PC is dead. Will it ever....

[super_matt89]

Originally Posted by Elk

id be willing to develop for $$$

nn showcase/publicity

I just imagined an Elk kickstarter haha. I would contribute.

PC still has life in it in my opinion and still very much potential it is just hindered by the lack of support..
There are many eager people that come and go but I'm almost certain anyone of them would stop in again
if they heard that they could be taught GScript 2 or specific development skills. With the right support PC Graal
could be bigger than it ever was in the past, there are certain combinational aspects
I am sure you can all agree are not found in any other online game.

[Cubes]

Once PC graal bites the dust we should make a clone called grrrrilllll and we can start sparing in dresses with spatulas

[Urahara112]

Bring back UDP. It's essential for PVP. The connection is too crap without it.

[Spiker]

Originally Posted by super_matt89

I just imagined an Elk kickstarter haha. I would contribute.

PC still has life in it in my opinion and still very much potential it is just hindered by the lack of support..
There are many eager people that come and go but I'm almost certain anyone of them would stop in again
if they heard that they could be taught GScript 2 or specific development skills. With the right support PC Graal
could be bigger than it ever was in the past, there are certain combinational aspects
I am sure you can all agree are not found in any other online game.

This. This right here.

[bradigger]

The community is an important part of any MMO. I know my friends pretty much only played while I did, and I haven't been able to play for around a year due to the forced update to get on the login server combined with the seemingly abandoned GNU/Linux client. I check the downloads page as well as the forum pretty frequently in hopes of being able to play. I don't usually subscribe to the belief of "better late than never", but I would make a bit of an exception for Graal, considering it's one of my favorite games of all time.

The devs are clearly not getting done as much as they should. There's currently a public-facing download for a client that is essentially broken. Not only that, but it says right there that it was last updated in 2012, while the other two PC platforms have had more recent updates and can play just fine. If you dig into the forums you'll see myself and several others complaining with no signs of a solution. There are a lot of problems right now that could probably be solved in a week or two.

That major issue aside, the website is honestly quite bad. This isn't just nostalgia on my part, although I do think the older site looked better, the purple kid-friendly theme that was adopted is both uglier and harder to navigate. It's also been untouched for several years and still advertises subscriptions that I don't believe are still around. You should be able to easily access the forums or the downloads page with a single click, but instead you have to choose from playerworlds/zone/whatever before getting to downloads. It just shows you different crap and adds an unnecessary step. As for the forums, despite removing the restriction that required a gold membership to post on the forums, you still have to jump through a message telling you that you need gold but that if you really want to you can view the forums as a guest.

I'm glad Graal isn't dead for real, but it sure as heck looks dead from the outside. We need some new player relations people to let the community what's going on. We need a good web dev, new client devs, clarification on if anyone is even actually working on anything these days, and if this sounds impossible, perhaps it'd be best to just slap the game under the GPL and really give the players control. Let us submit some pull requests to fix these issues. It should be obvious by now that there are people on the forums who are capable of developing things for the game but are not able to because of the closed source nature and hush-hush administration who barely talks to us.

[Cubes]

when i look for games to play i always check forum activity. if the forum is dead chances are so is the game

[mattdapimp]

Originally Posted by Cubes

Once PC graal bites the dust we should make a clone called grrrrilllll and we can start sparing in dresses with spatulas

I'm down, this would be a 5 star game!

[Spiker]

Originally Posted by mattdapimp

I'm down, this would be a 5 star game!

11/10 would play for 15 years again

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by bradigger

The community is an important part of any MMO. I know my friends pretty much only played while I did, and I haven't been able to play for around a year due to the forced update to get on the login server combined with the seemingly abandoned GNU/Linux client. I check the downloads page as well as the forum pretty frequently in hopes of being able to play. I don't usually subscribe to the belief of "better late than never", but I would make a bit of an exception for Graal, considering it's one of my favorite games of all time.

The devs are clearly not getting done as much as they should. There's currently a public-facing download for a client that is essentially broken. Not only that, but it says right there that it was last updated in 2012, while the other two PC platforms have had more recent updates and can play just fine. If you dig into the forums you'll see myself and several others complaining with no signs of a solution. There are a lot of problems right now that could probably be solved in a week or two.

