You know, I've seen the graal community flailing for 15+ years in the weirdest of ways. You have the ancient folks such as myself who want to see the game go back to its Graal2000 glory, you have some who think the current PC clients need to be open source, The archivists who hoarded everything all the way back to 1999 (but conveniently refuse to share anything), and the mobile/facebook gamers who look back at 2015 as "the good ol' days". None ever willing to work together to revive this godforsaken thing. I have no idea of the current owners' intentions. I was just a humble LAT who loved making custom player worlds.

I applaud the new beta, but it's still at its core a mobile-focused game, and the grognard at me hisses and swats at such a thing. And I can see where people are coming from on the PC version - they don't wanna pay money for servers with maybe 9 players max. It's just not the same.

Part of me wonders if it was just an accident that Graal got as huge as it did, but I hate seeing this game deader than dead.  

over the past 20 years, this game failed to meet its full potential at every single opportunity  

it's a cash cow. it'll be milked til the udders give in and then the servers will be turned off  

Weirdly enough, and I suppose this is what happens when the PVP aspect isn't up to its potential, I've started to play this game almost primarily for the single player aspect. I play to fight baddies, make gralats, and put those gralats to my house. I can't take the rest of the game seriously because the dev team hasn't ever improved it. Towering, sparring, etc etc. Plus, I'm getting older. I'm becoming more out of touch with the rest of the playerbase. I don't play this game to socialize with 6-19 year old kids, and it's not like they're knowledgeable about what this game could have ever been. A lot of kids that play today no doubt probably started playing in the last few years and don't know much about the history of this game. Oh well.  

Posted by McCullough

Weirdly enough, and I suppose this is what happens when the PVP aspect isn't up to its potential, I've started to play this game almost primarily for the single player aspect. I play to fight baddies, make gralats, and put those gralats to my house. I can't take the rest of the game seriously because the dev team hasn't ever improved it. Towering, sparring, etc etc. Plus, I'm getting older. I'm becoming more out of touch with the rest of the playerbase. I don't play this game to socialize with 6-19 year old kids, and it's not like they're knowledgeable about what this game could have ever been. A lot of kids that play today no doubt probably started playing in the last few years and don't know much about the history of this game. Oh well.

Yes, same for me.  

i dunno what people really expected from a game thats essentially a watered down diet coke ALttP but if anything i gotta say: it was fun to socialize on classic, and it probably was its strongest aspect to me. sure, PKing was fun and sparring looked cool ig... idk. its probably messed up saying it but if graal keeps going nowhere (yes im saying this even with playerworlds existing) then its probably time to move on.

look all im saying is: add a competitive bug catching leaderboard, then we'll discuss business ;)  

Bring back Graal from 20 years ago (with a few small tweaks) and Graal will live on forever.  

I really can't speak for GraalOnline but I can indeed speak on my behalf, someone that has been involved in much of the development. You may think we don't here you, but we really do and maybe that's a issue we need to address. Keeping the players more informed on what's going on and definitely develop some road map and try our hardest to follow it.

I really want to thank you Rilo, for being so passionate about the game with such positive and obvious feedback.

Posted by Rilo

Graal has been the most dead/boring it has even been for a long time now, with under 1k players on daily. There are a lot of problems and flaws that the game has at the moment. I will share my thoughts of the game and potential solutions that can be considered to be put into place. I speak for myself and a lot of players who may agree.

Sparring

Towering

Content Updates

The idea of ping allowed sparring arenas should be a no brainer. It something that can easily be accomplished with no time at all. This brings a peace of mind when it comes to players that care for there spar ratings and enjoy the benefits of being that great of sparrer. Rewards for people that are good at sparring also seems like a great addition. Competitive Sparrers love to see some form of ranking/rewards system to know where they stand in the community and how good they really are.

I don't know much about iClassics guild system, but I do know the current guild system has been a issue for years, including towering. Removing/Adding Towers to raise activity within some towers doesn't seem like it yielded the intended results. That's why your feed back is much appreciated, because as Developers we need to know where we failed and what we can do to improve it. I do believe that Classic iphone is addressing this issue.

I also agree with Auto Events, I don't know much about the carnival event. But just recently I suggested some events (New Events) that can be thrown into the auto event pool. Indeed Classic iPhone is working hard to finishing there remaining projects, so I'm not sure if or when events will be addressed. I do think Auto Events are important. It's content, and content that players enjoy. It also takes a huge burden off Staff that have to host manually.

