I recently came back to Graal after a year or two of absence and noticed a significant drop in the active playerbase. I recall constantly seeing 3,000+ players online at any given moment before last year. The numbers were often in the 4,000s last year, if I recall correctly. Now, we seem to hover around 2,000, going under it very often, which was not the case before. I am referring to the active playerbase during non-event times. What happened?  

There's a good number of reasons why people don't play anymore, the game isn't dead and I doubt it'll completely die off anytime soon, but right now, 2k players is all graal can handle.  

As the game ages so do the players. Ppl get busy irl and can log on less as they start going off to get jobs, college, trade school etc; whatever it may be  

Main reasons imo were:

1. The server became worse, so graal became more laggy especially in christmas, halloween etc. Which is I don't even like these events
2. Because of the player's ping, more brazliians joined the game and mexicans, they have a bad internet. You can be as laggy as you want on graal and unlike other games, lag effect both the lagger and other players so it sucks
3. Towering rewards were removed, so towering died, then the players who used to tower started sparring and doing other things so it effected sparring, and other parts of the game.
4. Hats quality not the best

 

Summer fun does capture a lot of people, myself included

I do my best gaming when I’m snowed in

Game sure is running smooth these days though, thanks for all your efforts  

Naturally we’re all just getting older. The kids that were playing when this game peaked are now older. And we’re even more older. And with kids these days not playing anything outside of roblox or fortnite it just seems like the average age is getting older.

I’ve never been happier to see kids on this game. It gives me hope for the future. Reminds me of when I was a kid walking around graal.  

its still summer vaca, should defo hit 4k-5k.  

Posted by Zetectic

its still summer vaca, should defo hit 4k-5k.

At peak hours its above 3'000. It has not hit 4000-5000 for a long time.  

It hits 4k sometimes on GST day  

I take back my earlier comments, it’s still extremely spike ish and I see lag from 80ms to 2200ms

Either that or it’s time for a new router on my end

How’s everyone else’s experience?  

Even right now something is wrong with the server, I can’t find log onto the game without turning my devices wifi on and off.  

Posted by MJ4

Even right now something is wrong with the server, I can’t find log onto the game without turning my devices wifi on and off.

i was playing for an hr yesterday, it wasn't hard to notice the weird connection issue after 30 minutes.  

it probably suffers from the same thing that PC Graal suffered from: lack of advertising. I'd be interested to see the metrics on how many players it pulled months after launch or even a year. The only way PC Graal grew was by word of mouth. Unixmad didn't advertise at all.  

I'm pretty sure playercount is still high, we just peaked a few years ago and dipped back down to a more stable number. With some big updates it'll likely shoot back up.  

Nerfed bug prices, imbalanced & laggy nickel & dime mini games, reduced furniture sale prices (which were promised to be revised after the duplication issues were under control but never were), upload tokens, random game freezing/performance issues, lack of meaningful content updates, unresponsive customer care, lack of in-game staff visibility, rotating annual events little more than a grind for collectables... I could go on about what has lost my interest recently, but that's a start.

Add to that broken sales buttons - third time I've pressed f***ing cancel and had it still spend my money. Rainbow gralats juggle, ridiculously overpriced skull bounce and now the black pirate bandana from bazaar on the items list the game has stolen my money for and forced upon me. I pressed cancel. It still purchased. I want my money returned. I get no response from feedback or tickets.