i just got a quick question.

General Talk
1

i am an old player of graal, from the very beginning when there was not even any player worlds. and when they started charging people, i stuck around for a bit longer with the playerworlds etc and left. i missed graal so i came back to find it was bugged out and all messed up looking. and i went searching the net and finally found this place, and told some of my old graal buddies and old teammates that i used to work on servers with, about this place.

up to this point, ive noticed there is not alot of people logging on at all, not even a little bit. and the server list is lacking and 95% are closed servers.

i want to help, but i needed to ask some quick questions first before i go about using my promotional talents and marking this place.

am i aloud to promote this project on other sites?

by doing so with proper banners, and directing to the right server that is up majority of the time and has a solid amount of content, i think i can start pulling some people here. i just kept quiet for a while, and lurked alot on the forums because i was new here. but now since ive been kicking around for a bit, reading the forums and working on my own content, i feel that i want to help to make this place a bit more populated. i realize everyone has there own projects to work on, but why does’nt everyone get together (developers mostly) and work on a prime server and get it going, with full npcs, events, games, quests, etc etc.

with all our ideas and what not, and skills we bring to the board, im sure compromises can be made to pull one mega server together and get one place up and going.

then we can branch off and work on something else.

i say this this because like myself, alot of us dottle in small projects to see if we can do it and awsome for that. but the point is to get something solid and grounded here. if we get resources together, and people working together with combined talents here, we could pull off a nice server in a couple of months.

its just an idea. to get something started, im offering my skills in graphic design, level design as well as sound engineering and some simple scripting.

my main strength is in levels, and sound is second, and my graphics are third and so on.

i offer up all the time i have, and when i get time ill work on my own project.

i really believe we can do this, and without an npc server. graal capped around 1000 to 1500 people waaaay back in the day. once they implemented new systems and what not, it began to die a bit. reason why? you split the groups and divided the numbers, people want others to play with, not 5 people on each server. the point is, those numbers add up when a main server is in place.

thats all i got to say for now, and i hope someone shares some of the same ideas and modivation i do. with proper organization and project lists to work on, we can get something awsome going.

that is all for now, thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Panzer

2

Issues we have is, most people here are developers and not players. We’ve forgotten how to actually play graal. Then there’s nothing to attract people here for more than a 5 minute sitting. Some servers like NPulse and UnholyNation have their vast playercounts purely because they have a high playercount. If we could get some section for people to “pool” on, attracting other players (who actually play) then other servers would slowly start to get life breathed into them.

The fun part asides from having lots of time consuming content and people to flaunt it to, is the initial “big bang” playercount. And within this big bang, you need every type of player: Idlers, Questers, Chatters, Pkers, Instigating Pricks, Charismatic Lawfuls.

If people develop friends, they will stay online when they are online. While they are online, PKers will remain happy if there is a bountiful amount of them, if the PKers out number them by too much, they will leave, and then the PKers will slowly die off from lack of new targets.

Asides from deciding an economy, we basically have to go one step further and plan an ecosystem for the players. Too few of one thing, they go extinct and anything related to it will follow.

3

you have some very valid points there. so pretty much we need something to attract players to the server. no offense to the servers that are up, the concepts are good, but lack a lot of eye candy, people etc. im going to start a project now, and work on it for the next couple of months. i dunno what to call it, but im working on it as we speak. im gonna talk to some old friends and see if they want in on this. you all are more then welcome to help, im terrible at scripting, but im full of ideas. if anyone wants to bring some ideas to this board, it would greatly apreciate it. what do you guys want to see.

4

Work on Harmonia Cadavre will suck your penis if you do

5

:marlon:

6

Definetly valid points all around. About attracting players, and also keeping players.
It’s almost immediate once your here that this community is primarily developers, all excited to work on their own stuff (or lazy, but excited is close enough).

Personally, I feel almost bad posting random crap up, since everyone is workin on their own stuff.

But back on track even if players arrived in flocks here, would anyone’s internet connection really be able to host more then 12-20 players max?

7

My shitty 1/3mb upload worked well for 13+; Only reason people lagged was because someone was DoSing my server at the same time. Lol

8

[QUOTE=Beholder;15015]
Issues we have is, most people here are developers and not players. We’ve forgotten how to actually play graal. Then there’s nothing to attract people here for more than a 5 minute sitting. Some servers like NPulse and UnholyNation have their vast playercounts purely because they have a high playercount. If we could get some section for people to “pool” on, attracting other players (who actually play) then other servers would slowly start to get life breathed into them.

The fun part asides from having lots of time consuming content and people to flaunt it to, is the initial “big bang” playercount. And within this big bang, you need every type of player: Idlers, Questers, Chatters, Pkers, Instigating Pricks, Charismatic Lawfuls.

