Here's what should have happend
 

If the dev staff were smart they would have released "graal2001" with its Original Bodies from back in the day. They would have also given each player a sword not this dumb lets get 5 gold and craft a sword bogus. Hats should have been stocked in the hat stores. The dev blew it from the start. People spent all their time making money rather than having fun on the server. I've played graal since 2002 and I played graal2001 all the way until it went under. Graal2001 can be revived if we get the right manager who is committed to getting the server back on its feet. I believe also that the events on this server make it very unique and special.

Capture the Flag and Counterstrike are unique?

As opposed to unique roleplaying aspects, the infamous and iconic traintracks, a race of alien creatures and a crashed lunar planetoid?

It's wonderful to sit back from your pillar and say what should have happened. It's another thing to be able to realize things. Our original plans had most of what you asked for, but the release date was forced on us in advance.

Not to mention that the original bodies are really, well, ugly. I realize full well that in the beginning, Graal 2001 had the original bodies, and also had the normal heart system, but that way, it's just like any other playerworld out there, especially now that hats have become commonplace. If anything, the differing bodies and heart system helped set it apart.

All that aside though. If anything does happen with the server in the future, Ms. Wyndell is ready and waiting to lead the Bellaseran people once again.

I could make everyone a black pixel on my PW and that would set it apart also. But would it be good? No.

The players voted that they wanted the old bodies back, they should have come back.

The reason Bomy Lands failed was because of inactive staff. Inactive staff before the release, and inactive staff after the release. The entire reason the release date was forced on Lance was because he was taking entirely too long to produce any results. I'm not trying to play armchair quarterback here, but he could at least have admitted to people that nothing was getting done, instead of keeping private and not telling anyone anything.

I already knew nothing was getting done when he'd make posts about how "things are coming along" but wouldn't reveal ANY information... I know from past experience that when you're a manager and you're only updates are "things are getting done"... nothing is getting done.

He failed as a manager because he was not involved enough in the server, and he was not keeping the staff active or removing them for inactivity.

Anyway... the server release shouldn't have even happened. What did the staff expect? That players would just sit around and do the same boring jobs for gralat that they once had before being reset? All that seems to have been done was to make everything harder to do. Harder to get a weapon, harder to earn gralat... Plus the fact that there was little to nothing to spend your hard earned gralat on.

Lance wasn't thinking about the people. He was thinking about himself and his staff. I can't believe Cheetos couldn't see that either. I had a chance to look at their ideas and plans for 2k1, and what they wanted to do was to totally change 2k1 into GK, basically. I'm infuriated at Lance for telling me that my 2k1 revision was changing 2k1 too much.

Lance's 2k1 is basically:

- pre-2k2 bodies with stupid karate crap and ugly HP display
- new and confusing kingdoms instead of focusing on the ones that were already there
- giving bomies special abilities or some new attacks or something which would have been hell to balance out
- magic spells for humans and all sorts of items and crap needed to perform them

These are mostly Gryffon's ideas by the way so he's sure not going to like me saying they are bad for 2k1. But they are. 2k1 is not GK and if you want to get into that sort of intense RPing, you should just play GK or work there to make it what you want.

2k1 was very loosely about roleplaying. Roleplaying on 2k1 was never so technical and not about making up complicated and cool sounding names for kingdoms and things and making up crappy and confusing histories about everything and totally ruining what 2k1 once was.

I like roleplaying but I don't feel that all roleplaying has to be dark and medieval and D&D style to be good. Graal was born from Zelda, and Zelda was never about that kind of crap. Zelda was lighthearted and made you feel like you were whisked away into a storybook. It didn't complicate things and that's why it reaches so many people of all ages.

Coming up with a bunch of random names like Bellasera and Vanguard and Oraster and all of that might be fun to think up, but it's not fun to have to learn and involve yourself in. What was wrong with the old kingdoms? They were simple... you had Dustari which was about being a knight and a classic medieval style, you had Pirates, you had Zormites the fish kingdom, and you had Samurai. Simple. None of this other crap is needed. At least, not on 2k1.

Gryffon totaly didnt understand my post. Graal2001 was fine back in 2002 when I joined and you ***** staff went and screwed it all up. CHANGE IT BACK!
Maybe then the server would accually populate up and everyone could enjoy what it was like 4 years ago. Lance and the staff tried a new approach and it totally failed. You guys didnt even have to work on the server. All you had to do was move it from its original gold status to classic status.
None of these new Kingdoms like Konidias points out. I mean hell you *****s destroyed Dustaris original Kingdom do you have any class or respect at all for the history of that place.
You guys had it all wrong from the start when you tried to change a server that was completly fine.

First and foremost, let me preface this by saying that I spent FOUR YEARS as a Dustarian. If it would have made sense to keep Dustari, I would have. But Dustari died, by no fault of its own, and to keep reviving it would have been more harmful to its reputation.

Sounds kind of like 2k1.

And to Koni, considering you never saw any of the planned abilities, I think you commenting on how the simple, 2k1-style spellsystem and simple bomy abilities would "be hell to balance" is exactly armchair quarterbacking.

Sounds like Jeff's revival... and what happend with that? Yeah it died.

2k1's players were all about getting gralat... you can't deny that. 2k1 is dead, the community that drove it is gone, just let it go.

As for Koni's comments, I don't think it's right for you to bash Lance when you yourself had failed at several attempts to revive 2k1 with your own twist.

It has nothing to do with how simple the spell system would be. It's the fact that there would be a spell system at all. As far as I remember... the original 2k1 had pretty fun sparring and fighting because it was kept to swords (the bamboo was never really used much). Also judging by the fact that nothing else on 2k1 is balanced, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that this stuff wouldn't be either.

I have failed several times? How can I fail at a server that's never been public. That's not a failure. Failure is releasing a server twice, having it die both times, blaming it on everything but your own management skills and then leaving it to die.

Thats not even failure, thats like super failure or "Mission Failed" failure.

The main reason on the failure of 2001 was this:
"PHs and Bomies will be released Friday"
Friday Comes.. then Saturday.. then Sunday... all but CheeToS are on and the playercount falls by 20 each day.

You guys should have had PHs, Bomies, and ALL JOBS rescripted before releasing, and I know that could not have tooken long to rescript it all in GS2 ( i believe you guys are using that )

Even if those things were released when the world opened back up, it would still have lost all it's players. Like I've said before... making it harder to earn money after you've reset everyone is not going to make people flock to your server.

It's like getting fired from your job, and then having them rehire you years later for less pay.

I think Lance might be one of the worst managers 2k1 has ever had. He managed to not only release the server with half of the old things not working, but he also changed several working things and made them worse.

I figured out what killed 2k1 last night. I shall not say it though, because I want it to stay dead.

If only they had made me manager.

I actually would of loved to see this one. Though like you said it probably would of been hell to balance out. Though I also like the new bodies and would of liked to of seen the types of special abilities/spells they would of came up with.