A few ideas to promote growth
 

Here are a few quick ideas I've had surfacing in my head for quite awhile now. Since I am getting more and more use to the Graal forums I decided to finally voice these ideas. However, unlike some other people in this community I am actually willing to do everything within my power to promote these ideas. Please, if anyone needs/wants clarifying or further information
either reply in this thread or forum pm me. Here are the delicious vitamins Graal needs to digest to improve it's overall health:


1. A better subscription plan.

I'll admit that I do not know all the details about the new payment system implemented. I started to read about it but was completely turned away and lost all interest in knowing everything about it. However from what I could tell it is way too limiting to new players. Rather than trying to get people addicted to playing Graal, it puts annoying limitations on them.

I know people have suggested things like, "free gold etc for x amount of time" and others have replied with, "Oh but then Jimmy Crack Corn would abuse it by getting loads of free trials." But I feel that Graal management is both cunning and intellectual enough to find a way around that problem while still promoting addiction to their game.


2.Better quality servers in order to persuade one to use the newly improved payment system.

I can't stress how many times this has been said over and over again both on these forums and in the game itself. The gold servers are exceptionally decent as well as some playerworlds but the majority of them are outdated.
But most of these playerworlds have wonderful ideas to improve and have even begun the workings toward those goals. They just need that extra support, which will lead me to my next point. Lastly, a completely new gold server that has a unique theme and setting would really spice things up.
I also suggest that Gold servers should be free on weekends to everybody, or something to that affect. Why? To again, promote addiction.


3. More global support for the playerworlds.

I don't even know if the global dev teams exists anymore. If so, I never hear about them, much less if they productively do anything anymore
(which will again lead me to another suggestion later.)
Most playerworlds do not have the resources and support to reach all (scratch that) ANY of their goals involving better game content.
We need global dev support, in more ways than one. Global dev needs to step in and familiarize themselves with all classic/gold/hosted playerworld themes and settings and to avoid any possible direct (excluding minor similiarities) clashes in themes. After learning/writing down these themes they SHOULD help these playerworlds develop quality content on these servers. Now I know this will be hard because even the globals are already stretched but it is vital.


4. Establish an official community for Graal developers to be more in touch with one another.

It wouldn't be that hard. Try something similiar to Xbox Live Gamer cards.
But instead it's Developer Cards. Something official that lists information and details on Graal developers. Hell you can even throw in achievements if you wanted to. How could one do this? Easy, instruct the server managers that if they and their server's worth of developers feel like being a part of the community and eligible for achievements, they have to organize their major server expansions/updates into just that, expansion packs. Achievements are awarded per successful expansion released. Achievements could award Developer Points that go on your Developer Card that could slowly earn you "Gelats" or gold days or whatever the hell they're calling it these days.

Now I suppose you're thinking to yourself, "Now hold on a cotton flicking minute there, how are we suppose to trace and track everyone who actually works on expansions?" The answer is simple. Hire competent, trustworthy server managers who keeps work/assignment logs. It's rather simple but takes effort. Have PWA play a more active role in it too if you want but it's definitely possible. It sounds hard, but if given enough effort with enough leadership support, it would work.


5. Inform the public of progress.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen Stefan or someone similiar say on the forums, "I've been working all day on Zone and I've done blah blah blah and fixed blah blah blah so now blah blah blah works more efficiently."
Now that's great and all, but unless you're more public with it, chances are no one's going to notice it or give appreciation for it. In fact, quite a few players feel upper management has abandoned Graal and I personally do not know what to think. So I encourage anyone who does official updates for both the forums, website, and the game/game engine itself to publicly announce it in a way that all players can see it (Like the login server)

It would tell the public that upper management is NOT inactive/ignoring Graal and her players and that they ARE indeed working hard. Personally, if I saw public announcements about how so and so and such and such was fixed by upper management it'd bring a bit of inspiration to myself, and further encourage me to go fix something. "Well ****, he fixed THAT on THERE? Hell I might as well check into something similiar on MY server." Something to that effect, anyways.

