Dead Graal
 

Graals been dieing for a while so why not.

Make trials limited p2ps on classic servers only.

They can play for up to 2 or 3 hours a day. (On Graal not just one server.) Then they get d/ced and cant get on for 24 hours.

They cannot have a RC on anything.

They cannot download the level editor or anything else besides the client.

They couldent post on the fourms.

Only so many could be logged on a server at a time.

This would get more people to play Graal and retain the trails and eventually when they cannot connect becuse there are to many trails, or they keep getting d/ced when trying to play or something else they would upgrade. Anyway just my 2 coppers.

This

proposal

will

get

a

no

answer.

Stop

pressing

return

so

much.

I'd say it is a shadow of what is used to be, but not dying.

I think you misunderstand the reason why Graal is dying.

It has nothing to do with trials or p2p, it's the content.. and it's not that good b/c people have got very lazy. Graal makes profit from what people make.

Were you around before p2p?

Pretty sure its P2P if you have never played Graal and you saw a few screen shots then saw some of EQ2 or whatever I doubt you would get Graal.

Go

screw

off

kthxbai.

graal is slowly dying...but why does everyone keep making new threads about it? there was a thread like this not to long ago...staff doesnt believe it to be true. they'll see what were talking about...cause it'll hit them all at once :x

Do you have any proof for "Graal is dieing"? For me it is just starting to become interesting :D Will move this to the future improvements section.
About pricing: we know that the trial mode is not the best thing right now. We think of letting trials playing with saving enabled, but limit them in the game, like not allowing switching the look, gaining high levels or high level items. As option they then can buy items or new looks without buying a full upgrade. That is not a simple thing to do and might only work on a few servers (Kingdoms) so it can still take some time before it becomes real.

"Thug life", eh?

Just between you and I, your general demeanour, assumed personality, and intellect doesn't shock me.

I have wondered the same thing.

The way I look at it is that when there was one server, the Graal userbase looked huge as everyone played one server, and even when there were only 2 or 3, it still didn't look bad.
Now we have a bunch of servers, and the community is now spread out all over the place, which makes the server counts look low, and may appear like "Graal is dieing"
In my opinion, Graal is improving.

Well even on Classic the player count was only above 250 for a few days, on July 4th 2000 there were around 400 players on it. Actually there were already playerworlds/subservers at that time, but the player count was added on top of the Classic player count (Kharlia and my test world).
I would say that an online community cannot be much bigger, people are forming groups. It's our goal though to bring the people from the different servers together, make it possible for people to easily communicate with players from other servers, globally announce events and such.

Zero how would you know how I conduct myself based on one post over the internet? As for my assumed personality your trying to take a jab at me? Your twenty years old and still playing videogames filled with teenagers, that leads me to think you lack any social interaction with people your own age and want to feel importent on a game with users often much younger then you. About my intellect lets not go there if you would look at my avatar you would notice its Tupac, he often shouted that its more of a joke then anything. So please stop trying to hijack this thread now.

Do not intellect battle with the might Zero Hour!!! >:O

Games are for all ages. Enough said.

I remember that, but I didn't consider that as being seperated because they were sorta morphed together in playercount, as you said.
This is evident in the way the client is constructed now (the logon), and the fact that we can add buddies from other PW's on the playerlist, and speak to them wherever they are. I love this option, and agree that it can bring the community back together, just in a different way.

Agreed. I am 41, and I love playing Graal, and other video games.
There is nothing wrong with my social life, or any other aspect of my life to make me play Graal. I simply enjoy it. ^^

You really need to teach that to my parents!

It isn't for everyone. Everyone has their preference for hobbies no matter what their age.
I don't think it is something that is "taught", but just their preference.
If they don't like it, they don't like it. ;)

True.

nice one lol

Trials should be less limited, I think that would help draw in new people. A lot of people just get pissed off when they cannot save. You could limit them in game, or even limit them to certain servers. Maybe even allow them to select they type of trial account they want. One that cannot save, but has access to every server, one that can save/play on only classic servers, and one that can save/play on every server for an hour a day. That way people can pick the right account for them. Maybe even start them off like a normal trial, and let them upgrade to a different one. I'm sure something like this would get some fresh noobs in here :D

Mmm, fresh meat..

I think we ought to bring another couple of playerworlds forward to classic also, to make it more interesting for new players. When I started with Graal however long ago it was, the major strength is that there were more worlds to select from and play.

