My final attempt

[Corp1]

First off, I started in mid-2000(mid 1.3's) and was a part of the newbie rush on the Main Server so I remember alot about graal.

This guest mode thing IMO is gonna drive so many trials away that would probably p2p down the road.

For the short term guest mode will be a slight success; more people will buy a p2p account. But looking at the big picture Graal is going to lose alot of players that could have paid off later if they weren't forced away after a short time.

I like to think of Graal as that small mom and pop store; a small business with a tight, knit community. Guest mode would be a big step in the other direction; it's most likely to be slightly profitable in the short run, but going the other direction and trying to compete with the bigger mmorpg's isnt the best step to take...and its apparent to me that Graal is trying to take that step.


-People who play graal need real incentives to pay.
-People need to think that there is a sale going on.
-Offer less Gold time for less money(Have a bronze and maybe even a silver package as a limited time offer.), but have that big bulk deal that looks a million times better but isnt much more... And then have your "VIP"'s.
-On those Bronze and Silver Packages maybe not offer lifetime Classic membership, only do it for Gold and VIP.

All those may be good ideas but probably not, im just trying to help out by throwing out ideas and stating my belief which is that guest mode is a bad idea.

(man its late, sorry if that was incoherent)

[James205]

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I'm sure we've all sent our forum PMs to the "appropriate staff" and have seen nothing come of them.

Yes exactly, the suggested system by the MODs that never works, you sir are correct.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I've played this game for 6 years this fall. From the time where there was simply one server, with 300 or more players on. When the game was all about the community, all about friendships, guilds, and such. Before the place was divided into many servers. Back before we were expected to pay, and promised that Graal, in some form, would always remain free.

Correct again, this is how graal was published in game magazines, it was known as one of the few good games you could play without paying any money.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I'm sure you've all noticed this, but player counts on all servers have been hitting record lows. It is to be expected, afterall. More people are quitting than new players signing up. VIP accounts are surely expiring at a fasrer rate than they are being signed up for.

No argument here, once again you are right.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

We have a system that allows players to create and develop their own worlds, yet not enough players to do so.

One of the big problems of graal was expanding to creating your own playerworld when it wasn't ready to do so. There simply isn't enough players to make a quality server (with few exceptions). Even the respected "quality" servers that for some reason people got all hyped about (Zenkou, Oasis, GRAAL2001,TOT and Faheria) all fell because of lack of staff and eventually everyone gave up (Yes that may not be the reason for all servers).

With one server ages ago with 300 players and increasing, it allowed players to actually play the game and limit the amount of staff jobs. When a player became staff it had actual meaning to it. Now anyone can buy their own server and TRY to make a low quality server, but eventually just quit graal because they get tired of DEVELOPING and not playing. So once players started buying their own playerworlds they concentrated on that, which cut down on the amount of players big time.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

We also have tons of free MMORPGS, and MMORPGS which cost a comparable amount to this game, which offer much larger communities, more interactive and captivating game play, and a seemingly more involved administration. (Just check the list of games on mmorpg.com, if you need verification).

Yes, there is a simple explination for this and we all know why the community has been destroyed

Originally Posted by Inspiration

Graal simply does not offer a package that's attractive for your money. Two Servers with a playerbase of 40-60 people each? Access to some semi-active forums? The ability to log onto 100 playerworlds with nearly no content?

Yes once again I agree and your explination is along the lines of mine. If graal was cheaper I would upgrade to gold, but the amount of money for a package now is getting ridiculous. I would love to post on these forums more than once a day but no way am I going to pay $40+ to do so, I'd rather use that money for food for a full week.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

Further more, and by far the worst call Stefan has made since making classic servers P2P, is the new "Limited" trial account system. Is it really necessary to drive the nail into the coffen?

I read about this in the "Future Improvements" sections and I was amazed by the amount of GOLD players who wanted a limited trial system. A GUEST SYSTEM is the same thing as a limiting trial accounts. Some of my old friends on graal still use a trial and simply don't have the money to upgrade and don't have a reason to do so (goes along with nothing attracts them).

I'm sorry to the people who think it's a very important issue and getting out of hand that all trial users are incompetent asses who are just annoying, but I could say the same about all the new GOLD players. They are part of the game too and just because they don't want to upgrade doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to play, GRAAL is known as a game you can play for free and ages ago put up a good reason to upgrade and some of those reasons were...

1. Growing Community
2. Constant Updates
3. More Freedom (ex: look at the amount of closed threads for no reason around here, half the time I can't post on a thread because it's closed for no reason).
4. Logical Staff (staff now just beat around the bush and send you to one staff to another. It takes over a week to sort out a problem which could take literally 4 seconds, and don't tell me it has always been like this because when Contego and I were account admins it was required to fix the problem first rather than say "Let me look at it tomorrow" or "send me a forum PM")
5. LESS money for a game that should be for less.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I've said it so many damn times and no one seems to care. No one wants to listen. The best thing this game has going for is its simplicity. At it's core, you have a simple game with a community that is easy to get into.

