Lifetime Classic

[Googi]

Originally Posted by unixmad

So Cyberjoueurs have to find solutions to attract more players (and I am working on it very actively) but also find solution to not loose endlessly money with long time customers.

We keep telling you that ridiculous rules and overbearing moderators are causing people to leave, but you don't do anything about it. The moderation on the forums isn't making you look "professional", it isn't impressing anybody and it isn't something any successful MMORPGs do. It's causing people to quit (or, more rarely, to be banned for stupid reasons) and then tell everyone else not to upgrade.

[excaliber7388]

I didn't realize that was a vip/gold thing only.
I just wouldn't want big parts of classic servers to be limited to gold/vip only.
I'd like to see extra vip/gold only things, just not things that would limit developers.
Classic servers should have to have so many gold/vip benefits on their servers to stay classic. That way there's a large amount of benefits for gold/vip, but it doesn't take away from the core game for classic accounts.
Also, Googi makes a good point, don't delete his post because it's about moderation, it's a good suggestion. Who would pay more just to come here?

[jacob_bald6225]

I'm not going to pay for a game that refuses to do anything to help the situation on the server I play on. I feel ignored as a customer.

Originally Posted by Gerami

I'm not an expert or anything but you need to give people a reason to upgrade. I don't mean one addition and restrict it, I mean worthwhile gold server additions. Make a new 2D gold server, or something. It's been a while since Graal Online has made their own server. Zone is simply a revival of the old Zone made by Angel and them.

If there were a new offical, classic-esque server, I would upgrade to gold to play it.

[xXziroXx]

Graal needs avdertising.

Why have it not been done? Sure, Graal might be mentioned in one place or another, but is enough advertising being done? No, far from it. Make signatures for people to have in their signature on other forums so the players themself can help in advertising. Pay for Google adds (I dunno if you pay for them or how it works..) - that will give you tons of hits every day.

Another thing that you guys really should be slapped on the fingers for, is, that you update the graalonline.com page once a year or so. Why arnt you updating it often? Because you are lazy? I dont think so, but even a simple thing like that makes GraalOnline look bad for new players.

How can you earn money?

One solution, that I dont really like myself, is to let other games advertise on your website for a monthly fee. Other then that.. well, I dont know.

Accounts
Allow Trial accounts to work as a p2p, but limit it to 1 hour game play a day. p2p accounts shouldnt have to be paid for, although they should be limited to classic servers ONLY.

The VIP package is pretty much useless, only have the Gold package. The majority of players would chose Gold over VIP if they only were paying for one, since the Gold package gives them unlimited play time on Gold and Hosted servers unlike VIP. Sure, VIP lets you make a global guild - *wow*

The Global Staff / Servers
Why is there rarely new additions to the Classic list? Is there really that few Hosted servers that got what it takes to get there? And why is there so few Hosted servers, and its rarely updated? It should be updated alot more often..

Well, Ive said my thoughts.

[Minoc]

I'd be willing to pay more for an Old Graal based server.

[excaliber7388]

I have VIP, not gold. It's all I need to get on my dev server, I like the difference because then I don't have to pay full price for gold, which I'm not sure I'd do if I had to.
We definatly should advertise, have google advertisements on the forums, as well as other ads on the main page.
Or maybe in game?
As for accounts, Trials should have 1 month as a full p2p, then they are 'reset' untill they upgrade. They would have a week to upgrade or they lo\ose their stuff. This would cause more of a 'rushed' feeling, causing them to be more willing to purchase it. You have to make them convinced they need to upgrade to a classic account at least. Then show them all the cool features they get with gold/vip for a month or so, and once again, take it away at the end of the month. There shoud be more in game benefits for upgrading, without limiting the classic users.
Also, put an activity thing in, like they have to go on the client at least once every few months to keep their classic account.

[Googi]

Originally Posted by excaliber7388

As for accounts, Trials should have 1 month as a full p2p, then they are 'reset' untill they upgrade. They would have a week to upgrade or they loose their stuff. This would cause more of a 'rushed' feeling, causing them to be more willing to purchase it.

Or just make a new trial account. This is a bad idea.

[zim5354]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

I agree to limiting certain things to the upgraded players.

Do that and more will quit. I for one do not wana log on a classic server, and be limited becuse I didnt shell out for the newest thing. Limit classic people all you want on gold servers on vip servers etc but not on classic servers.

[excaliber7388]

Originally Posted by Googi

Or just make a new trial account. This is a bad idea.

Obviously they'd have to limit it to one per email, one per Ip range, comp ID, etc.
Maybe you have to register or pay for an account, and then you get one month free.
Obviously, advertising is the most important thing.

[Googi]

Originally Posted by excaliber7388

Obviously they'd have to limit it to one per email, one per Ip range, comp ID, etc.

None of these are a highly secure way of preventing the creation of multiple accounts.

[excaliber7388]

True

[konidias]

Okay! *cracks knuckles* Time for me to repeat myself!

I'm really glad that you're making this thread Unixmad... it's definitely a step forward.

Okay first off... the forums and classic's current content are not worth anyone reupgrading. So that should be free forever. (after the initial gold upgrade) This let's non-gold players communicate with staff and gold players, which in turn, might convince them to upgrade for whatever reason.

Next, the website issue has been addressed, but I will restate that I think you should have weekly contests for poems/comics/art/stories so that you'll get people contributing to Graal as a community, plus if you give them discounts off graal store merchandise or discounts on another upgrade, it will encourage people to submit stuff. This could be a weekly update to the site which would keep the website even more active looking. Plus when strangers come in from the outside and see the site has a lot of fan art and stuff, it's going to show that this game has fans and people dedicated enough to write stories or draw art for it.

