Is Graal really going to be free to play? Well...
 

We have all seen many posts from Stefan and Unixmad saying that they will make the servers free to play as they add gelat shops, and that is what they mean by "Graal is becoming free to play". Zodiac and Era have each implemented a gelat shop; Zodiac sells character slots and exp boosting potions, and Era sells potions that boost maximum hp, speed, and working.

First of all, the only thing that has been done to the servers to make them free to play is the removing of observer mode. Players still cannot choose their heads other than from the first 10. This greatly kills the fun of customization, maybe Stefan could add the right to sell a "customization pack" on their server for some gelats like on the iPhone servers.

Also, on Zodiac trials can not play events, and on Era trial accounts can be disabled with the ET saying something like ":notrials". Is this really a removed subscription system? Clearly there is still a large difference between being a trial and being Gold. Also, on Gold players on Zodiac gain 50%more EXP than trials and classic players. (correct me if I'm wrong about the classic players part)

As someone who actually pays for gold,I feel I would be more likely to buy items from Gelat shops if I knew that gelats were not necessary for gold subscriptions.

Lastly, trials cannot develop. There are many new players that could become great developers for Graal and deliver exciting new content in the future; however they cannot develop if they do not pay for gold.

In conclusion, it seems that Unixmad is only trying to trick us into earning him more money by convincing playerworld owners to add gelat shops. As posted by some of the Playerworld owners, their shops have generated a decent amount of revenue. is the removal of observer mode really stopping players from subscribing to Graal? The answer is no; if anything it is just enough to stop them from quitting and making them want to purchase gold. I hope that Graal will actually become free, and that the whole subscription system will be removed.

If you owned Graal- would you not do the same? He's learned from his mistake(s) if you ask me.

He's aware that not everyone would keep upgrading to play Zone / GK & to develop, so why continue? Having a one off payment system didn't work out as well as he thought it would. Which if you ask me was a good idea, so I thought...

He's noticed from iPhone's and such, that players are more willing to pay for in-game stuff rather than to play the game. Think about it, would you play to go on Facebook or the games on Facebook? He's got his target audience, in which Graal is expected to be getting alot of new players via Facebook.

I believe everything you have mentioned is going to go away. I'm pretty sure gold accounts won't even exist anymore when everything is overhauled.

Whatever is going to happen, I'm going to be scared for my life when I go onto Facebook from now on.

What happens when Facebook dies out just like Myspace? :P

People are too stupid to leave it, for most it's an addiction.
Myspace was just ugly.

Well, actually they can play events on Zodiac and classic players receive the same amount of EXP as gold players.

I agree with your point about head customization, it should be a lifetime "given" upon purchasing a month of gold. Hopefully they get rid of it and just lets PC players use whatever they want.

Shame they want to depend on Graal as a primary source of income, or going back to the whole "pay once and then never have to pay again" formula would be a rad suggestion.

PC should be free play period, we should be making enough off iphone if it was that great as people say.

It's not cheap to have 100+ gaming servers online - I don't agree that it should be free.

The problem with that logic is that there are plenty of higher quality games that are free with nothing more than a cash shop, or games that only require a single payment for unlimited access.

"Oh but wait, graal is a development platform"

okay but when was the last UC server to actually become something important? Let people host their own servers (for free). No reason Eurocenter should make money off people who are wasting their own money to have Eurocenter pay to host a server that won't matter in a couple months.

Yes, a game with 10,000 + active members who log on to the game each day would be able to achieve a profit from the shops but because Graal hasn't got an active community on the PC it's not going to bring in any substantial amount of money to provide for maintenance . You can purchase cards on PC to enhance the game play but I highly doubt these are going to make a significant impact comparing what's coming in to the business and what's going out.

Graal is a great development platform in my opinion; I personally don't play or enjoy any of the servers currently online. I pay my subscription because I like to develop and I get enough satisfaction from my contribution which keeps me paying the monthly fee.

I am going to suggest we start giving UC player worlds the opportunity to have their servers on the player list for a fee each month providing they follow the rules and don’t abuse their power when it's on the list. This would increase motivation for more players to invest in Graal PC and start developing their own servers.

