The main argument with adding new towns has always been then they're hyped about and enjoyed few a few days, then die out after a few weeks. This is highly supported as Graal city remains the most inhabited town by far, whereas other towns only contain maybe 10-20 people at a time. The reasoning for this is Graal city is a popular location for advertising things like your status and is fully no pk as well as near unstick. The other no pk zones are poorly marked and take time to walk to as well as have unclear boundries; belle,snowtown, and I believe a couple other locations have on and off pk levels and it is quite confusing, whereas Graal city has gates and small pathways where it because a pk zone- it is well enclosed.


Any town that remains pk may seem dead because players do not stand around and talk as they will just get killed-but players still go to their destinations a lot, it's just the fact that you just see people for a split second passing by on a horse that it feels empty. As for snowtown, you have to go really far out of your way to get their(wait a few minutes on draisine or spent 1-2 minutes on your horse getting their then light your lantern. Deadwood has annoying dark lighting that lags and is irritating and the overall mood just doesn't fit for a place to go without reason. If you take a look at Onnet, it is moderately populated, ideally how a town should look, and it has clear boundaries and is enclosed. Belle is a mess of both pk and no pk zones. It should be either all pk or no pk. based on its design I think it would be more optimal as a no pk zone since it only has 1 entrance but that is just my opinion. Deadwood and snowtown are better fitted as pure pk zones. With the pyrats, fort, and lack of clear enterance/exit york is best suited as a pk zone. North graal city at the moment can be suited as either because it has no real purpose at the moment, but also is easy to access, convenient, and well designed for casual players.


It would be nice to add some kind of town warping system. Right now people abuse unstick as a way of mobility far more often than actually freeing themself, so why not allow them to warp to more locations in a more polished and official way? Add set warps to onnet, belle, swamptown, etc. warping can have a 5 second "channeling" period in which you must wait and cannot be hit or it will cancel it- to stop people from running from fights.

I highly appreciate the new timer in Graal city that moves you when you're afk in the crowded portions of Graal city, it really helps a lot when running through Graal city. I don't know the exact time but it seems to be about 5 minutes. I hope this stays, but it would be nice to lower it to 2 or 3 minutes so Graal city can be more for traveling through and not for spamming. High enough so you can stop and type a guild message or go brb for a second without getting kicked out, but low enough to attempt to spread players out more and make the whole map seem more community oriented-it's nice seeing lots of players across the overworld. There are plenty of no pk locations that are near abandoned. Burger Refuge and other buildings may remain crowded as they are not needed to travel through.

As more players spread out adding new towns with forts, shops, and some form of fun events will further add to the feel of a community oriented game. New locations are the most hyped things by most players as long as they have some form of content, and I've noticed a direct pattern between new towns being added and playercount increasing. The playercount rapidly increased the first two months of Graal from ~100 to ~600 when it was continually expanding. It then slowly increased from that to a steady 1000-1500 within the first year as snowtown, deadwood, and more areas were added. The playercount then seemed to very slowly decline as other updates came out but weren't new towns. Then when York came out the amount of players playing seemed to increase back to the old amount.
As more towns are added, more people will come, and they will stay active and the feeling of exploring a large world will start to feel even better. People who come back after quitting for a while that see a lot of new places will have a fresh feeling.

I'm not saying to throw out a lot of "half assed" new towns with no purpose, but rather to put an emphasis on the size of the map and not just new features. It may not have worked on PC servers back in the day with huge gmaps with abandoned towns, but that was because the game was p2p and the playercount of a server never really exceeded a couple hundred. With thousands of players on at a time, free to play, and an ever growing community with limitless potential, Graal will grow over time allowing for far larger maps. Getting lost and not knowing your way around is actually half the fun of the game.


tl;dr:
1:Graal will get more players as more towns are added-there has been a very clear direct correlation between playercount and new towns.
2:add more areas as it adds to the exploring aspect and feeling of content
3:pking may make a town seem dead as players do not use it to talk but rather tun there to go where they want then leave and not idle outside
4:laggy effects, dark lighting, lack of accessibility, as well as unclear safe zones make towns undesirable. Snowtown and Deadwood are evidence of this.
5: idling warp timer in Graal city could possibly be lowered from 5 to 3 minutes.