If people develop friends, they will stay online when they are online. While they are online, PKers will remain happy if there is a bountiful amount of them, if the PKers out number them by too much, they will leave, and then the PKers will slowly die off from lack of new targets.

Asides from deciding an economy, we basically have to go one step further and plan an ecosystem for the players. Too few of one thing, they go extinct and anything related to it will follow.
[/QUOTE]

True I say graal had a lot of outside activity verses inside meaning back then people made half assed websites about graal, for guild, among various other things. Lets go a step further and talk about how the graal forums aka community forums was sort of like the UN (with communism aka unixmad) , where basically all the web website people met into one website graal forums aka communtiy chat, to chat about programming, levels, graal 3D, graal iphone , life, being homo sexual, bi, furry, goth, N0th etc…

It was the fact that everybody felt important in some way. In that, that is what makes graal, graal when everybody argues and hates each other. It’s the my playerworlds is better/worse than your players world, or myguild is better then yours. This is the essence of graal. I mean yeah sure it’s 2d, but hey you can make quest etc… That’s what got me, then when you get into this is the result… Fun filled pack community that is egotistical, and smart…

I suppose I’m saying to have graal the way I remember is at sort a competition amongst each other where everybody feels important in some aspect. The way to implement this is hard to say but outside factors like myspace, blog, stealing and highjacking the P2P graal e-mailing list, and twitters could possibly help fuel this type of expansion as well as sticking around for a long time to let P2P graal players leak onto GraalReborn as well. Then again back when i was playing graal I was still on a 56k modem and WoW had not came out yet. In that there is also competition from other outside games like WoW, runescape, etc… More people have cable internet now as well. The appeal you would be going for is zelda/old school snes online to some, to others it’s a game maker online, and to other make quest levels make a NEW game!, free game to play

It is a bit hard to get people to stay on to play when better things are out there also when something is free people tend to have less obligation to play it aka it feels less special… Also factor in the stupid factor, as the internet has become more and more popular it’s become more and more easier for people less knowledge to enter these realms. These people are like my roommate who sits and watches sports all day, live off unemployment with attempting to even find a job but while reading and article in a newspaper of online finds out that some little 16 year old kind made a million dollars from a iphone app they made so he thinks it’s easy… My roommate attempts to make a iphone application only to give up within 2 mins because we know why… These factors are why graal should be webbased and done in flash to be stupid proof is a way to attract more people. Just a lot of factors as to how and why in the growth issue of graal reborn.

9

all very good points to raise. but the fact of the matter is, graal reborn needs players. what is the fun of making something that no one will ever see and no one can apreciate.

i am as we speak working on this project, i have 5 outside levels completed so far, and i will continue to work on this project with or without help from anyone else, anyone who wants to help with this, feel free, i could use it.

combining our efforts either on this project im already working on, or another one which needs some love like harmonia (which i may add should be renamed Graal Reborn Online when you log in so people know its the main server). if graal reborn is to thrive and grow, a common interest and a common effort needs to be in place. and i believe we can do this. good ways to attract players is not what “graal” players want, they will come in time when the numbers grow. we need an outside audience who wants to be part of this community, but we need to give them a reason why they want to.

i was poking around today, and ive found large roleplay communities on wow private servers, runescpae, furcadia, yahoo chat, IRC, MPOGD, forums, etc. why do people choose these locations to roleplay? because of there freedom to explore and create new characters. think DND, people still play DND for the simple fact that they control whats going on, they imagine who they are and play that character in dialogue and dice. these are the type of people who will play graal reborn.

anime junkies and otaku kids who love the idea of big swords, wings, tails, half humans half robots etc. these caffeine junkies who are up late at night playing games here and there trying to find a home of there own can be reached to, they will play graal reborn as well.

and ive jumped on some of these servers, you know what they lack that graal classic has? useless crap. yes! useless npcs that do nothing for the character but are fun to mess with. the skipping rope? how about the hackie sack? hat system? pets? soccer balls? snow balls? etc etc etc. these are simple npcs that can be made and can be made quickly with the help of eachother here. people will come for the simple fact that they can click a button and an umbrella a towel and a beach ball spawns up for them to sit on a beach and pretend they are there. these are also people who will play graal reborn.

has anyone googled the word “Graal” ? did you know graal reborn is not even near the top of that list? this is also a simple fix and it does make a difference. also updateing the front page also helps.

though i may sound im hounding and saying “YOUR DOING IT WRONG” its not that, everyone is doing exactly what they like to do with graal which is fine, and that is what its there for. but if we want more players, and more people checking it out and logging on, we need to give them a reason to do so.

if harmonia needs help, i will log on and help with that server, graphics and levels wise if we want to go that route. i just want to know if im the only soldier going out in he battlefield is all. if i am, ill just work on my project and wait for my mates to help.

if we work together, and get one server up and fully rocking, trial and error, weapons, quests, enemies, pk zones, events, useless items, wings, tails, heads, custom gui and items, forum updated, site updated, promotion, word of mouth, etc etc. then graal reborn will become what we all want it to be. because trust me, people are sick of graal classic, they pay for it, the system in place is terrible client side, and people are slowly leaving it. lets give people the reason why they still keep coming back to graal and get something going.

