While the potential benefits of a new client are clear, this raises more questions than answers and in the absence of detailed information does little to provide re-assurances over the future of current Graal on this platform.
In the mean time, what is going to be done to reverse the current downward spiral?
- Global playercount is slowly but surely dropping
The summer holidays have for the first time as far as I'm aware not produced an increase in playercount, even Zodiac (which has been a beacon of stability for several years) currently finds itself in a slump.
- There is no longer a listed traditional sword server
Although many could argue that the removal of Unholy Nation was on the cards, this would not have happened had it not been for the combined failure in Graal's security capabilities and the compromise of a global staff member, it was essentially scapegoated. Meanwhile control of a poor-mans Unholy Nation in the form of Npulse has been given to a team of developers with no history on the server, whereas CloudStrife was refused access to Graal2001 (which he does have history on) and provided with an excuse of "I'm not in to reviving servers".
An offer to construct a spar only server has fallen on deaf ears.
The agreement to port Graal the Adventure to Facebook/Web has not been honored. In previous years there were echos of Facebook/Web accessibility becoming the way forward for PC servers, one such official announcement being
here, but this has not come to fruition.
I also offered to have GtA listed temporarily for the summer, but Carlito put it bluntly that he would not co-operate with me because of his personal differences (had he have been more transparent on the previous point instead of keeping me in the dark all that time, perhaps I'd have been less critical towards him).
- The Graal website is out-dated both in terms of its development and content
With it previously being acknowledged that the Graal website could do with a shake-up, for all I know maybe an individual/team has already been assembled to deal with this. But being a professional full-stack web developer I had hoped my offers to redevelop it free of charge would at least be returned with a "no thank you" or "non merci".
Even without renovating the website there are some relatively simple changes that could be beneficial:
- Add a client download button in plain sight which detects which OS you are using
- Replace (vastly out-dated) news archives with Facebook feeds. Can be done through official JS widgets if bespoke is not desired
- Remove references to Pay to Play & Trial Mode. Whether it's intended for players to still have to upgrade to Gold in order to obtain a Community Name I do not know, but this should be reflected on the Subscription Centre, though that seems unfair given that people in-the-know can seemingly request an account name from a global
- Add link to the new Support Centre
- Remove Graal Zone's inner pages and link the Zone section of the home page to its web app instead
- The link to this forum only works if the user is logged in and has Gold subscription. Would it not be desirable to allow the forums to be found purely for reading purposes? Even then these forums do not actually require Gold, but just a Community Name
- Although this could be classed as an addition, the Graal website does not provide any information on server renting or how to "create your own world", or what exactly dispensing with the €49/€79 fee provides you with. Maybe more people would be willing to rent a server if they were provided with some enticement? Otherwise it's pretty much relying on just word of mouth. I would suggest the addition of both a shorter and longer dev subscription period as well.
- Small things which can be fixed by editing login server scripts
- Client RC doesn't list new body colours
- Make PlayerList Show On First Login
- Mass Message Option Stuck
- In-game GUIs still reflect the old subscription policy. For example the trial bar is still visible (though some servers hide it via script)
(there are probably others, these are just things I've posted)
07-26-2016, 02:57 PM
Hybrid Mode