6. Advertising.

Never have I ever heard of Graal actually advertising other than word of mouth (friends telling friends.) And though this may have worked for myspace, I just don't think it's cutting it for Graal. Make trailers (don't exactly have to be gameplay trailers, more or less concept trailers) and try to
get them advertised on other game community sites. Although I wouldn't bother with this until the above suggestions have been completed.

7. A better website theme.

Seriously, now this will sound like flaming because it partially is, but what is the deal with the new theme? That doesn't feel like Graal so much as a cliche movie for kids about fairies and magical unicorns. To prove this fact I had a friend, completely oblivious to Graal, log on the site. Once the web page loaded he immediately hit the back arrow because he thought he had been redirected to Disneyland's Fun n' the Sun website. The main point is, scrap this new crap and get something that is more newb friendly but captures the theme of promoting imagination, because really that is what Graal was always suppose to be about.

8. Stop with the negative, "graal's ded, lollers" crap.

This suggestion is for the players themselves. Seriously, quit being such a negative, worthless piece of pigeon snot. Stop complaining and actually do something. If you do not like the shape Graal is in then either invest money in it by purchasing subscriptions, develop quality content, suggest -useful- ideas and then do everything you can to make them reality, or just leave already. Because negativity spreads quite easily and I'm very tired of
players *****ing about this or that but never quite living up to their words.
I'm also tired of players having a narrow point of view on server themes.
(eg: "What? An RPG based server? So a zodiac clone?" makes me raaaaage)


But that's all I have for right now unfortunately. Please post your ideas but if you disagree with something that I have said here then you are wrong, sorry. These are basic areas that Graal fundamentally lacks in. If these were improved then Graal would vastly improve in players, both in mental capacity and in numbers!


PS: Do not place all the financial blame on Graal management itself.
Bear in mind that economies all around the world are suffering, especially the United States. There are many businesses who are experiencing similiar problems.

I definitely agree and support a better theme, and i really like the idea of a new Gold Server, since something new would be really good. No significant/decent changes have been made to make the Gold Subscription really that make it worth buying. The overall guilds community is nothing as it used to be back in 02-03, so the reason of upgrading to register a guild has probably decreased.

If we actually get to that point though, we have to clean-up the code of the client and make learning to develop more player-accessible like it used to be.

The subscriptions definitely need to be addressed though. In the short term, charging the more dedicated players monthly gets you more, but even they will leave when nobody new is willing to pay. And the method of payment is over-complicated, paying for an electronic currency to pay for a game is a little much.

This is the most legit post I have ever seen.

I like the idea of more playerworld support. I'm actually willing to help in that area, if Graal would have me :P. Only problem is that I'm not sure about my own schedule in the next few months, as I might have to be out at sea for months at a time...

But, I'd still like to see a revival of at least the scripting team to clean up documentation and help out with minor scripting issues for the servers.

Most of your ideas require manpower and... well... ideas. A lot of concepts are outdated, yes, but are you making a new one?
Hm, N-Pulse's manager, probably you are huh? Anyway, the problem isnt anything but the lack of stuff to do. i agree with the support part, but thats about it.

You are wrong, sorry.

I've tried to introduce Graal to a few friends of mine lately. If you're completely new to graal, theres atleast a good solid 20 hours of gameplay before you get bored. Between the confusing and costly subscription plan + annoying trial limitations my friends laughed at Graal and went back to Guild Wars, Runescape, WoW, or wherever. The lack of game content is not the only problem Graal has. Graal has many problems and no I did not go into full detail in this single post. It's already too long for most graalians to read it.

1. Subscription plan had been discussed and though everyone would like it done, it's bringing money into Stefan's hands so I doubt this will occur till playercount is increased.

2. The free on weekends idea is good, whilst gold servers only have I think 3 developers in total, for both Zone and GK.

3. A global dev team would be nice but a option should be given to owners of servers whether they'd like help from the global dev team or not.