The community is the players. Without them, the game becomes moot. There are no monsters to level off of (GK doesnt count, seriously.). Besides interactivity with other people, this game does not offer much.

Fully agree again.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

So why must the player count be forced to go down?
Why can classic servers not be free again?
Why not give this game a damn chance of survival?

It would be nice to have classic servers go free again, but we have to remember the financial costs of the servers. Personally I don't mind the one time fee to play CLASSIC servers, but even that has increased in price (was $15 originally). Personally I think Gold should be $15 a year, I would upgrade instantly because it's only worth $15 a year.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

Instead of forcing people to pay just to play, why not offer them a free game, and then make a few servers (Graal 3d, anyone?) pay to play, like it was?

Seemed graal was doing better when the system was like this too.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

Why not advertise this game? I see adds for games like adventure quest, which is no more than a flash RPG, yet I see none for this on any popular sites a gamer might visit.

Well it used to be advertised as a FREE online game which got a lot of attention, that quickly changed though.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I understand the financial issues. I also understand the most basic concept of economics. Supply and Demand. Players demand a product worth their money. Currently, Graal does not supply this.

Yup agree with this, explains what I was talking about earlier.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

You can tell me I'm not forced to play. You can tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. You can defend your choices, as poor as most people find them to be, until the bitter end.

While you've been jumping from one project to the next, I've been watching the community die. I've been watching players lose faith. I've played other games. Yet I always come back here, clinging to some foolish hope that perhaps my first online game will restore itself to a fun, large community like it once was.

I also keep returning as well, but each time it's disapointing but I put forth some kind of effort each time.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

Edit: To Stefan.

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...9&postcount=23

That means users who do not pay have 2 weeks to play Graal. In those two weeks, do you believe they will become attatched enough to this game to think it worth the money?

I also thought about this a little more and I remember when a certain game came out (YES I WISH I COULD SAY THE NAME BUT APPERENTLY IT'S ILLEGAL) and it had a free trial account thing like this, but the game had a HUGE community before it started using guest accounts. The game had more than 3,000 players on at once, that was a minimum playercount sometimes it would be at 6,000. Right now it's 1:40am and according to the playercount on graalonline.com there is approximately 121 players on, now according to the RC server list 24 playerworlds have 1 or more players on. Lets do some simple math here...

121 players divide by 24 playerworlds averages to be 5 players on each.

12 of those playerworlds are PRIVATE/HOSTED with a total of 41 players out of the current 121 players logged on. 80%+ are idling RCs...

So for trial users who consider this time to be morning/afternoon they have a good 4 people to interact with on each playerworld, is that seriously going to convince them to upgrade?

During the day graal only gets at tops 600-700 total players and peak time. Divide that up with the amount of private servers graal has. Usually UN and Era have 100+ and sometimes GK has a high playercount (nothing extraordinary still).

It really is time to re-think some of the things going on with graal...

[pacMASTA]

Originally Posted by Damix2

Hey, bud, this is the internet, not the United States, there is no freedom of speech.

Might not be that way too long congress has their grubby little hands and is sending proposals all over to be the world internet police or what not o_o. But trials are annoying but UN will lose 25-50% of its player count.

[Raeiphon]

I have 30 or so friends on other communities who are dying to play graal, simply put - they cant afford it. They played the trial, they LOVED it, but they just cant become p2p.

Free games are good games. (Sorry for the nubish attempt, but here it goes)

Runescape is a prime example. I remember playing it when 100 on one server was an all time high. Nowadays it's an average of 1.1k per server, and there's 89 servers X_X

Why? A huge portion of the game is free. Then there's a huge member section, double the size of the free. Its 6 bucks a month, and 1/3 of players are subscribers. Bingo. Do the math. 32633 subscribers, at six bucks a month. 195800 a month. Woah. In a year, 2349600. Lots of profit.

Easily pays for rental/server costs, with plenty to spare after wages and such. Why doesnt graal start advertising and doing this? It's a great game, it's just too damn expensive for what you get.

[Inspiration]

Originally Posted by Methril

You're telling Stefan what is correct about his own game? I think he knows the stats better than you do, seeing as he has the logs and you do not.

First thing, Stefan said he presumes that the actions of a normal trial user are as he said. He did not say "According to my databases".
Even if he statistically does have how often trial accounts are used, do these "logs" account for trials made by people with P2Ps, trials made and never logged on, ect?
Personally I know tons of people who have used trials for over 2 months, forget 2 weeks.

Originally Posted by Methril

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. A p2p account costs next to nothing per month. I think I paid around 45 canadian for a year of VIP. That's 3.75 a month, I spend more than that on coffee and food every day.