That major issue aside, the website is honestly quite bad. This isn't just nostalgia on my part, although I do think the older site looked better, the purple kid-friendly theme that was adopted is both uglier and harder to navigate. It's also been untouched for several years and still advertises subscriptions that I don't believe are still around. You should be able to easily access the forums or the downloads page with a single click, but instead you have to choose from playerworlds/zone/whatever before getting to downloads. It just shows you different crap and adds an unnecessary step. As for the forums, despite removing the restriction that required a gold membership to post on the forums, you still have to jump through a message telling you that you need gold but that if you really want to you can view the forums as a guest.

I'm glad Graal isn't dead for real, but it sure as heck looks dead from the outside. We need some new player relations people to let the community what's going on. We need a good web dev, new client devs, clarification on if anyone is even actually working on anything these days, and if this sounds impossible, perhaps it'd be best to just slap the game under the GPL and really give the players control. Let us submit some pull requests to fix these issues. It should be obvious by now that there are people on the forums who are capable of developing things for the game but are not able to because of the closed source nature and hush-hush administration who barely talks to us.

You make a lot of valid points. Yes the community is important to a MMO however there needs to be some emphasis on playability that extends beyond MMO for times which lower player counts will be reached. I proposed servers upped there quality to something more similar to Graal The Adventure. Which IMO should have been your showcase/flagship server for pc. I like how you focused on the "MMO" part and didn't add "RPG", because In my opinion the competition for an RPG based server is much greater then a Action Adventure server.

I don't use linux often but I am kinda a bit disappointed by the lack of the Linux client. Luckily and happily I use a mac as my main machine and a windows pc as my secondary. Times that I use linux I am usually on an ARM architect which wouldn't run traditional desktop applications. (such as the raspberry pi)

I also completely agree that a lot of dev work that should be getting done is not. And I am not just talking about other dev's, I myself also, not getting stuff done. I also completely agree that the new website is hard to navigate and the fact that you have to navigate to other pages to download is pretty embarrassing, but not as embracing as the subscription's that you mentioned that have no use now. But one thing I kinda disagree with is that the site is ugly. It's not ugly it just has a different taste that might not fit your's. I myself kinda like the look but the navigation and consistency is just terrible.

I also don't know if making the game open source is the way to go. They still use a lot of proprietary stuff in there mobile games that could be compromised. It just wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. However I do think they should have more dedicated staff/employee structure, as well as greater communications to the general public.

This is a game that we have all played over a decade, yet has anyone actually seen any advertisement? I heard about it from a friend (word of mouth). At the same time if someone tried advertising the current quality of the game my impressions would be tainted by the lack of quality so much so that I would hear about the game a year or 2 later and just not even click to see the updates or news.. I would just have this prejudice of a tainted quality towards the game.

[bradigger]

Originally Posted by scriptless

You make a lot of valid points. Yes the community is important to a MMO however there needs to be some emphasis on playability that extends beyond MMO for times which lower player counts will be reached. I proposed servers upped there quality to something more similar to Graal The Adventure. Which IMO should have been your showcase/flagship server for pc. I like how you focused on the "MMO" part and didn't add "RPG", because In my opinion the competition for an RPG based server is much greater then a Action Adventure server.

I don't use linux often but I am kinda a bit disappointed by the lack of the Linux client. Luckily and happily I use a mac as my main machine and a windows pc as my secondary. Times that I use linux I am usually on an ARM architect which wouldn't run traditional desktop applications. (such as the raspberry pi)

I also completely agree that a lot of dev work that should be getting done is not. And I am not just talking about other dev's, I myself also, not getting stuff done. I also completely agree that the new website is hard to navigate and the fact that you have to navigate to other pages to download is pretty embarrassing, but not as embracing as the subscription's that you mentioned that have no use now. But one thing I kinda disagree with is that the site is ugly. It's not ugly it just has a different taste that might not fit your's. I myself kinda like the look but the navigation and consistency is just terrible.