4. Basically a chat room correct?

5. A constant update of servers progress would be appreciated, maybe once every week or month.

6. Discussed and Stefan isn't doing anything about this, he'd prefer leaving this to the public, though I'd say a contribution from you would be nice.

7. The site needs a better background color as well as pictures.

8. Well though Graal may not be dead it's playercount has dropped dramatically since 06.

These threads come and go, you wont get an answer

True.
Maybe if you forum PM Stefan the link over and over again he might reply :D

It's not about me, rather the community itself. Instead of having an apathetic attitude towards global management maybe you try to be a little more constructive?

1.A BETTER subscription plan could bring in MORE money into Stefan's hands.

3. Of course it would be voluntary, but who would deny the extra talented help?

4. Not so much as a chatroom as an in-game and in-forum accessible feature.

6. I'm working on my contribution =]

8. Unfortunately this is true, but it's not the end of Graal.

What i meant was that nobody gets an answer, ala the community.

1. This has been discussed plenty of times and yet Stefan hasn't seen the logic to it.

3. Some people may want to work on their own server personally rather then with others.

6. If you can make me a banner approximately 60 by 480 then I could upload it on some sites.

I pretty much agree with everything you listed in the original post. I also hope that you're aware of that Stefan most likely won't come across this thread, unless you forum PM him the url and ask him to look into it. :)

A good one to put up there is unbanning me.

A better management.
Sorry, you have done a bad job in the last 4-5 years, stefan and unixmad.

to unkown soldier
i doubt that would improve graal,
and i agree with all of the points, i especially like the weekends free feature, once people get hooked up they will want to play more often then just weekends.

It would very much.

Lol.
I agree the management at times has been poor, and most of the choices made were a step in the wrong direction but yet they don't learn from their mistakes but rather repeat them.

Stefan and Unimax if you two wish to see a growth in profits then I advise following those points though you've rejected them before. Advertising and lowing the price of gold would be the best points to start at, this way you draw in players at a reasonable price.

Just so everyone knows. This kid deleted our server's entire GP records, and wiped several players' comments and then proceeded to taunt us in such said comments. We immediately banned him from N-Pulse completely.
He then proceeded to harass staff about getting unbanned and even lied to PWA in an attempt to be unbanned. Proceed with caution if you ever hire this individual.

wow... thanks for the heads up.

Unknownsolder has quite the reputation.

Uhm, he has that wrong I did delete those things however I did not harass staff or lie to tig. Honestly that's why Kay unbanned me because I was not harassing them.

that doesnt make any sense, you shouldn't unban somene because he doesn't harrass you, you should only ban him more when he does harrass you.

He was unbanned for about 5 min due to a misunderstanding (I think that was the case), and is now perma banned, for the record.

Yay, back on topic. Anyway, hopefully one of the PWAs find at least some of this information legit and not like many of the other threads like this, which consist of just complaining.

These are good and solid practical ideas, and I'm so glad to see someone emphasizing the community's responsibility in the life of Graal. I've been playing on and off since 2002, and in my humble opinion all along a major overarching problem has been the disparity between the developers (I mean Cyberjoueurs) and the community. The community most of the time complains because it feels disempowered, and the developers don't seem to acknowledge this.

This problem is only half out of our hands, though. The community can empower itself by using some of the methods outlined here. We, the Graal community need to take responsibility for our own experience, as far as possible.

The community meaning us has many ways of helping with the growth of graal, since we can advertise for them through sites. We can also spread it through word. Though many believe this is a 'admins' job, it can be either but speaking from another perspective it's more a responsibility of the communities since admins are busy through producing the game to a higher standard and probably don't have time to advertise, therefore making it our responsibility as part of the community to help.

As well as creating a new website theme and helping develop on servers in need of a job.

I especially like the idea of establishing an official community for Graal developers, and the idea of some kind of support or reward for being an active developer. Since Graal developers are volunteering their time and effort, and find no reward except the satisfaction of creation, they may end up feeling their efforts are useless, and give up.

