Adding Advertisements to Graal?
 

So I was thinking, games like Runescape use to make all their money on advertisement, right? Like, they were paid to advertise bull**** while in their game. Well, couldn't graal do this as well, but rather than putting it all over the screen and crap, just add billboards like Era use to haev for Era Business except they'd be real businesses. Along with this we can fill up some random buildings around Era with real life businesses that when you grab an NPC it sends you to their site or something? This would work pretty well on Era atleast considering it's modern anyway.

Would Graal be able to make any money this way? I honestly don't know much about advertisement.

Graal used to be completely ad-supported with ads displayed in PM windows, but it didn't make enough money to cover Graal's costs. They might be able to make some money by bringing back advertising, in particular it might be a good idea to force trials to be exposed to ads of some sort.

I agree with advertising for trials, but I don't think it's a good idea for people who pay. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't overly intrusive, but some would, as you generally pay to remove advertisements.

I think it's a good idea for trials. I don't people who pay to have them though, it kind of defeats the purpose.

im against ads because we dont need them

We don't need them, but they could supply Graal with a little bit of extra money, which is probably needed.

I'm against ads at this point because Graal sucks right now. If they advertise now and people see how much trash it is, they won't even come back regardless of the spamming pop-ups they see from it. Graal needs to spice it's contents up before they start advertising.

I'm for ads, only if it can compensate for, or even surpass the amount of money that graal makes on subscription accounts. And then make accounts free for everyone.

I'm sure if it could be done this way it would have already been done though.

Could possibly lower the price though for accounts.

P.S.
It should advertise on the uploading process and any way that WONT cover my screen in ads. I don't want ads covering my screen in any way, but I'm deff for it.

I'd say only the gold members don't see the ads.

ads would cause more harm to trials than good, the way i see it they are more likely to leave than to upgrade which makes this counter-productive

I don't really agree, you haven't really stated any means of how advertisements would drive trials away from Graal? I could only see Graal making money from this. Especially if the advertisements weren't game-related.

I think ads for trials is a good idea, and maybe non-intrusive ads for members, like billboards on Era.

Perhaps if Graal can make more money with ads they can be a little more lenient on their prices or be able to improve the quality of Graal.

I don't know about you but if I had to play a game that had ads I would not play it let alone upgrade.


More like re-prioritize. Instead of wasting time with the ugly new website, graal skills, graal 3d, and other silly side projects they could have developed a new high-quality flagship server but they didn't.

You were probably playing back when Graal put ads in the PMs. I doubt that trials would be driven away by ads if they aren't driven away by observer mode, etc.

I've been playing this game for a ridiculously long time and I don't remember ads....
What year was this? Maybe it just slipped my mind or they were just that un-noticeable

I remember the ads in PM windows pre-P2P. I never cared about them.

I think they were removed sometime in 2002. It might have been earlier, but I'm pretty sure it was in 2002.

To be honest I don't remember ads at all. Was it a server-specific thing?

In 2000 I rarely used PM's but when I actively used them later in 2001 and I didn't see any. Could be possible that they were there the first half of 2001, which is when my computer was broken. Maybe I just didn't use any trials during that time.

Ads would be nothing but negative for trials.

I am thinking way earlier. I think banner ads in PMs was ancient history when this incarnation of the forums first showed up.

I would not mind (non-animated, non-flash) advertisements on the forums or on the website, but I doubt it would be worth the effort to even implement them. I think Stefan said the ads were not really doing much when they were removed from PMs.

Get ads, remove p2p.

On the flipside - advertise Graal and make p2p something worth paying for.

I could imagine that it could be hard to find a advertisement partner for about... 300-400 Graalians right now? It's just and easy a very very small market.

indeed =P

I vaguely remember PM advertisement.
It must have been for a brief period of time because I easily remember when they appeared, but have very little memories of seeing them.

TBH, I only remember Cyberjouers advertising its "other products" (who knew they ever had any?) on Graal PM-ads, specifically the Bomberman-type game. What the hell was the point of that? Don't complain (or even bother mentioning) about how little money advertisements generate when most of your ads are for your own damn self.