Scheduled Event Hosting
 

Throughout the past several months since the release of the Castle Quest, Classic's development has been focussed on the construction of events. At this point in time there are 11 Studio events, 6 events utilising the team event system (some with multiple game modes such as CTF), as well as the conventional spar tournament.
As it is not much longer until events have reached their intended level of completion (I'm hoping to make 7 more Studio events, with the possibility of some extra team event modes), I would like to revive the idea of hosting both existing and newly developed events on an organised basis.

Having assembled a team of GC's and discussed a time, I currently have my sights set on events being held on Saturdays, starting 10 PM UK time / 5 PM US Eastern time. The idea is to hold hosting on a bi-weekly basis at first, and then possibly bring it forward or backward depending on turnout.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what may be a better time?
Given that it's unlikely for one single time to suit every interested player, another possibility would be to alternate the day according to a cycle, such as holding it on Friday one week, Saturday the next time, Sunday, and then back to Friday.

It would also be good to see how many forum users would generally be interested in participating.

Edit:

To avoid confusion, this idea is intended for while Classic is still Under Construction. We would ofcourse want events hosted on a daily basis once live.

I think a constant rotation would be too confusing to keep track of for people that aren't regulars on the server. If we want the highest possible participation/interest, then perhaps we could have one select weekend where the day is different, while the rest are standardized.

Ex: The third saturday of the month has the 'Classic Event Marathon', while all other weeks have it on friday.

That way we can make sure to let people participate at least once a month that are always busy on the standardized day (friday, in the example above.) If they're busy on both friday and saturday, then they need to get a better schedule :D


Edit: My suggestion above relates to a weekly marathon, but that is not what Thor was going for, my bad. A bi-weekly marathon should keep the day the same, in order to not force non-regulars to search for information.

I think your initial plan of action sounds pretty solid to me. Though I will agree with Gladius as well, if I am understanding correctly what he was saying, but it is possible that a bi-weekly setup at first could be confusing to non regular players. I mean I am sure you would post something on the NPC Server message so you would think it would get read leading up to the Saturday so someone that logs on should know if it is the coming Saturday or not. I mean this of course is the growing pains of getting it going initially, but I think it sounds good. I myself would then make sure I am on on those evenings whenever I am not having to work.

I will also say that the events I have played on there so far are extremely fun if not addicting at certain points. :D

Organized dates for hosting events sounds terrible. I understand that you don't want new Classic solely focused around events like it used to be, but the beauty of GC was the ability to host and play custom made events with the tool at any time. Some players enjoy Graal for the content of the playerworld, and some enjoy the game for the events they can compete in. I don't think it should be forced what their preference is for certain days.

I don't think an event schedule is really a good idea. Part of the fun of 'Game Coordinator' was the fact that it was like the 'Mom and Pop Shop' of staff divisions. Once you over organize it it kinda loses it's charm.

Edit: Okay, I'm cool if it's for Classic UC.

I was actually mistaken, as my suggestion was geared toward a weekly event hosting situation, rather than the bi-weekly suggestion that Thor made. We should keep the day the same if it's every other week, that way we don't have to wonder/check somewhere.


@ mystic and zip

Given that Classic is UC but the events system is mostly complete, an event marathon would be a good way to attract potential players for when the server does go live by introducing them to the best part of the server. While we don't want to over-rely on events like we did in the past, the beauty of the new system is that many of them are hostable by the public. We can introduce people to the events via the marathon, and if they enjoy them, they're likely to come back with their friends and play them publicly.

So until Classic either goes live or has a regular playerbase, GC's having the "freedom" to host whenever just isn't practical. Sure, we've hosted a few events when 6-10 people are online, but those moments are rare. But with a scheduled event marathon, we can be sure that people will show up.

I've edited the original post.

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I know this was meant for UC Classic, but i kinda like Glads idea of a day of the week or month or whatever being set aside for a marathon :p

I can confirm that event hosting nights shall begin on Saturday 30th of June, 10 PM GMT/5 PM EST.

Edit:

Having received complaints of confusion, I would like to iterate this is occurring on the PC version of Classic. I apologise for not making this clear beforehand.

Seriously?

So with playercount having peaked at 35, there being over 4 hours of straight hosting I'd say it went fairly well. It's difficult to tell whether the main servers going down 24 hours previously would have had a positive or negative effect as events had then been hosted until morning.

With that said this can be expected to be held again on Saturday 14th July, 10 PM GMT/5 PM EST.

So it appears our scheduled hosting has coincided with some major lag issues, the login server being down for some, players being disconnected from other servers, and these forums being down/laggy. Nevertheless we've got a small crowd of players and are trying to maintain some events for as long as possible, incase anyone interested arrives late.

Fogles has been back. He DDoS'd the login servers (as I heard), the forums and graal.net

Despite the lag issues and disappointing initial turnout the situation improved enough for event hosting to last a good 4 and a half hours. I get the feeling that bi-weekly is too often at the rate the main servers are crashing (twice within the past 7 days), so I shall wait a week or 2 before deciding a new date.

He explained in a forum post on Graalians.com that he's doing it because he was banned. Made me lol.

Should contact Fogles and have him DDoS every other server during the event times so we get optimal turnout. :fro:

How old is this guy now? Seriously DDoSing an online game with a small community might've been edgy a bit back but seriously-- it is borderline autistic when you have such "hate" and run campaigns against the same thing for years on years.

The administration of GraalOnline/Eurocenter ****ed a lot of people over, he is no different than us, but happens to be the only one to take action against them.

I don't think it's Graal's Administration who are suffering as a result of this though. Unless there are some severe bandwidth cost implications.

Or the only person who can't grow the **** up and simply not do business with people who have ****ed you over?

fogles grow up d bag

move to everquest or something

Now normality has resumed, an events hosting night has been scheduled for Saturday August 11th, at the same time of 10 PM GMT/5 PM EST.

Best combination of initial turnout and duration so far, playercount crossed the 30 mark again and hosting lasted 4 hours and 45 minutes. As such, an events night is scheduled to take place at the same time on Saturday 25th August. Perhaps this shall be the last one.

Similar to 2 weeks ago, playercount crossed the 30 mark and hosting lasted for about 5 hours. I can also confirm this was the last one, more on that another time.

Was a great night last night. I'll be attending more of these :P!

No you won't.

I swear everytime you host these i'm at work >_>

that's why REAL graal players don't go to work and instead play graal all day every day.

Plan a sumo event and I will be there!!!

what the what? where have you been hoss?