Infact, don't Graal developers need to pay extra in the form of hiring servers to contribute more? This is a bit backwards.

Beyond just establishing a developers community, maybe the Graal community as a whole needs more unification. I suggest: celebrations.

Celebration is a powerful thing. It exalts the present moment by imbuing it with significance from enthusiasm, but the reason for celebration may be as obscure as you like, or why even bother with reason? Though we have a reason, it is to celebrate the fact we all play Graal, and enjoy it!

So, I propose Graal day, perhaps annually, on the anniversary of it's release? Or, on the 5th of every month, everyone should log on and party. It doesn't matter what you do, we all know exactly how we like to celebrate. Get drunk and log on, play music loudly, invite friends and their computers over, whatever. Just to create a spirit of celebration.

Not to hijack your thread, but if enough people seem into this I might make a topic for it of it's own, and we might advertise on Graal and wherever else Graalians hide?

Graal developers are either paying for their own server to develop for the game, which brings them money, or developing for a server which brings in money.
I find that extremely dumb, I expect if I buy a server and it earns them a profit then I deserve a reward of some sort.

Exactly, and this is a prime example of the disparity between Cyberjoueurs and the Graal community. I haven't heard anything from any developers themselves, but I'm supposing that they must feel used for having to pay to develop content that someone else will profit from?

lol you want a reward for an unfinished server ?
how stefan said if you finish a server you can sell your own cashshop items
graal is a sinking boat and its not like anybody can rescue it
if someone thinks he can rescue graal ask unix to buy it
its easy to say "do this its better" if its not your money you waste

@Angelu, we're not proposing anything that requires such drastic action, for the most part we're suggesting ideas to the community for how they might help Graal to grow.
Your negative attitude is useless here. If you think it's a sinking boat, kindly step off into the water.

I'm not sure what cash shop is, but if completing a server does enable developers to profit as well as Cyberjoueurs then thats great! The things I've said about developers are based on what little information I have about their conditions, so any corrections are welcome.

a cashshop is a place where you buy ingame items for real money
like cool looking clothes, hats, fun weapons and all kind of things
the prob here is that there is no graal server made for a cashshop
than we have the bad graal community with all this bashing and "my server will be the best" talking where nobody works together
graal isnt worth the money so nobody plays it and stefan and unix dont get enough out of it so they cant pay good people to make good servers or advertisement
so thats why i said graal is a sinking ship
the best for unix and stefan is if they dont put any more money into it and let the players pay till graal dies...

and dont get me wrong i think graal is the best 2d mmo
but its not that funny than 10 years before with all this money probs

Seriously?!

I didn't know this either. You'd think they'd try to promote this considering everyone always complains about not getting anything for their hard work...that is, if it's true.

@Angelu I see what you're saying. Does everyone agree that Graal is locked in an unfortunate position of not having enough quality content to attract alot of new players, and not enough players and developers to generate quality content?
Even in this situation though, we have the power to push it towards growth rather than stagnation, by attracting new players by spreading word, and the developer community idea suggested earlier might go some way toward stopping the every-server-for-itself attitude.

Whatever Stefan and Unixmad think of Graal's current situation, the fact is it's still going, and that means theres potential for it to improve, which would make it more profitable and make everyone happy.

Wouldn't making a cash shop require you to make an account to take in all the money? Most people here, I believe are in an age range of 12 - 17 whom don't have access to an account for money to go in.

Anyway that was off topic so back on topic, those ideas and thoughts that were suggested are quite simple, though a few can be done through the community.

In this example we aren't talking about the general population of Graal, we are talking about the small group of developers.

So, the suggestions on this thread that apply to non-developers basically come down to spreading the word and being active in the community. Easy, no? Let's get to it.

I'm pretty sure ever 2 out of 5 people on Graal are able to develop.

Oh I had no idea the developer population was so high. Though I guess the distinction between able to develop and actively developing is pretty important.