Another big thing is staff... You've simply got to dig up some more people to handle this stuff. Support center, website, possibly a newsletter... more moderators for the forums and possibly ease up on the rules... Otherwise the forums feel very unfriendly where you can't have an opinion that a mod/admin doesn't like without being banned.

Okay... now on to the actual point of this thread... How to make money with Graal. You need more gold content. More servers. You need to get teams put together of talented people and you need to watch over them like they are your children. You get together these teams and you assign them new gold servers to make... and make sure they are active. You could possibly reward these people with free gold days for each day of work they put into the server. This is only fair seeing as how they are losing play time by working for you. Then while the servers are being made, you pull in some people from the outside to give their opinions about it... Maybe you could start by creating a website or forum poll that is multiple choice which lets people choose what sort of servers they'd like to see. (medieval fantasy, modern, futuristic, something totally different, etc)

You need someone at Stefan's level or Stefan himself to actually keep these teams in check and possibly motivate them and keep them working. You'd have quality gold servers coming out all the time. You also need to encourage professionalism with the team. Not just acting professional but making professional quality work. Not just slapping random levels and graphics together from all directions. All graphics and levels and scripts and everything about the server should stay consistent.

So anyway, the main problem is that you have 2 gold servers that aren't very active, up against a dozen + classic servers with varying levels of activity. You need to try and match the number of classic servers with Gold ones. That doesn't mean taking the badly made classic servers and forcing them to go Gold. It means starting new gold server projects.

I mean, it's silly to even ask why nobody is upgrading when all you have are two gold servers that are in specific genres. I don't like the hardcore stats based MMORPGs and I don't like the futuristic laser shooting stuff. So where does that leave me as far as gold servers? I've got no options.

I would stop worrying about Graal3D and put more focus into making more high quality and active Gold servers. Your current playerbase didn't start playing Graal because it was fancy 3D. I don't want fancy 3D Graal and I'm sure many people agree with me.

Which reminds me... stop losing focus on what Graal is about. Graal is not a 3D game and it shouldn't be. Graal is not a hub for flash games. If you want to make flash games, then make them graal related. Make chess but make it using little graal characters instead of chess pieces. Screw having a flash game lobby. Why not make a gold server that acts as a lobby for tons of Graal minigames like those? I think that would be far more interesting. You could still link the games in the lobby, just have them direct the player into that gold server. When those games came out I didn't even know they EXISTED. My account is expired and there is no listing of the games at all in my Graal game.

Also, don't base Graal's image around one server. I hate it. I don't like GK that much and yet you've changed Graal to "Graal Kingdoms". All of your merchandise minus one item is GK related. The website images, the forum... it's all GK related. I miss the fun family-oriented slash'em that Graal once was.

You could definitely get more people upgrading if there were more gold servers that people actually wanted to play. I mean you've got this great game engine and scripting language and all the tools needed to make great online games... yet you have two measily gold servers as your selling point. =/ I gave up on GK a long time ago... Because it lost it's professionalism the moment Stefan stopped focusing 100% on it. The economy was never balanced properly, staff were hired with powers and not watched over. People would abuse glitches and nothing was done about their accounts being overpowered. The one of a kind battleaxe I won in the first spar event ended up being three of a kind within a couple of months... Just things like that which ruin the experience.

I'd love to go into more detail about how Graal could do a lot better but I know you don't exactly like me or what I have to say anymore.

[excaliber7388]

Actually, I think a lot of people would be willing to upgrade to gold/vip for Graal 3d. I would love to see graal go 3d. And if you allow 3d playerworlds, we'll even be better off.
Of course, you'll also need a good, easy to use, 3d level editor.

[Infernix]

Originally Posted by unixmad

So Cyberjoueurs have to find solutions to attract more players (and I am working on it very actively) but also find solution to not loose endlessly money with long time customers.

Um......How do I put this...This game just isnt as good as other games =/. The Question is probobly "why" right? Only thing I can ever think of when I compare graal to other games I play is the weak gameplay.

I think maybe you need to do some research on how to create a game with deep gameplay. How about start a thread about that and the you might just pick up a few nice ideas...that are probobly all over this thread but you seem to have completely ignored them.

Koni talks about your staff team such as Stefan but I have to say I dont care who develops graal I care about the gameplay, and gameplay is the only thing you need to bring in $USD. Sadly you dont have it IMO. Anyone else agree?

But then again you need to start a brand new server...and you need to best developers your gonna find to create it because most of these amateurs on graal just arnt going to cut it.

You need to create somthing that people love because you cant market somthing people dont love. People love Zelda but after awile when they relize this isnt a Zelda they have to start loving graal but at this moment people sure dont love graal.

..one more small word of advise...take the key notes of what people dislike about graal in this thread and then make of list of them. Then Disscuss that list with your staff team...the professional ones. I dont think any buisness could do it better than that.

Originally Posted by Stefan

But the flying technology is a good update? It is an update accessible to gold subscribers. It it not restricting the game play for other players, and is eventually encouraging them to upgrade. Why should classic players reupgrade if they get the same stuff without resubscribing?

This has to be the only upgrade for graal in awile that is big but the fact is its still not that big of a update. Its a update for people who choose to develop for graal more than it is for the players. The real update is if it will and can be used in a way that seems innovative. So at the moment I dont think anyone is gonna upgrade their account or buy a new account for such a thing.

[konidias]

Originally Posted by excaliber7388

Actually, I think a lot of people would be willing to upgrade to gold/vip for Graal 3d. I would love to see graal go 3d. And if you allow 3d playerworlds, we'll even be better off.
Of course, you'll also need a good, easy to use, 3d level editor.

If it weren't for the fact that it's not going to look that great and it's going to be based entirely around GK.