Gold Accounts (Making Them Worth-While)

Venom_Fish · #1 11-02-2011, 01:55 AM

Hello, all.
I'll get straight to the point.
There should be a new perk added to having a gold subscription.
Currently, there's little other purpose than working/owning a developer server or the usual upgrade to play Classic Playerworlds.

In light of this, a very lucrative addition would be to allow Gold Subscriptions to log on iPhone/Facebook, similar to how VIP's on facebook can log on Era iPhone.

In summation, by interlinking the servers through Gold/VIP subscriptions, you really grant people a reason to upgrade their accounts (even classic).
To be quite frank, very few people are interested in Kingdoms/Zone anymore (the numbers are clear). Therefore, this would really be an adequate and appropriate replacement.

ffcmike · #2 11-02-2011, 07:35 AM

This may seem like a simple and obvious way for Graal to make money, and I'm sure there probably would be some interest in this among PC users, but you also have to consider that this would put a much larger number of players who use an iDevice at a disadvantage. The main reason it is such an attractive proposition to PC users is simply the sheer playercount, which could be damaged if the majority of users begin to suffer a worse experience.

Not only this, but in merging the two communities there's a risk the older community could open up the eyes of the younger community towards the lower standards they have been buying into. I imagine that if attitudes were to be influenced in such a way it could actually cost more money in the long haul than it would create at first.

I do agree however that Gold subscription is becoming redundant, I imagine that Gold or Classic subscription may be phased out or watered down should micro-transactions kick in on a larger scale.

jkldogg · #3 11-02-2011, 09:36 AM

ffcmike is a genius.

TSAdmin · #4 11-02-2011, 09:43 AM

The part I glued myself to is where Thor said "Gold Subscription is becoming redundant" because if I remember correctly, we were supposed to be removing Gold Subscription entirely once Stefan worked on and fleshed out a similar system of "Global Gelat Shop" to that of the iDevice shop. The question I'd be asking, rather than suggesting additional perks for Gold Subscription, is: "Is that still happening or not?"

Venom_Fish · #5 11-08-2011, 04:23 PM

@ffcmike
A very valid argument that I also juggled around in my head.
However, that bridge seems to have been partially crossed by allowing Classic Facebook players to log on iPhone.

To be quite frank, a lot of the players that seek such a privilege are PC players who only do it for the sheer playercount.

I mean, since the release of facebook and that option, Unholy Nation has lost a lot of its playerbase to not facebook, but Classic iPhone.
In reference, the effects you described, which only seem logical, have yet to become prevalent.

Therefore, I'd have to ask, will they, with certainty, be the case?

Or will it be coherent with the co-existence of facebook/iphone players and unproblematic (for the most part)?

@TSAdmin:
Yeah, "Free To Play", was the whole announcement, as I recalled.

ffcmike · #6 11-08-2011, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venom_Fish

@ffcmike
I mean, since the release of facebook and that option, Unholy Nation has lost a lot of its playerbase to not facebook, but Classic iPhone.
In reference, the effects you described, which only seem logical, have yet to become prevalent.

Therefore, I'd have to ask, will they, with certainty, be the case?

Or will it be coherent with the co-existence of facebook/iphone players and unproblematic (for the most part)?

Admittedly it's entirely speculation on my part rather than through definitive evidence, but I'd imagine a lot of the players crossing that bridge from UN are more the competitive type, as opposed to the casual type.
Should the older community therefore have an influence on the attitudes of the younger community, that could potentially shift some of the focus off of item collecting and flaunting, and onto more conventional gameplay such as sparring and guild forts.
Whether this would have any effect on income would really depend on how much income is generated through in-game sales compared to purchasing of VIP or cross-platform accessibility, that is assuming there is no movement to harness the more competitive desires in such ways as developing events.

Something else I should have mentioned though, is that Graal's management must surely realise they need to keep PC Graal open for the sake of being the development platform to their mainstream servers.
So on one hand, they wouldn't want to do something that hinders PC Graal too much, or else that could have consequences on potential development of new resources.
But on the other hand, I don't think they'll want PC Graal to be too successful either, as this could shift traffic towards a more chaotic player-ran environment as opposed to their controlled environments.

fowlplay4 · #7 11-08-2011, 09:45 PM

Facebook/PC Access to iPhone servers has killed their community or at least hyper-aged it and further exposes them to hacking and the ****heads that are banned in the PC communities.

Crono · #8 11-08-2011, 10:38 PM

yup. facebook version itself is pointless, we already have a pc game why do we need facebook aswell? have our normal client share the same server as the facebook one and get rid of "VIP". as a pc player who used to play iphone it's dumb to let us play there on pc.

MattKan · #9 11-09-2011, 01:16 AM

I agree, Facebook seemed like a cool idea at the time, but it was a tremendous waste of time.

I kinda doubt that Facebook has brought ANY new players to Graal.

Draenin · #10 11-09-2011, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crono

yup. facebook version itself is pointless, we already have a pc game why do we need facebook aswell? have our normal client share the same server as the facebook one and get rid of "VIP". as a pc player who used to play iphone it's dumb to let us play there on pc.

VIP stuff was phased out some time ago. I mean, some servers still have (VIP) guild-related stuff, but it isn't as integral as it used to be.

fowlplay4 · #11 11-09-2011, 02:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draenin

VIP stuff was phased out some time ago. I mean, some servers still have (VIP) guild-related stuff, but it isn't as integral as it used to be.

Wrong VIP, and I haven't seen any server do anything special for the global VIP guild at all.

Stefan/unixmad brought back iOS/Facebook VIP so you can travel back and forth between the two servers.

This allows players on Facebook to go to the iPhone world which kinda makes all the "unique" changes on the Facebook world pointless because not enough people are sticking around because they would rather be on the server with a 1000 people instead of 50 (makes perfect sense for a social game).

VIP should of let iOS clients go to the Facebook world but instead it allowed two way travel that is unfortunately at the expense of the community and more damaging (i.e: many act like entitled ****s and it's a much more negative atmosphere now) in the long run.