My Unholy Nation Experience

[HirakoShinji]

To me,
Unholy Nation is a server that I've played on for a little under 6 years and have had fun on there even when people are being idiots and acting rude. I didn't play as P2P for very long so that really bummed me out but when I did get a P2P, all the advantages came to me and actually made me want to play less. Nowadays I just make stuff for my Reborn server (not advertising) and apply to be GP or LAT on UN. I did take a 5 month break to sort out some personal issues, so that made me lose out on some things but I quickly caught up on them.
So, I'll ask you your question.
What is "Unholy Nation" to you? (Besides you thinking it's a fallback server)

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by HirakoShinji

What is "Unholy Nation" to you? (Besides you thinking it's a fallback server)

I have always considered Unholy Nation to be a horrible mess, especially in terms of its content. It lacks structure, it lacks coherence, and it doesn't show any signs of being an actual playable game. Because of this I've never had any desire to play on it, but due to what happened to Classic, I was pretty much forced to. I didn't start playing by myself though; there was a few of us left on Classic and we all moved over together. We ignored how big of a mess the server was, we met new people, and we seemed to easily integrate into the server. I think that's the only way you can play this server, if you ignore how bad it is.

After about a year I got egged on by a few people to apply to the Events Team. I cracked, applied, and got the job. I never cared about the position, but I'd never apply to something if I wasn't going to do it right. I'm going to be honest though, I was entirely selfish in accepting the job because I had seen it as an opportunity to retain players. Without people around things are just going to end up like Classic, and at that point you can no longer ignore how bad the server is. For once on Graal I just wanted to be able to play the ****ing game with people.

It seems the development staff have always been quite content on ignoring all of the problems the server has too, because every addition to the server over the years has just been adding crap on top of crap. This only stimulates for so long however, and because the the players are no longer getting that (and haven't been for quite some time now) it starts to become a problem you can't escape. When your friends stop logging on, when you start to get a low participation in events, when there's nothing to do BUT host events, you can not just ignore how bad the server is. This is where we are now, and honestly, I can't really see that changing.

Nobody cares about Unholy Nation as a server, because it never was one. It's extremely unfortunate, but we just need someone who will work.

[kia345]

Unholy Nation is a generic classic server that exists as nothing more than an attempt to take every trait of a quality classic style server and dilute it enough to fit into their already mediocre system. It has everything a classic server needs, but it doesn't dedicate itself to anything.

Sure, it has quests. But they're low quality ones, with no depth and easily forgettable. Sure, it has events and sparring, but they're the lifeblood of the server, and who doesn't have those anyway? And if hours of events don't hold you over, UN is not for you.

It has a ton of quirky, unique things, and that's the problem. It has lots of amazing ideas but no one will flesh them out, so it just becomes the Mario Party equivalent of a Graal server. There's a lot of little, fun things. But that's all they are, little. Not actually the main appeal of the game.

It's a shame that the last of the classic servers is also the dullest. Most of the people I see on it on my buddylist or when I get on are the people who played Classic, Delteria, or NPulse. The people whose servers went down and moved somewhere with similar gameplay. Whether you play it for other reasons or not is irrelevant, because it is undeniably, as Rufus put it, a fallback server.

It doesn't help that it loses a manager every month, its staff line up is constantly fluctuating, and it's obvious no one knows what direction it should be going.

[BigBear3]

Originally Posted by kia345

Mario Party Graal server

I wish!

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Rufus

Kevin only plays because it's the closest thing to Classic.

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

[HirakoShinji]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

Definately.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

playercount

[Heroin]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

Sounds fair on the surface, but I also worked harder on UN than I ever did on Classic so there has to be something else that drew me in.

yeah, the fact that you would crack if you'd lose another graal server apparently.. isn't there anything else in your life you can put your creativity and devotion into? putting effort in this **** is like feeding pearls to pigs

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Heroin

yeah, the fact that you would crack if you'd lose another graal server apparently.. isn't there anything else in your life you can put your creativity and devotion into? putting effort in this **** is like feeding pearls to pigs

wat

[HirakoShinji]

I could probably spruce up the quests and make them entertaining but I'd need some time.
By the way kia345, you were right about everything.

[Crono]

UN is a terrible server, like many i only play it because it's the last "classic" server left (npulse doesnt count, what a joke of a dead server).

actually i dont even play UN much anymore so w/e. but the staff list is a horrible mess and i've already brought this up before but no one listens, as usual.

