Interesting Subscription Statistic

[ffcmike]

Unique IP accounts with over 50 hours online time which logged on since Classic launched on September 5th:

Trial - 6

Classic - 241

Gold - 27

Ex Gold - 5



This is despite the fact there have been 1174 unique IP address trials, that never accessed an alternate upgraded account, which have logged on in this time.

Some other factors to take into consideration are that many Classic subscription accounts will have had more than 50 hours online time prior to launch, but on the other hand, the Gold accounts include people who are either staff on an iPhone server (free Gold), or use it to work on their own dev server. Some of these trials also obtained a lot of hours before launch.

While there are multiple ways this data can be interpreted, and it would be wrong to put all blame on trial restrictions, if they weren't so outrageously harsh and therefore trials weren't prohibited from playing events, even a small 30/1174 trials playing 50+ hours in 7 weeks would make a big difference in fortune to a server like Classic, UN or Val.

[Kamaeru]

Well by your diagram it would appear that the Classic subscribers are actually in the process of consuming the other subscriber demographics. Which ironically some of which have been symbolized as ghosts in the past.

Jokes aside, if no one had ever subscribed to Graal in the first place, P2P would have been a failure altogether. Graal2001, by being way too enjoyable of a game, is now Graal's ruin because although P2P may be failing Graal at the moment, it was a huge success whenever paying extra meant you actually got something worth the money. If Graal2001 had not existed and P2P had been implimented as it is now, Graal would have been abandoned years ago methinks.

[Crono]

Not really interesting, more like predictable. We all knew this was going to happen. It won't change until Classic is made F2P like it should be with this relaunch, like it was over 10 years ago, and like it always should have been.

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by Kamaeru

If Graal2001 had not existed and P2P had been implimented as it is now, Graal would have been abandoned years ago methinks.

If Graal had never been free and P2P existed to begin with, Graal wouldn't have made it to 2001.

Originally Posted by Crono

Not really interesting, more like predictable. We all knew this was going to happen. It won't change until Classic is made F2P like it should be with this relaunch, like it was over 10 years ago, and like it always should have been.

Yep I was being sarcastic with the title. Although it would be ideal and should be a long term target, we're not really asking for the game to be free, rather to script our own trial restrictions that provide an incentive to upgrade but without ruining the game.

As it happens, observer mode is being replaced by a new trial restriction which prevents trials from entering so many levels, such as by hiding areas of the map on the client. Supposedly nothing is set in stone at this point, and changes to subscriptions are open-ended, so it's hard to say how bad it would be with enough certainty, but it does suggest the owners have not learned a single thing about their previous mistakes or even where they've got it right.

Stefan suggested that trials could maybe not be allowed to go north of the bridge, and only play one or two quests. When you consider Classic is only a small map by design, with a linear chain of quests spread all round it, and no real questing below the bridge, this would kill off our plans.

Trials wouldn't have to be excluded from events but apparently it would have to be at the expense of overworld space. If we were allowed to script our own trial restrictions. they could instead be limited to a certain number of events per day, that way they get to experience a wider variety of events, and participation wouldn't be lower for otherwise unavailable events.

The 2 things Stefan did say trials would be able to do, are "chat with friends" and "test the game", which doesn't fill me with any confidence this change will be an improvement.

[fowlplay4]

It's all about playing ball and when the time is right steal a few bases.