I also don't know if making the game open source is the way to go. They still use a lot of proprietary stuff in there mobile games that could be compromised. It just wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. However I do think they should have more dedicated staff/employee structure, as well as greater communications to the general public.

This is a game that we have all played over a decade, yet has anyone actually seen any advertisement? I heard about it from a friend (word of mouth). At the same time if someone tried advertising the current quality of the game my impressions would be tainted by the lack of quality so much so that I would hear about the game a year or 2 later and just not even click to see the updates or news.. I would just have this prejudice of a tainted quality towards the game.

One issue I have with Graal the Adventure, or Classic as I know it better by, is that it's extremely linear. Last time the server was actually live and playable on the main list it was like a bunch of us were playing together through the game and there was a lot to do besides the story. That, I am fine with. I'm just worried that they've taken a different turn and are focusing 100% on the story. I like idling in large groups in some sort of central location. I like pking and socializing and such. I basically don't want Classic to get rid of a lot of what it had in common with Unholy Nation and other server.s

I'm fine that you disagree with the site being ugly. Mostly because you're treating it as a separate issue from the site being hard to navigate. I have no issue with the color purple or a lot of the theme the site has going. I definitely prefer the old look, but if the site was overhauled and stuck with a similar theme, that'd be great as well.

I believe strongly in free software, and also open source software, but I'm totally fine with the game not being open source. My issue here is that the game feels dead and abandoned. This is the PERFECT opportunity to open source a game. It's already mostly handled by players. If the alternative is the game not being kept up to date (look at the GNU/Linux client that hasn't been updated in three years for example), then I think open sourcing it is the way to go. I don't mind this not happening if they Graal team starts actually getting things done again.

I'm not sure I want advertisements. I see what you're saying, and I can see some benefits as well, such as bringing in more people to play and/or work on the game. I just think that when you start to advertise and bring in tons of new people the quality is sure to go down. Graal may be dead and the staff may be screwing around recently, but I actually really enjoy the game and its current quality. If I was able to play right now I could entertain myself for months on Era or Unholy Nation. Zodiac may have even changed enough by now that I could get back into that again.

You mentioned you're a developer.. Are you a developer on one of the servers or for the game itself? I see your description says scripter which makes me think you mean the former, but I'm super desperate to get some confirmation on what's going on with the GNU/Linux client, so if you had some way to contact the higher ups, that'd just make my day, or year even.

[scriptless]

I am currently co-manager of N-Pulse. Yes I do script, and occasionally I help other servers. And certainly more players would not lower the quality. Only unskilled staff will lower the quality. I am glad you can enjoy the current quality but I'm not happy with it. I pretty much 'idolize' thor's classic because it caters to all players needs. If you are a sparrer theres spar arenas, you can pk anywhere, plenty of events, some cool side stuff like the cards, and a storyline. I look at it like this. You go to a store to buy a new xbox 1 game or PS4 game.. all the games have there own unique story but if you stand back like 15 feet away from the tv, cross you eyes and sit there for 5 minutes you start to think you been scammed by the big game companies because it all looks the same.. 3rd person rpg with emphasis on graphics to look realistic. If it were not for the storyline being so emphasized on the games or the fact that the players graphics, or weapons were slightly different all games would feel like the same game really.. and honestly I know at least in CoD a lot of the code is just recycled. What it all boils down to is if you put 0 effort into a story you end up with a server thats pk, events, spar and thats it.. the same thing all the other servers currently already offer you. At least your story play can set you apart a little.

[Gold1]

Andd it's still dead LOL

[Tru_Entropy]

I can see Graal being the type of game to have its concept live on, but the servers themselves already have poison in the veins.

[Kuzative]

Yeah but nobody even buys Gelats so PC doesn't really give much profit to Graal so there's less focus on it...I don't see it ever being as popular as it used to be since most of the attention is focused on the iOS Servers. But I see PC Graal still being a concept but just not as active as it ever was.

[maximus_asinus]

The real question is, "how many of the posters in this thread were actually scriptless' alternate accounts?"