved to gold that would be interesting.

why should we care how much money "graal" has?