Lifetime Classic

[WanDaMan]

Finish the guild system please. I'm getting very impatient about that x-x

[excaliber7388]

The classic accounts should stay, but there should be a lot of extras and reasons to upgrade. The biggest reason I keep upgrading is I like having my own server, and I need VIP for it.

[Elk]

im just upgrading to pm people on other servers

[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.

[pacMASTA]

Originally Posted by Googi

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.

Very well put -^

But on another note Unixmad -v

Also Unixmad talking about 'new versions' 'new fees' the only games that do that actually add NEW content; WoW Burning Crusades: New Races, New Transport, New Worlds to explore, Battefield2142 Although its based on the Battlefield2 engine its totally a different game, New Transport, New Weapons, New Characters, New levels. Among lots of other games doing this theirs actually so many it will take too long to list them all but im sure everyone gets the picture except you Unixmad, you have no means of justifying more money for barely anything new. Although if you take the time to listen to your players yeah i know woah your customers actually have something to say?! Amazing discovery I'm sure you will notice they too think this is a bad idea.

And to touchbase on the new content. An expanded Z plane is an AMAZING UPDATE worth $25->$40 and charging players for this 'new content' will lead to disaster because players will get agrovated till they leave because now your gimping the content so even though for me as an example i've upgraded pacMASTA 5-6times but now you unroll this 'new content' for $40 which now i cant access inless i want to give another $25 I'm not gona go I MUST GIVE MORE MONEY FOR LITTLE CHANGE; Im gona say 'F' this Im going to go play something else.

Also I'll touch this Graal3D mater I think we may as well drop it; 2 Failed attempts going on 3 now I think the Graal3D project can be classified as a fiasco and we shall never mention it and can work on player support and the content players are actually playing; or even a means to update and manipulate this content their is no Dev support for Mac OS X or Linux really; And even the Windows tools are quite dated if you want to be a PROFESIONAL business you can't rely on your players to make the tools for you. This is your job you say you want to be treated like a profesional business but you sure as hell don't act like one. All games you can actually edit BF2, FEAR, Unreal, ETC. Give you a source developers kit and in most of the cases its compatible with all OS's when with Graal theirs only antcient tools for Windows and nothing else.

What about Ragnarok online and such, also theirs another game thats quite a bit like Graal Online but i forgot its name thats 100% free; and even with ragnarok online they dont charge for you for patchs and yes ragnarok is ALOT like Graal; Its basically 2d sprites, 3d effects, with the capability of a 3d enviorment it basically describes graal. But graal 'boasts' the means that its EASY to EDIT when in reality is extremely hard if you dont use windows and even then your tools suck.

In reality Graal Online Adminstration is just puting more and more on the table they can't even deliver and when it is finally acomplished they just add a pricetag to something that really should be free because of chages so extremely minor.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[Spark910]

Originally Posted by konidias

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)

Problem is you aren't going to really get TEAMS. And in Graals current state SERVERS is setting the pole ten times too high.

I agree new servers need to be made. But just do one and then another. One a year, as an official big project, is more than enough. Help needs to be given to projects that are good in the UC section (pick one up like with Zone).

I would stop worrying about Graal3D and put more focus into making more high quality and active Gold servers.

I agree, and have said it many times. Graal 3D does not make sense. It's a waste of resources. What comes out will not be anywhere near worth or proportionate to the resources put in to make it.

There is also a free trial built into Graal already, but it hasn't been used yet.