[HirakoShinji]

Rufus, I would work on the server a lot. But the time it would take would probably be 1 or 2 years alone. If someone would help, we could actually make it better.
But as Crono said, "like many i only play it because it's the last 'classic' server left".
I could change everything if I had the rights, but since it's a classic server I shouldn't.
If the server changes so much as a more detailed tileset, osl change, town change, or quest change, it won't be Unholy Nation so much anymore.
But what I 'would' do if I was LAT is update the quests. They are boring as **** and they need to be changed. Though, knowing the head lat, I won't even get hired.
People tell me I have so much potential going to waste and I should do something with it, yet whenever I try and do something I end up getting a storm in my face about how I shouldn't bother with anything. It gets really irritating hearing people calling me an idiot over this stuff.

[MysticX2X]

Originally Posted by HirakoShinji

I could change everything if I had the rights, but since it's a classic server I shouldn't.
If the server changes so much as a more detailed tileset, osl change, town change, or quest change, it won't be Unholy Nation so much anymore.
But what I 'would' do if I was LAT is update the quests. They are boring as **** and they need to be changed. Though, knowing the head lat, I won't even get hired.

It is a lot harder than you think it would be.

[HirakoShinji]

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

It is a lot harder than you think it would be.

I realize that, that is why I said it would take a year or 2 to do this stuff alone.
If I did have some help, it would take 8 months or a year.
But before I did all that, I'd need the actual O.K to make these.
And by O.K, I mean getting hired as LAT.

[ff7chocoboknight]

Rufus for manager.

[HirakoShinji]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

Rufus for manager.

Agreed, Rufus for manager.
Me for leader of (Noobs Anonymous).

[ff7chocoboknight]

UN is a haven for players looking for a place to go when their favorite server dies.

Classic, Delteria, and N-Pulse players are the majority of the server's players.

[MysticX2X]

Originally Posted by HirakoShinji

I realize that, that is why I said it would take a year or 2 to do this stuff alone.
If I did have some help, it would take 8 months or a year.
But before I did all that, I'd need the actual O.K to make these.
And by O.K, I mean getting hired as LAT.

Not exactly what I meant. With the amount of staff who do help and disappear thereafter, and the ones who cast no visible sort of support, are the main difficulties. I honestly doubt you can do what you feel should be done all by yourself, in any time frame.

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

UN is a haven for players looking for a place to go when their favorite server dies.

Classic, Delteria, and N-Pulse players are the majority of the server's players.

Weird, since UN was my first server that I stuck to (with the exception of the malinko era).

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

UN is a haven for players looking for a place to go when their favorite server dies.

Classic, Delteria, and N-Pulse players are the majority of the server's players.

Maybe UN should stop trying to be something else and start conglomerating the best ideas from servers from the past.

[HirakoShinji]

N-Pulse is alive... in a vegetated state.

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by HirakoShinji

N-Pulse is alive... in a vegetated state.

Confirmed, Let's just say it's recuperating from PMV (Past Manager Virus) as I like to call it.

[ff7chocoboknight]

My point is still valid.

[HirakoShinji]

Yes, it still is.

[Hiro]

it's retarded to start remaking useless quests or focusing on simply events and spouting ridiculousness about how UN's entire focus has been on their events aspect - that's just how far UN has slipped over the past 5 years into the utter crap we see today

see, UN has always had a main focus on sparring. it is only in the last 2-3 years that UN has had a total focus on events rather than sparring, or even PKing and CW. back in the day, those outside levels, the quests, the NPCs, and the events were all secondary to UTC and TTUTC. there was a long time where 60% of the server would be inside tcspar, because in a way, rufus is correct about most everyone not caring about the server itself, since what we really cared about were all the kickass sparrers who were online everyday, not the noobs and social NPC hoarders who had actually created the server and spent all of their time in events or joining guilds with 70 other multiguilders

however, since most everyone who was awesome at sparring has quit, including those who were staff members (the top being NJ as manager), UN has let that aspect of the server just become completely stupid, to the point where there aren't even any real dedicated sparrers left besides perhaps myself and a few others - and this includes all other aspects the server had going

with no other focus besides (in my opinion, crappy) events to get hats/emitter NPCs, what else besides mindless PKing is there on UN? at least CW was presented as the guild wars aspect of the server, but as mystic has made clear, CW hasn't been a real priority but more of a development dead zone; just another lost aspect of the server, albeit the last real attempt at creating another good focus for UN

systems that promote players competing against other players, preferably without needing the assistance of staff members, is what UN's top priority ought to be - sparring and CW are the best examples of these aspects. secondary to those aspects should be events, and then another guild wars system in addition to CW, to create a diversity of guild wars. the last aspect needing any sort of real work should be the levels, and the removal of the current quests altogether. seriously, the last thing UN needs is questing, unless it holds a solid storyline that allows players to acquire items that can be used well in UN's absolute ****-hole of an economy

[Mark Sir Link]

I see a lot of serious claims about how time was invested in that post without any sort of evidence to support them.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I see a lot of serious claims about how time was invested in that post without any sort of evidence to support them.