Panzer

10

It’s been brought up before i’m sure, the concept of merging developers around cmmon interests to better the community in general. I’d whole heartedly agree that, my main attraction to graal is random intellectual expression that seems to appear selectively thru scripts or levels. Just seems like there is alot of smart people around with ego’s just as advanced.

I like the quality, but i’m not sure it really on average suits group oriented projects. The rub seems to be, whose idea do we develop further? Or whose idea is the best option.

edit: Just noticed the end of demon’s post. I’ve been working on setting up a custom http:// protocol for launching graal thru the browser(think kpederson allready did this maybe) and configuring a activex installing java or flash plugin to play graal IN your browser. Even the official graal site does this. Both are pretty simply additions but could make things much easier.

11

well with that, we make a sort of just public server, that is main that combines everyones talents and skills, where those “egos” can be massaged and everyone can be happy. and with the amount of people who are developing other projects, we can combine our efforts and chip in something to further the growing community to a whole. im not talking about stopping what your doing and focus soley on this. but i mean, pitch in something maybe an hour or 2 a day or week, whatever is good for you. brainstorm and bring something to the table, and go off and work on your other project. say for example, beholder has made some pretty nifty stuff from what i saw, say he brings a hat script or some staff npcs to the table for the main server project, as well as say a graphics artist makes monsters as there specialty, they could submit the sprites and the script and ganis for a couple of enemies or bosses to the board and go off and do there own thing. same goes for anyone kinda thing. that way, the happy medium is in place, and we could have a nice server full of everyones work and creations.

you could even give everyone a spot of land or an island and connect them somehow and let them place say 3-4 npcs, customize there levels with there team, etc etc.

it is possible, but to answer tha question, its not about whose idea is the best option, rather everyone has the best idea is the best option, mini games, paintball, soccer, hats, stupid pets, etc etc. we can make these things and make it work. custom tiles and heads and everything. we could with our efforts combine our skills, and make a fully customized server for graal reborn and run with it.

EDIT: by npcs for spot of land, i ment say an item or something. was just an idea.
Panzer

12

this has been tried before. We used to have Graal Reborn PW. Noone even bothered to do antything on it. I tried to hire people for it. I gave up that kind of thing long ago, so I merged GRPW with Harmonia.

13

[QUOTE=Cadavre;15054]this has been tried before. We used to have Graal Reborn PW. Noone even bothered to do antything on it. I tried to hire people for it. I gave up that kind of thing long ago, so I merged GRPW with Harmonia.[/QUOTE]
And UnixGraal. Lol

[QUOTE=Cadavre;15054]Noone even bothered to do antything on it.[/QUOTE]
You were all lazy ass hats. O_o

14

Chicken did a lot of work. I just ran out of ideas of what to do next. And I have a bunch of other projects not related to graal to attend to.

15

Wasn’t the anti-unixmad team accused of being pirates before? Go that route, kidnap playerworld makers and steal any resources they’ve made so far. Using their buildings and stuff on one main official server.

16

well, ive been poking around, and ive been indexing heads and working on sprite sheets as well as levels (got one area done already) as well as the GUI is being tinkered with as well. ive also found some sites where i can put up a forum and website and start putting the word out there for the server im working on as we speak. if everyone is not interested i respect that, but im not gonna crash this idea because people are so called “lazy”. ill get it done then, no problem.

17

Just throwing it out there, before I think we never had the numbers to do it now we do. At that the times we started this stuff it was near at close to the end of summer at which many people get occupied by school or college. So yeah it’s very rational to start it up now then later. Cadavre started and founded GraalReborn but he can’t be doing everything m00

18

Don’t think it was pirates, I think it was Islamic Terrorists.

19

Well what do they do? We can sacrafice them in the name of Jihad, then take their stuff?

20

http://www.guardiaonline.hyperphp.com/index.php

got a site up to help promote the site and the server im working on. i have my ladyfriend promoting it as we speak and getting some graphics people to help out. more info soon. ill be starting a playerworld thread as soon as i get some kinks fixed up.

EDIT: im not good with html at all, but ill do my best to keep my site kinda going and stuff XD