Trials should be accessible to VIP Servers.

Aswell as Classic with the same option as trials as not saving.

The whole idea that would bring in more players is not to limit trials so harshly they don't have a chance to get in to the game its bad enough that they start off most worlds with no sort of tutorial and have to deal with players taking advantage of them for kills and items but any progress they try to make dosn't save. Instead I think that there should be greater rewards for accounts that are purchased special shops or items only accessable to them. This would be up to whoever ran the PW and it could be anything from pointless "fun items" to more powerfull equipment and weapons.

Yes they are but some people should not play them, if there gona act like that.

I disagree unless some servers were removed in the process. Currently we have 9 Classic servers with Zodiac, Unholy Nation and Era taking most as usual. Since Zodiac came about, Classic has dropped in activity as well as a few of the older servers. Adding more servers would be detrimental to these servers and the one server that used to beat the rest, Classic, would just fail.

Times are changing, but with all the players spread out on different servers, the playerbase for certain servers are dying.

Again, I disagree.

They wouldn't be called VIP servers, nor would VIP have as much significance if they were accessible by everyone, especially trials.

They shouldnt even be called VIP servers due to you NOT needing VIP for that server but gold aswell.

Next: Why can't they be accessed via viewable instead of ghost? You want the trials, classic people to see AS MUCH as they can while limiting them so they will want too play.

I think this game needs a Newbie Server again. Limited for trials, but not as limited as it was - and official too, so there's a sponsored hub, somewhere you can meet your cousin from Wisconsin and introduce him to the game. Naturally my preferences run towards nominating Classic/The Adventure, but G2K1/Bomy Moon would be a good one too - a nice, preferably stable(ish) server with a low learning curve designed towards being newbie-friendly while remaining sufficiently quest-heavy that there's a big enough hook. The hook size is terribly important, as if they spend 14 hours questing they'll have to experience the awesomeness of Graal (and start wandering onto Graal's other worlds), whereas if they spend 1 hour getting everything they can close the game with a sense of accomplishment - "I beat Graal, what else is free?"

*coughSO-GIVE-US-GLOBAL-STRINGScough*

Alot of servers would be nice it would breath life into some of the less player heavy servers.

Mmm, many servers going Newbie Happy would just water things down. There has to be a single hub, a definitive "This Is Graal" intro server that gets the newbies hooked and leaves them wanting more. An entire tier of Newbie Friendly servers could be good - more limited than The Free Server, but with much more content...so they beat the Intro Server, then they see how the other servers built on that, then they have to upgrade to see the whole picture and continue exploring...

Particularly if there's Global Communication so all the servers are interconnected, so to find out what happened to that ninja NPC that helped them they have to go onto Era or somesuch...

Back then when trials were able to choose 1 of the default guns, with 1000 ammo, that
attracted a lot of trials into P2ps. I will say myself, I had a lot of fun as a trial on Era and
when I upgraded it got 10x better.
(Keep inmind I'm talking about Era)
A problem is that Trials are soo limited, that when they get a gun on Era and they can't
shoot they think the game isn't working properly and they uninstall it.

We get complaints of people not being able to talk alot...and its because they are a trial.

I wish I had seen this post like a week or two ago. I was trying to work on something similar where I sent data down to an SQL server and requested some Data back up.

It was going to be used for the exact same reason you pretty much detailed in the post but would have been less intensive and we wouldnt have had to worry about hooking a ton of data onto the player globally (how would you need to choose to load all this data anyways, would it be intensive?)

The main problem ive seen is my php codes that I requesturl cant send data back up to graal, and thats really the biggest problem.

its continually returning 0 (when not starting with http://) and will return a "weird string like http:__www.somesite.com__80__path__to__file" when including the http:// but when returning data from the php, which is what I needed most to finish, nothing worked.

Would like some more info on this if anyone has tried, I want to finish up my project ^^

Was also why i was looking for a player.world identifier to make sure the correct world is always sent.

Also I wanted to say that entire story thing was so great.

Yes but alot of them didnt upgrade a trail account is still a trail.

Glad SOMEbody liked (or Read) my idea...

Hm, a 3rd party server could be a good idea...but of course I'd rather see it straight up integrated. I mean, given that you can only realistically be on one server at a time, it only has to read your global strings in once, then treat them as completely normal strings stuck to your player/account on that server...
and I had such hopes for the Global Gralats...

3rd party forever