Graals Population
 

I played Graal back in its hay-day and it was free. Then it got a big boost with Graal2001 which was a fantastic server and I still think it is better then any server out today. I can't compare to Era or the ones that aren't like Graal at all. Even though Graal2001 was P2P it still had tons of players and content updated everyday. I might be wrong but I think it was cheaper to play it then the cost is now. If the price was lowered a little I think there would be more people playing. I mean I had an account I paid for and I spent 1000+ hours on Graal2001. Stefan spent his time on it and it was fun. Now we have Kingdoms with 20 players on it. The Zone or whatever the other one is with little players on it. With a mix of Stefan doing a new Graal playerworld like Graal2001 was and lower the price of Gold, I think more players will start to play.

What do you guys think?

Disagree

Graal2001 isn't a fantastic server
It worked back then, but not now

I don't mean bring it back. I mean Stefan make a new one. Updated and actually spend time on making it a main server.

I guess the budget doesn't allow such time investment

What exactly are they working on to spend their time?

"They", so you call Stefan, are working on other projects than Graal to keep graal actually alive

Perhaps if "they" focused more of their attention on Graal it would be able to sustain itself.

There's nothing stopping developers from creating these new servers. I don't see why "they" have to participate in something we should be able to do our self especially since "they" would end up making it a gold server.

But I do wish we could get an updated client every once in a while.

Probably because it's a game, and they're the ones that own and should be developing it.

You don't understand why developers of a game should be involved? You would rather people spend their own time and money on something to make the game more money? That is fine. That is one of Graals drawing points. But if Stefan is spending time on another thing he should spend more on Graal.

Iam saying this for ages.
Graal is no game worth playing anymore..

And hey, they try to present it as the great sdk atm - yet providing terribly outdated development tools?

Open source graal without the torque code and invest your time in iPhone games, as graal is making no profit anyways? So it should be no problem at all :)

Apparently the only servers that get attention development-wise by Stefan are his Gold tabbed ones, since they get him money and all. Then again, i can't blame him much. >.>

It seems like when Stefan creates a server it dies eventually. He makes the best servers but something is missing. I dont know what. But Graal Kingdoms used to have 200 players or so, now look at it, its sits at like 25 players. what happened? I agree an awesome new, old style server would be great. but how many people would play it, and the real question is for how long.

Like the servers on the Gold tab, Graal appears to be suffering as well from the lack of quality updates. So I guess you guys are right, Graal needs some TLC.

His servers seem to sustain themselves as long as he sticks around and actively develops them(and develops Graal around them).

Exactly, its like when he leaves so does everyone else. He brings people to servers.

its like he has teh honiez. and we is teh honeybears. U KNO WAT I MEEN?

English mother ****** do you speak it?

Seriously though. He is the best at what he does and that's being creative with scripts and stuff. He can get the best people to work on the servers. Stefan Graal needs you.

Get Stefan's attention by developing something so unique and ****ing fantastic; Zone had no support from Stefan untill he realized it's potential. Work together as a team, everyone posted in this thread has their own individual attributes to help contribute towards a server so stop complaining about no support because if I'm being honest you don't need Stefan to develop a decent server.

As I've said before, as long as CJ views Graal as a development platform it's not going to move forward and hasn't ever since this ****ty attitude was put to place.

no wei bro>>! U act leik he frekin made this game or somthin... Owait


/what did you do with the real spanky\

I don't so much want him to help other servers. I want Stefan to do a new server.



The "english... do you speak it" is from Pulp Fiction.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY MOVIES, DEEP BLUE SEA, I GOT EATEN BY A MOTHER****IN SHARK [chappell show]

;) <3 i'm slow to catch movie quotes but i got ya now :>

I am in agreement that although Graal2001 was a fantastic server, and it was a benchmark for a very successful period of time for Graal (gameplay and money-wise for cyberjoueurs)--it was not necessarily the quality of the server that was responsible, but the entire direction for Graal as a whole moving towards something that seemed truly powerful and extremely worthwhile for my playing time on Graal2001.

What I mean is-- when Graal2001 came around, everyone was positive that Graal was worth playing and the entire standard of all servers was raised a bit as a result. Graal2001 hyped all of Graal up. I feel like Graal2002 only rode that hype and was never the game it was meant to live up to be.

So, if you want to make Graal happy again, all you have to do is make another happy server such as Graal2001. Graal2001 simply had many traits of a direction of Graal's greatest pontential being unlocked by increments. Constantly raising the standards.

That's why whenever it has been re-released in the past it was always greeted with a TON of players. What happened? If 300 players want to play for a week, and 100 for a month, then why do they stop after that?

I think you may be right that a figurehead of development such as Stefan is just missing and the server hemorrhages players as a result. The server's battery is a stream of updates. If you have a successful enough server, staff will be much more motivated.

Why do you think they call it a "patch"? Online game developers realized that they had to patch up the wounds of their game a loooong time ago.

^ That's what I was trying to say. ^

No doubt, now if we could just all get along too we'd be set. :)

I just don't think that works out as well as Stefan starting from scratch. Not to mention Stefan hardly has interest in Graal, yet alone any servers someone may start.

Well.. Stefan could scrap G3d... hopefully he already has. And Try to get people to help him build a new server. It would be great. It would have to be much bigger than 2002 though.

