Even If the new editions had a fraction of the features Graal Classic had over a decade and a half ago, I would still say it has deteriorated.
I've heard the excuses of this, "It takes time", "we're working on a new client", etc. And I'm very aware of the old drama against Stefan - which, imo, is totally unfounded, as people still piled on him when he had the audacity to charge 50 cents a month. Only a few years later would Blizzard do the same thing with no one batting an eye.
Anyway, saying "it takes time" only works if there is time spent working on content to justify saying it. Personally, I've seen nothing but a few promos here and there, some funny scripts activated sometimes -- but given Retro Nexus recently, there is a *lot* of talent on display there - so why does the world still not have things as basic as a hammer? There are things in the world that scream "find something to get to me" only to actually be leftovers of a world that was far more expansive when those areas were actually relevant.
It's straight up baffling to me. It's even more baffling to new players because they would (correctly, yes, correctly) assume that those areas will be accessible at some point. There are huge sections of the Graal Classic world that are shrinking. Why?
I found the last version of GraalOnline before the removal of Single Player on some of my backup disks, and I had a blast. Where is that game? I had 1000s of hours in those old servers, and there was still stuff I hadn't finished by the time the servers were reset. I mean, the central tenet of the game - the four graals - isn't there now. I could understand if it took months, but it's been years. Years! Duke Nukem Forever has nothing on the current state of Graal.
But hey, at least we have houses, hats, and a marriage/family element that could have been fleshed out even more, but has not been.
I am of the opinion that the developers would love to fix all this but are so afraid of player backlash which is always going to happen. I don't know the current management, but this is ridiculous regardless.
Do NOT take this as an attack on the devs, this is not an attack on the developers as much as it is a wakeup call to the top brass - if I can have more fun with a single player version of the game over 10 years old than the current version populated with players, isn't that a problem?