Why is there still a subscription system for playerworlds/gold servers?
 

Most of Graal's playerbase seems to hang out on the iPhone these days. I'm guessing that's where the majority of the revenue comes from too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Graal doesn't make much money from the ~70 (and dwindling) players who actually play on the Gold/Playerworld servers.

Yet unless you shell out $30 (for a game nobody plays) you can't really have a particularly fun experience. Trials and lifetime subscriptions were an okay system when Graal was more active, but it became less viable as the subscriptions became yearly, and now it's almost ridiculous that this system is still in place (not to mention so expensive) even though Graal has a miniscule amount of users.

All it seems to do is screw over the oldbies who are still hanging on to decade old servers that are dying due to the fact that most of the other old players have moved on, and nobody new wants to pay money for something like this- especially when the iPhone/Facebook app is available instead.

It just seems like a model that, while once may have been justified, is now only fueling the deaths of these playerworld servers. What exactly is the point? Do they even make a significant portion of money from people buying playerworld/gold subscriptions?

At the very least, I don't think the pricing should be so absurd. Or maybe people shouldn't have to pay for something as simple as like, Valikorlia, which is basically d&d that uses the Graal client.

i dont know but whoever posted this facebook comment thinks the system is similar to vip on mobile/facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/playerworld...tal_comments=9

I don't think they even care any more.

Actually the apps themselves don't bring in much money at all. I would think even less then Gold did on PC. HOWEVER, due to them having cash shops there pretty much a gold mine. Similar systems have been setup on PC now and servers have been going free to play now. Era, Zodiac and Kingdoms I believe are free to play as of now. Not sure on UN tho. The sad part is the majority of PC servers that blamed "pay to play" systems were killing there server but not other pay to play servers.. o.O which made no sense. I think the most lacking aspect of PC graal is the content itself. Not how much, but how well presented.

I was obsessed with GTA to the point I woulda paid the staff several thousands of dollars to keep working on it but they refused the offer and said PC is dead anyways. But that was a well presented server. The new Delteria is another example of some very quality content. Remember, it's one thing to have lots of content... its another thing to have the players actually feel emerged into the game, something I have missed since i started playing.

The GTA server died when it was forced to start using a npc-server back in 2005(?). All attempts to revive it failed because it didn't live up to expectations and other servers already had a well established playerbase.

The subscription system as it is turned off new players from coming here, which meant that the servers that didn't already have an active playerbase would have to take players from other servers.

Well, that's atleast my opinion.

Nailed it on the head. PC Graal is a dying cow that's to be milked for every last drop that's left. :)

It's more like the old neglected dog with scabies and a puss-filled eye sitting in the back yard dying while the family is busy having fun with the new puppy.

I still think it would be pretty dope if cash shops could be used by developers to keep their servers running.

In other words, if you make around $100 - $120 USD (or whatever the rental cost is currently) through your server's cash shop, you wouldn't have to worry about renewing it. The rest of the profits would go to the company, of course.


And regarding the Gold subscription fee... It's about 3 bucks a month. Go rake some leaves for somebody. Seriously. :rolleyes:

The money's not the point. The cost is too high when you account for that the game is neglected by their owners, poor service and all the content is made by the players themselves.

It's not because it's not affordable, it's simply because it's not worth it. Especially when you can play it for free on Android/iPhone with thousands of players.

its actually $4 and only if you commit to purchasing at least 8 months worth in advance, which is a lot different to being billed '3 bucks a month'

plus once your subscription expires youre now mostly treated the same way as someone who has never paid, people actually need to upgrade in order to staff/develop a server, and all rental servers and a couple of the remaining playerworlds still have observer mode (which any self-respecting game developer would be utterly ashamed and embarrassed about having on their game)