Well, I'm certainly happy to know your financial situation reflects upon that of the entire world.

However, now back to reality, as Raeiphon just stated, there are TONS of potential players out there who would play, but can not due to unavailable money.

Believe it or not, there are people out there without 40$ to lay out on an online game, be it no access to a payment method, bills that must be payed, pesky things like food and rent, ect.


Which also brings me to a new point.

Let's take the average trial user. Probably a 12-16 year old, with no bank account, nor credit card of their own.

Which, as a parent, would make you more likely to lay down the 40 bucks for this game?

"Mom/Dad, I've been playing this cool game for a week, and I need 40$ to upgrade my account before I can't play anymore!!"

or

"Mom/Dad, I've been playing this cool game for a few months, and there are tons of features that a VIP account would unlock for me!"

Personally, I believe the first situation just seems like the kid has found a new toy that he wants, that he will most likely soon grow tired of. Why pay for a year of something for your child that you believe they will grow tired of before the month is out?

As a parent, seeing your kid sticking with something for a long time would probably compel you to invest your money into it over something that they just found.



Well, so far I have a lot of people completely agreeing with everything that I have wrote.


Willing to listen to me and talk about this yet without excuses, or are you really willing to ignore what the players have wanted for so long?

[Vintersorg]

Someone just stated that it takes tons of money to run this game.. How? I mean.. What the hell, the only thing they pay for is the hosting since all the people that work on it do that for free?

[Lord Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Minoc

She doesn't let people argue around here as well. ;(

...or breathe loudly

[syltburk]

I was lucky to get my account upgraded, but you are right.. At my age when P2P came, most people quit because they can't pay, we dont have an credit card and we cant get one.. Parents usually deny the youngster who wants his account uppgraded, because they dont know what they are paying for.

[Codein]

I was lucky to get my account upgraded, but you are right.. At my age when P2P came, most people quit because they can't pay, we dont have an credit card and we cant get one.. Parents usually deny the youngster who wants his account uppgraded, because they dont know what they are paying for.

I had to plead for almost a year (pausing for toilet breaks and sleep). My mum was just too scared to use the internet to buy things. She simply couldn't trust this "New fangled payment system.". Less likely for most parents these days, but I doubt their parents would allow their kids to pay for something, and if they see Graal, I'm really certain that they'd snort and say "Rip off."

No offence, but I've seen this happen to so many people.

[unixmad]

Graal should be free, graal is not worst paying, graal have no content, graal downfall is coming, graal managers are dumb, I will leave the game if nothing change.

Your should really change your disc.

Originally Posted by Inspiration

I held off on making this thread for a few reasons.


First off, it is highly likely ...

[unixmad]

Stefan and I just had a fantastic idea:

Let's open a new restaurant where you can eat for free, you will eat as much as you want for free.

The main idea is to make money in another restaurant near the free restaurant; this other restaurant will sell Caviar to the customer coming in the free restaurant !

[Skyld]

Originally Posted by unixmad

Graal should be free, graal is not worst paying, graal have no content, graal downfall is coming, graal managers are dumb, I will leave the game if nothing change.

Your should really change your disc.

I've got to agree with Unixmad here.

"Graal has no content content." What are those nine classic playerworlds, two Gold playerworlds and four hosted playerworlds? Why is the game being constantly improved, and new concepts like Graal3D being worked on? To fuel more content.

"Graal should be free." In an ideal world, yes, it probably should. But, GraalOnline would not be anywhere near what it is now were it not for the funding that account upgrades and the like provide.

"Graal managers are dumb." That's an entirely different matter. People are selected as managers for playerworlds, or they buy a playerworld. Global staff members are selected due to their competence. If you have a problem with a playerworld manager or global staff member, well, problems can't be solved if nobody knows about them.

"Nothing changes." Things do change. Era alone has made great progress recently. Plus, Graal3D is being worked on. Zone and Graal Kingdoms are often worked on. Not enough for you? Graal is very complex compared to a lot of similar ideas. It provides you the oppurtunity to help change things yourself, too!

[Lance]

Originally Posted by unixmad

Stefan and I just had a fantastic idea:

Let's open a new restaurant where you can eat for free, you will eat as much as you want for free.

The main idea is to make money in another restaurant near the free restaurant; this other restaurant will sell Caviar to the customer coming in the free restaurant !

You will become millionaires!

[Skyld]

Originally Posted by Lance

You will become millionaires!

Loans and overdrafts have to be payed back, y'know.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by unixmad

Stefan and I just had a fantastic idea:

Let's open a new restaurant where you can eat for free, you will eat as much as you want for free.

The main idea is to make money in another restaurant near the free restaurant; this other restaurant will sell Caviar to the customer coming in the free restaurant !

Will it have the famous Graal Beer?