I don't want to get into content updates as I'm personally working on some content for Classic iPhone, but discussing this would need prior approval. However I always felt Classic iPhone lacked any PVE concept, minus the socialization aspect. I'm referring to doing content with players, and enjoying some PVE Adventures (That can be done in groups).

Thank you again and it was worth sitting down for a moment to reply to you and address some of your concerns.

Regarding everyone else, I know most of you are passionate about Graal that's why your so vocal about your opinion on the direction the game is heading, and I don't think this is a bad thing. But we certainly do here you and we are not some "Cash Cow". Most money goes right back into the game for development purposes. But I think are biggest priority is modernizing the game engine. Every day Merlin updates and releases new unity beta clients that fixes huge amounts of issues reported by people testing these clients.

Not only does modernizing the game engine help with stability and resource usage, but it also brings arsenal of some cool new features. Here is a sneak peak of somethings that was done using the new client.



Short Video-
https://imgur.com/CxU0fvK

So we certainly are not sitting here doing nothing, but we are focused and working non stop to improve graal as a whole. Sorry for this long ranting post, if you're to lazy to read it I don't blame you.

Graal Unity Documentation:
https://graalonline.net/index.php?ti...ripting_Manual

Please Note:
I have no control over changes that involve iClassic, however I can bring these values to the table, and despite there pipeline... The players need to be heard.  

The problem isn't entirely a lack of content per say, but the type of content. It seems the team have begun pushing out a lot of things associated with customization and smaller QoL features over the last few years, but have left the other issues like towering, sparring, or overall server health behind. I'm still seeing lots of customization news updates every week or two, but the things that really kept players engaged were the competitive aspects of towering and sparring. Working together to capture and keep a tower or competing with dozens or hundreds of other players for the top ten positions or even just Guild sparring is what gave players that feeling of fun.

They wanted that rush with their friends and they also wanted to look cool doing it, but these last few years seem to have only focused entirely on customization and furniture and the players that have asked for better things with the competitive aspects have now mostly moved on from Graal. The only players that tend to play now are young kids who probably have little knowledge or no desire for the competitive aspects of towering or sparring. The downward cascade of towering began with the removal of York Tower, and then Swamp, and then Snow Town. Big time tower guilds like Maphasy, UFO, or Ninjas disappeared because their home towers were removed from the game.

With there still being general server issues it's still annoying and cumbersome to spar. No hate to Brasilians, but I just don't want to see them in the arenas, or any person outside the U.S for that matter until something drastic changes.With the ping issue never formerly being addressed, the best sparrers eventually left. Alumni is gone, but that's mostly because they're all adults, now, but even others said that there are too many ping issues that they no longer want to compete with.

The sad truth is it's too late to fix any of the problems we asked to be addressed. The older generations of competitive Graal players are mostly gone, and I doubt any of the kids who get on to socialize and role play all day would care to tower or spar if things were better. Quests and bigger events and things still happen every year or two, which brings 500ish players back, but we're still looking at about 400-500 players on daily when nothing is going on.

We were at 4500 active players from the time I started playing. That was only eight and a half years ago. Now we sit at 400-500.

Key features were removed or features became limited. Removing towers was a big mistake. Not doing something about pingy sparrers sooner was a big mistake. Focusing more on useless cosmetics as opposed to improving the mechanics of the core gameplay was a big mistake. 90% of the population no longer actively plays the game, because the features that made this game fun for a lot of people have not been refined or remedied over the last decade. The players that play today are fractions of the last generation. The rest are kids that probably only play this game for the cosmetics, because that's all they know this game to be if they've joined in the last 2-3 years.  

Posted by McCullough

The problem isn't entirely a lack of content per say, but the type of content. It seems the team have begun pushing out a lot of things associated with customization and smaller QoL features over the last few years, but have left the other issues like towering, sparring, or overall server health behind. I'm still seeing lots of customization news updates every week or two, but the things that really kept players engaged were the competitive aspects of towering and sparring. Working together to capture and keep a tower or competing with dozens or hundreds of other players for the top ten positions or even just Guild sparring is what gave players that feeling of fun.

They wanted that rush with their friends and they also wanted to look cool doing it, but these last few years seem to have only focused entirely on customization and furniture and the players that have asked for better things with the competitive aspects have now mostly moved on from Graal. The only players that tend to play now are young kids who probably have little knowledge or no desire for the competitive aspects of towering or sparring. The downward cascade of towering began with the removal of York Tower, and then Swamp, and then Snow Town. Big time tower guilds like Maphasy, UFO, or Ninjas disappeared because their home towers were removed from the game.