A lot of older players would come back and play. How many people come back to Graal Kingdoms and Say... well same old same old. It would be cool to come back one day, or hear from an old graal friend talking about a new server. I know I would play a good bit more. As long as it has a more concrete lvling and Fighting system. add more room for quests, and such. It might take a long while... but if you find the right people who are interested... it may work out.

try investing some of the money that comes in off of graal in itself, on a new server. And if it takes off you can keep the staff happy. And the bugs will be fixed, and will be updated regularly. It is not gonna make more money unless you make updates to gameplay.

This server shouldn't be a boring shooter. it should be more like graal. That is what graal is about. If you want to go Hack and slash, you can... or if you want to go RP with friends you can. The more concret lvling and fighting system would make it more interesting. Different races, classes, and stuff like that.

open up the applications... and see what Graal as a community is capable of. I know there are very talented people out there in it. People don't like GK anymore (I do for the community)... Make a new server everybody can enjoy.

That would be ideal, and I've gotten such teams together to create something, though the lack of devoted scripters usually ended up killing the idea when nothing but the most simple scripts were made.

Stefan should lead this team. He is the one who knows what's needed mostly... We need a 2010 to replace 2002... like 2002 did for 2001 lol

I like most of those ideas for the most part. I also think it'd be superb if the globals could help develope playerworlds with 'potential'. And by potential i mean mostly Classic servers working on a large/new release project such as Delteria, and Hosted Servers. Of course this would never turn into a priority for them, but it'd sure be nice. They'd be surprised at what comes out of doing so.

Either drop the prices or free up the trial restrictions a bit.
Right now, the population is indeed down a slow but steady decline. Decreases in players are bad for the game on multiple fronts. Servers are less fun to play if they are barren, the higher your population, the more fun the server is to play, regardless of content. Also, by losing players, we lose potential developers down the way. Also, restricting things regarding rented servers. This only spreads the population AND the development population thinner and thinner. Not many of these servers reach a point of completion anyway, so it all ends up being wasted effort.

Main point, we're not gaining players and the low amount we have now don't make this game very fun to play regardless of content to the new players that try things out. We're also not doing ourselves a favor by being all spread out on UC servers that will realistically never be completed.

I see where Spanky is coming from here, a lot of us oldbies still love graal and really would love to help make it better but it feels that CJ has done everything in its power to make it fail.

Well I agree with you pretty much and yes you are an oldbie you been around for awhile :)
but also lets see right now people are buying player world and account upgrade pretty much i just see graal as Stefan's extra pocket change at the moment. i mean he needs to be more involve with graal to get more people to get more money. if he is working on something the seriously post in on the forums so we know about it. pretty much graal looses 1player per week. i see people all the time saying good bye my fellow graal people. i might return one day. which is true they do come back sometimes but they don't stay vary long. I think graal could be like it use to if stefan would work on a new PW like back in the day when graal was free not p2p oh wait n/m. Graal will never have as many players as it did when it was free. but anyways im done with this topic. and this is my input and im not putting down stefan in anyway. he is probly just taking a break from graal drama. :)

THIS!

it seems that every time CJ has tried to "improve" graal, they've only made it worse and less unique of a game and an engine. the only good thing CJ ever did since like, 03-04ish is implement GS2. nothing else done by CJ has improved graal at all, and the current state of graal is more than enough back up for this claim. i agree that if stefan started up a new (classic hopefully) server, developers would flock to him, CJ would be behind the project, and a truly awesome server could be produced - but it doesn't look like he's interested in doing any such thing. it would be nice if he responded to threads like this one so maybe we could convince him into it, maybe even shoot him ideas and have some constructive criticism of what he brings to the table - but, it just doesn't seem likely.

I wish stefan would read this post and get some gumption to make an awsome server. I would definately pay for graal then. the only person i see trying to make gk a better place is Tig. he is active and stuff... but he is only one person, and he will get burned out if he gets no help. Stefan needs to work on graal if he wants to make it a better place. I've played this game since the beginning, and there is no other game as addicting as graal for some reason.

when was the last client update

The Darkness Comes...

Well this is how it is, we pay to play this game, we pay to make this game, we pay to play the game that other people who payed to play payed for. "they" just reap the benefits, its a money making thing, this was actually a brilliant idea on "their" part because they get payed so people can develop, and for the players who play those developed servers.

Also, when a server is realesed, it gets around 80-150 players, look at Bomy Lands, last time. The day it came out there was almost 200 players. Babylon at one point had 250 players, but after that they slowly fade away back to the crappy servers. The problem with Graal is that the game never ends, there is no final level, there is no plot, there is nothing but kids-teenagers-adults making a game with no experience at all, so of course no one wants to play.

[OT]
Honestly, who the hell are you?

You speak like the worst kind of newbie, yet you have a forum post from 2001 in your signature. Is that some sort of cover?
[/OT]

Graal could be better, IF:

• Development tools were modernised.
  
  
  • The remote control is fine, but it should stick to what it was originally designed for, dealing with players without having to load up the game.
    
    
  • If I'm any sort of development staff, I should never need RC access, at all.
  
  
• FTP would return, or at least some *kind* of FTP, allowing backups to be made and versioning tools such as SVN to be put in place.
  
  
• Scripters had better means of creating and debugging scripts
  
  
  • Maybe with Eclipse. Edit a script, hit debug, Graal should come up and display the results of that. I am sure with Stefan's expert knowledge of Java he could create an Eclipse plugin that would make this possibile easily.