Catch 22 right here.
Graal doesn't have a substantial playerbase on the pc because the current subscriptions suckkkkkkkk.

And unless they change gelat purchases it might still suck when it goes free.
$40 for however many gelats is still not a microtransaction.

I don't mind paying £3 every month to enjoy playing as I figure it's costing me just 10p per day although it depends on how many Gralats I have, I have some left over each time I upgrade so at most in one month I'll be paying £6

I smoke, a pack of 10 cigarettes is costing more than that now and they won't last me 2 days lol

Start free -> acquire medium sized loyal fanbase, and become a minor household name -> have active administration release quality updates -> have active administration who work with development staff to create unnecessary but fun/nice to have content for cash shops -> have active administration release large scale updates like quality VIP servers that they work on regularly/work closely with their paid development team

Graal formula: Start free -> okay now you have to pay, but only once, okay -> jk pay for everything -> what do you mean we don't have any players on the pc?

You don't actually pay £3 a month though.
You pay £24 all at once.

The idea of micropayments isn't to make people who are already happy to pay money just pay less money more often.
It's to get people who wouldn't normally spend the money to say "Oh well it isn't very much, it's just a couple of bucks" and pay without thinking.

If a hobo asks you for £1 each day and you give it to him it's no big deal.
But then one day if he says to you "hey man why don't you just give me £365 now and I won't ask you again for a year" you're going to tell him to **** off.

Point is they're not the same thing and that will be what ends up ****ing this free-to-play thing up, imo.

We pay for almost all of them to be there...

That's the benefit to me of the micro payments as it's opitional to re-subscribe. I'm not going to pay an annual fee as in three months I may not be interested so I opt to pay on a roll-on contract.

Take advantage and log on to the under construction servers.

lolol you all should get a job if you can't afford it

Andrew yet again stuns us with his philosophical insight.

damm rite

Huh? I don't get your point whatsoever, but most of the UC servers have been paid for too.

This:

Isn't that what the Hosted tab pretty much is... and you don't even have to pay extra for it either.

I think he means not hosted tbh- it would bring more players interested to buy it i suppose but i don't like it

Not exactly, no; in order to get on the hosted tab you'd have to fit specific criteria. My suggestion is to have it so UC servers can pay to be put on the server list so they can then fully focus on developing the server as it is already online eventhough it's not completed.

Yeah, we buy to have access to these servers - I'm suggesting you check them out sometime; eventhough they haven't got much material it's still interesting to watch servers being developed. Check out Europa - it's got a lot of potential :cool:!!

You only have to have an hour or so of game-play to get on Hosted to begin with.

They should have to work to get on that list, not just pay their way on to it.

If UC servers aren't getting enough interest from players then it gives them hope if they can purchase to be online as they would get players involved upon it's release because if they didn't they would just leave it after paying the fee to get a server.

It'll boost the development on graal and introduce new servers as players would be able to learn skills.

The reason UC servers barely get any interest is because they barely produce anything of interest.

Allowing 'developers' to skip the 'working on the server' part to get on the list is just a giant cash grab in my eyes.

Yeah it is going to boost sales - but it would also bring new material to servers, introduce players to developing, get PWA involved more within the community to name a few.

I like the idea as it would bring competition to Graal amongst servers.

Boosting sales does not mean it's going to make the development state of Graal any better nor do I feel that the Graal community should have to worry-about/suggest changes that would make Graal more profitable (we shouldn't need to run their business for them) and what not.

It would bring about as much competition as the recent Maloria did to Zodiac. none at all.

At the cost of quality content. The people willing to pay for servers aren't always the most capable of managers, and the more capable ones will likely want to keep the private UC phase until they have a polished server - in which case, it would probably make it to the list regardless

This isn't necessarily a good thing. Graal depending purely on playermade content is part of the reason why it's slipping. Couple that with your suggestion: making people pay to give players more reason to pay for Graal, and that's going to deter some developers more than Graal already does.

In fact, I contend that Graal has too many playerworlds as it is. With so many servers spreading out the already small talent pool, none of them really see any progress in improving.