With there still being general server issues it's still annoying and cumbersome to spar. No hate to Brasilians, but I just don't want to see them in the arenas, or any person outside the U.S for that matter until something drastic changes.With the ping issue never formerly being addressed, the best sparrers eventually left. Alumni is gone, but that's mostly because they're all adults, now, but even others said that there are too many ping issues that they no longer want to compete with.

The sad truth is it's too late to fix any of the problems we asked to be addressed. The older generations of competitive Graal players are mostly gone, and I doubt any of the kids who get on to socialize and role play all day would care to tower or spar if things were better. Quests and bigger events and things still happen every year or two, which brings 500ish players back, but we're still looking at about 400-500 players on daily when nothing is going on.

We were at 4500 active players from the time I started playing. That was only eight and a half years ago. Now we sit at 400-500.

Key features were removed or features became limited. Removing towers was a big mistake. Not doing something about pingy sparrers sooner was a big mistake. Focusing more on useless cosmetics as opposed to improving the mechanics of the core gameplay was a big mistake. 90% of the population no longer actively plays the game, because the features that made this game fun for a lot of people have not been refined or remedied over the last decade. The players that play today are fractions of the last generation. The rest are kids that probably only play this game for the cosmetics, because that's all they know this game to be if they've joined in the last 2-3 years.

Firstly, lets not exaggerate a bit and keep this a 100% honest conversation... The game sits at about 800-1000 players, which is indeed horrible to where it was standing prior. I 110% agree with you. The content that has been worked on seems like its cosmetics, cosmetics and some more darn cosmetics. However Classic has massive amounts of projects that are so close to completion and they just lack the help of developers of all types. If your interested in really helping classic, then do something about it. Apply for a position, I'm pretty sure there hiring for all types of positions. You can check out the discord discord.gg/graalians and help make those changes and make a difference in general.  

New client in development? I'll stay tuned.  

Posted by MysticalDragon

Firstly, lets not exaggerate a bit and keep this a 100% honest conversation... The game sits at about 800-1000 players, which is indeed horrible to where it was standing prior. I 110% agree with you. The content that has been worked on seems like its cosmetics, cosmetics and some more darn cosmetics. However Classic has massive amounts of projects that are so close to completion and they just lack the help of developers of all types. If your interested in really helping classic, then do something about it. Apply for a position, I'm pretty sure there hiring for all types of positions. You can check out the discord discord.gg/graalians and help make those changes and make a difference in general.

We're sitting at 800-1000 only because of the frog event, which happens every year and is usually advertised on social media.

Give people time to complete the event and get their cosmetics, then they'll leave again for a while until something opens or another event happens. When nothing is going on, it'll drop back down to around 500. This has happened every time an event happens, even when we still had 4500 players on a normal day an event would bring it up to 5000-5500.

So, I shouldn't have to, as a consumer, be forced to participate in the development of a game if I want something to change. At this point that's entirely the manager's fault for not being able to retain employees/volunteers, further showcases the disjunction at that level, and is the reason nothing gets done on time/ever.

I don't have the time, skills, or experience in graphical or technical development, and to ask a consumer to spend their time trying to learn the skills necessary to make the game better is comical.

The forum and discord is there for us to relay our feedback and share the problems we face. I shouldn't have to be forced to help make a difference if I find something wrong. If I were to play CoD and said I didn't like something I would hope never to be asked to help make a difference by physically becoming a part of the development.

My point is the development team is the problem with their lack of transparency, and I don't want to be a part of a team that only tends to focus on things that don't matter.

We would like to know what these projects actually are so we can look forward to something. Hopefully giveaway and event streams aren't the only streams
you want to do in the future.  

Perfect timing actually.

Snow town has just been introduced with a brand new tower and it looks pretty neat. The first floor is small and neat and the flag room is fine. Smaller tower but for the first tower in a long, long time, this is great.  

Doon't stop belieeevin'....Hold on to that feeeelingg!  

All the wait will be worth it in the end, I just know it. The tower update was a great refresher but I still have not been able to access the secret room in sards. The only thing keeping me going is bking. Maybe Babord will finally be released on Jan 1st. But that is a stretch although we can only dream...