[Mark Sir Link]

60% of players focused on sparring? I seriously doubt that. I doubt that even 30% of players were focused on that.

[ff7chocoboknight]

I remember finishing all the "quests" on UN in '07 in 1hr~1hr30min. I don't even have 100 hours on it. I'm usually only on it for at most 15 minutes and then bail. UN has never appealed to me. Make it happen.

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

I remember finishing all the "quests" on UN in '07 in 1hr~1hr30min. I don't even have 100 hours on it. I'm usually only on it for at most 15 minutes and then bail. UN has never appealed to me. Make it happen.

Make what happen?

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by jacob_bald6225

Make what happen?

Therein lies the issue. If we simply develop more random things, it wont really help the server long-term. But if we take on huge projects, our Development staff grow bored and quit mid-project. Especially scripters. Once that happens, the next scripter to take on the job has to rewrite the entire thing because "it would be easier that way", and then they quit mid-project as well. That has been the story of UN's large projects over the passed few years in all honesty.

To Hiro, I was always very interested and supportive of CW, as Mystic says I asked him about it pretty regularly. The real issue was the Development Manager did not focus on CW at all. Mystic had to find his own scripters, with the exception of Ben Rain, who approached me about it before he became PWA. This lack of support from his higher admins on the Dev side probably led to a good portion of Mystic's lack of enthusiasm. When I spoke to Luca about it, I was told the scripting would be replaced with another project's framework (the same type of thing I was talking about above), but that never came to fruition either.

Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items. The real issue is both that either players no long want these items, or cannot get them because of the old playerbase no longer playing and trading actively. From what I recall, trading was more the focus than anything else if we tried to pinpoint something accurately. With the economy in the poor shape that it is in, related to ep duplication largely, players dont want to buy things for the inflated prices. EP and item trading were probably the worst ideas to hit UN, because you no longer had to play events to win event items. That being said, most people loved the item trading and auction houses, so it's a double edged sword.

The conundrum we are in, is that if we focus on large, meaningful projects, they will likely never come to fruition, and if we focus on small, meaningless projects, nobody will be happy, including me. We have to work on a mix of these things in order to prosper is the conclusion I have reached, and is what I am working on implementing now. The remaining issue is getting people who are willing to work on anything for the server nowadays. UN doesnt have the draw of 'most popular' server by numbers like it used to, so we have far less developers interested in it than we used to.

[fowlplay4]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

stuff

You've got a 'Dev Manager' who can't finish a damn Newbie Course, fix that.

[LordSquirt]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

=
Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items.

UN's focus has never been rings or rare items. Most players find the NPCs annoying and lame

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by LordSquirt

UN's focus has never been rings or rare items. Most players find the NPCs annoying and lame

That's highly inaccurate. I have played UN fairly consistently for over 6 years, and I can assure you Manta's Rare Items and projects were the focus for a good half of that time at least.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

60% of players focused on sparring? I seriously doubt that. I doubt that even 30% of players were focused on that.

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

To Hiro, I was always very interested and supportive of CW, as Mystic says I asked him about it pretty regularly. The real issue was the Development Manager did not focus on CW at all. Mystic had to find his own scripters, with the exception of Ben Rain, who approached me about it before he became PWA. This lack of support from his higher admins on the Dev side probably led to a good portion of Mystic's lack of enthusiasm. When I spoke to Luca about it, I was told the scripting would be replaced with another project's framework (the same type of thing I was talking about above), but that never came to fruition either.

Anyhow, Unholy Nation's focus was never on 'Events' or 'Sparring', the only focus the server has ever had was to create things players want, whether it be things such as the rings, or things such as the Rare Items. The real issue is both that either players no long want these items, or cannot get them because of the old playerbase no longer playing and trading actively. From what I recall, trading was more the focus than anything else if we tried to pinpoint something accurately. With the economy in the poor shape that it is in, related to ep duplication largely, players dont want to buy things for the inflated prices. EP and item trading were probably the worst ideas to hit UN, because you no longer had to play events to win event items. That being said, most people loved the item trading and auction houses, so it's a double edged sword.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

[Mark Sir Link]

Originally Posted by Hiro

you didn't play UN back then - how would you know?