PWA obviously don't care about quality control (or else can't handle it), and the few times they step in currently have usually been rushed and considered bad decisions by all involved. They either need more stricter rules for themselves or to get more hands on with the current servers.

You got scared for one minu..second, ADMIT IT!

Yes, but it also means a server with one talented scripter could create something never seen before on graal - his downfall is that he can't motivate anyone to work for him on graphics / levels so he has no chance in having an opportunity to go on the server list because of this set back.

" Quality Content " - I haven't been around UN for about three years (properly), I highly doubt anything has changed or been heavily modified in this time. Actually, the last time I had a walk around they were developing some docks I'm now wondering if it's been finished... EDIT - Yes it has, looks good too!

I concur - which is why PWA would have to be more involved.

Developers will develop regardless whether or not the server got released because of its content or if they decided to pay to get online. They have no opportunity to improve when players don't log on them servers so my theory is that given the amount of interest at release will encourage players to have their own server and new developers will emerge because of this.

I was saying if graal was free to play it would be ok, being if graal still charged for servers, since you posted "do you know how much it costs to have 100+ servers online". I was simply saying we mostly pay for most of them, im not saying that is a problem.

I've been on plenty of UC servers btw, and ran my own before more than 4 times so far...

I would agree that UC should be in some kind of list on the serverlist. Maybe not in plain sight, but somewhere so people who are interested can get on them. If the rules are broken then the rules are broken and those people who broke them should be subject to the punishment just like on any other server at all.

Anyways, basically what I'm saying is, I think I half ass agree with you at the least, its just Graal should be free to play regardless, with iphone, soon facebook and andriod revenue, along with people purchasing playerworlds. If that were to happen, people from those other platforms would, at least logistically, move to pc graal as well. IF that were to happen, you could even keep gold subscriptions, but only for kingdoms and zone and it would grow. Kinda would be easier if servers were merged too...

If that were the case, why is this so true:
Servers are lacking in good development as it is, and these are servers already pushed far enough down the road to have a suitable springboard for developers to both learn to improve their own skills and contribute to improving Graal. Allowing more servers on the list isn't going to suddenly inject developers with the morale to pump out something new and amazing. It'll just put more money in Eurocenter's pocket, and people will continuing playing Era and Zodiac.

UN has already got so much content, these UC servers have nothing. The servers online at the moment are pretty much stagnant and unfortunately it's not giving anyone opportunitys to develop or introduce new blood as the managers have no ambition to progress any further and have became complacent with the content they have at the moment. These new servers would inspire players to jump on board and help when they start seeing content from other servers on a regular basis.

They don't have to be on the playerlist for that. Just because they don't show up on the list of playable worlds (for good reason, they're not playable!) doesn't mean they're completely unknown. People who can develop will see hiring threads on these forums without low tier UC servers cluttering the playerworld list. People will get inspired to work on playerworlds so they'll eventually be able to get hired on UN and the like, as they do now - even if it is ultimately a waste of time on their part.

And not everyone on Graal is a developer, or even interested in developing. Multiple servers that are nothing but money farms for Eurocenter and places to draw new players into getting hired aren't going to be very good for the majority of the players, who will most likely want to stay on the already established servers that they've spent a lot of time on (playing; not developing). Which is why the PWA should be more dedicated to the servers we have now, and Graal as a whole should focus on them, rather trying to be something it's not (a dev. platform and not a game).

If anything (just spitballing here), heavily UC servers should be hosted on the owner's computer, that way Eurocenter can't ever pull the "gosh, it's so expensive to host everything!" card. The tools to actually host a UC server on the owner's own machine and allow Graal accounts to connect to it, those should cost money (gelats?). If the server's good enough and draws enough attention post-development, Eurocenter should be "purchasing" it from the owner (whether that's with gelats, money, or some other stipulation) to host themselves, or if the owners want to get it attention themselves, they should be purchasing a hosted playerworld slot. IF the former option was taken, then put the PWA on watch to make sure the server keeps doing what it did and changing management if need be.

ITT: Overcomplicating things.