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.

you were never a part of the sparring community, much less the sparring community within UN, so you have no idea how much influence the sparring had (or has) on UN. you just don't realize how potent the sparring community is, and your focus on events, useless "rare" manta NPCs, and whatever else only diminish the only other active "event" taking place on UN that has a good portion of player's attention. if you add more systems that allow players to swing swords at one another in a ranked atmosphere (like sparring, or teaming up in CW) then more players will start to appreciate what a classic server is all about, and participate in these events

if UN had more focus on global guilds specifically, you could have an abundant source of competition and incentive that can lead to economic stability

Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

I wouldn't know for fact but I would assume it's a very safe bet (like 100% safe) to say that only a fraction of players can compete in highly competitive sparring. I can't imagine competitive sparring being the prime focus of 20% of the players.


Your first two sentences don't even make sense, he was never part of the sparring community despite it being highly influential/"potent"?

Clearly it couldn't have been that influential if he had nothing to do with it.


I am not sure why you are pandering your personal opinions as if they were somehow facts. Just because you liked to do something doesn't mean a majority of players did.

Originally Posted by MysticX2X

I wouldn't say 60 percent of the population focused on sparring, although 25-30 percent probably is a good estimate.

UN, in my opinion, has been a server where you can do whatever, and interact with whoever. (We have guns and cars people...) It was never really only sparring-focused, and I wouldn't suspect that to be LiquidIces intent either. I enjoyed collecting the rare items, back when they were actually rare. I also enjoyed the events when more people played instead of teaming with 10 other friends. These among many other things.

Hiro is right in the regards that UN really needs to focus on improving the competitive elements of the server that it used to have. Sadly, that is not the current development focus.

stop thinking about the current staff - back then, Absolut_Crono was not staff, and did not even play or if he did he never sparred. but, a large majority of the staff of UN did (like 50%) and my percentage of sparrers on UN includes those players who used to be able to hop from server to server sparring in different tournaments - aside from perhaps delteria, UN was always the center of where sparring happened. clearly just because our current manager doesn't seem to enjoy or appreciate what sparring does on UN (and you can say that for the past 5 managers now) it's influence on the players and past players who have quit seeing the dwindling state of what servers offer for sparrers, is quite real

and besides, i'm talking very generally when i say UN needs more competitive focus - i said we need to be able to swing swords at one another, because that's what a classic server is pretty much all about. sparring has just always been the best form of this competition

i mean seriously, what the hell else are you going to update that exemplifies the classic server style? something is going wrong when the focus of a classic server moves away from the sword

[ff7chocoboknight]

Make UN appeal to me. A whole server focused on events and sparring is all fine, but what I can't stand is the unorganized mess of a server it is.

I hate UN. I hate Enigma. I hate Bravo. I hate N-Pulse. I hate Delteria. I hate Zodiac. Why? Everything is cramped into the smallest spaces possible. Fix it.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by ff7chocoboknight

Make UN appeal to me. A whole server focused on events and sparring is all fine, but what I can't stand is the unorganized mess of a server it is.

I hate UN. I hate Enigma. I hate Bravo. I hate N-Pulse. I hate Delteria. I hate Zodiac. Why? Everything is cramped into the smallest spaces possible. Fix it.

That would be a much larger project than just me saying "ok, will do". Fixing the server completely would probably take longer than creating a whole new server from scratch, because there is little-to-no uniformity in a lot of the old systems. Not to say it isnt something we want to work on, just that it's not something that would happen quickly.

[Absolut_Crono]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

That would be a much larger project than just me saying "ok, will do". Fixing the server completely would probably take longer than creating a whole new server from scratch, because there is little-to-no uniformity in a lot of the old systems. Not to say it isnt something we want to work on, just that it's not something that would happen quickly.

Where in that do you see me making an excuse Kia? I said it is something to work on, but it wont happen overnight. In fact, it will take a substantial amount of time. Most of UN's base scripts are either in GS1 or patched GS1 for functionality purposes. We would have to redo the entire server to make it efficient, otherwise it wouldnt be worth working on at all. It'll just break when V7 comes out.

No, that's not a typo. V7, as in the next upgrade after this one.

[xXziroXx]

Originally Posted by Absolut_Crono

It'll just break when V7 comes out.

No, that's not a typo. V7, as in the next upgrade after this one.

You made two errors with that post. One, no client in itself has ever broken a lot of scripts -- GS2 in itself did however, but GS2 is far superior than it's successor anyways so who cares.

Second of all, v7 is not the next client no, as v6 isn't even out yet. We're currently in v5 and v5.3.


I'd also like to point out that PWA has done an extremely ****ty job with something they said after the release of GS2; that all Classic servers were to fully convert to GS2 within x amount of time or be taken off the list. It's been 5 years now, wtf.