I aggree that a new more efficient way of requesting help is needed  

You can't be banned from reporting other players, that is outrageous.

As for PMing the Staff, it's kind of pointless.
Reporting players is easier on the Staff because they can just warp straight to the reported player instead of having to look them up from the name you sent them in a PM.  

Posted by Virus

You can't be banned from reporting other players, that is outrageous.

Like he said, there is no such thing as a "ban from reporting" function on Graal. Spammers can be banned from sending Feedback, but the Report button is always available.

And on the subject of reports, it's much better if players use the in-game Report button instead of private-messaging a staff member, as the report's data will allow staff to warp directly to the offending player(s) whereas a PM contains only the names, which anyone can have, so staff will end up having to check the entire list of online players' names and locations. Reports are also visible to all staff members, not just one, so responses are much faster.

Posted by Cabbage

If you get robbed and try to contact the police, they aren't going to respond to you wit PLEASE CHECK MY FACEBOOK PAGE TO FILE A POLICE REPORT

On the same wavelength, if you were robbed, you would report it to 999/120/911 (whatever it is for your country), not call individual police units by their personal mobile numbers. It's a similar principle here.

The problem is that sometimes players can end up treating certain staff members as what I call "personal admins", whereby they completely abandon the Report system altogether and instead send every single problem they have in PMs to a single staff member. Not only does this delay the time it takes for us to read other PMs, but individual members of staff are not always available 24/7, whereas Reports are always readable.

(Reports Rant)

Spoiler

Also, there have been some complaints where reports were thought to be ignored. Sometimes, we receive reports that are too ambiguous (eg. "(s)he was mean") or reports of players who have done things that are not against the rules (eg. "(s)he PK me"). Otherwise, we have also received plenty of spam reports, especially from players who have watched certain "educational" videos on YouTube on "how to become admin", and they will report everyone within their sight for nonsense reasons. These spam reports can really clog up the system, and make us miss genuine reports, which is why those who imitate the spamming actions encouraged in those videos will be unsurprisingly banned from the game.

(End of Reports Rant)

Personally, I still agree that most staff should disable friends-only PMs when available. Both my accounts have no PM restrictions, and I try my best to answer queries both sides.

It's okay to have just a general chat via PMs, but it's probably better if players sent general chats to the staff member's iPhone account, not their PC account. When we log on to our PC accounts, we will always working. If you see us online on our non-staff accounts, it means we are not working and free for chats.

Again, to follow-up with Scaal's post, we do get a lot of spam. Messages like these will be ignored:

-Can I have a hat?
-Can I interview you?
-Hug me please!
-Wanna hang out?
-Recruit me!
-Join my guild!
-Please increase my stats/help me boost!
-Please drag me!
-Please warp me to (unreleased area)!
-Invite me to your house!
-Come to my house please!
(The last two are really discouraged, because we will be in the middle of work, and don't need to be whisked away to a different location)

However, we will try our best to reply to genuine requests like:

-I have a problem with my iPod, can you help?
-How do I transfer accounts?
-How do I obtain (item)?
-When will (announced event) be happening?
-What does (in-game feature) do?


Hope this clears a few things up.  

^This  

It won't let me +Rep for Midori for some reason..

Anyway, Midori is completely right.
Report players. It is easier on the Staff.  

Sorry i was staff member on a other game and it had over 3k online players and the pms...
When you can't handle with the spam... ok the mosst are litle kids they can be stressfull but why you guys are not scripting a spam filter when they will send "can i be a admin?", "can i get a hat?",... That it would be blocked it's easy to make it.  

My skype is NewYorkerNick.
My email is [email protected]
My Facebook is facebook.com/nyn.graal
Our email is [email protected] (Just put ATTN: <insert staff name here>


I respond to everyone who isn't asking something in tinyurl.com/graalfaq

I ignore dumb questions.

PMing in the game is inefficient since it doesn't save and I could be patrolling then happen to sign off because I am turning off my computer/going out/etc.

...but we still answer anyway.

@Pi, I'm sure it was a MUCH different situation where the staff was not within the community as much as we are. Obviously people get excited when they see us so they overwhelm with questions just so they can talk to us. We can't create a spam filter because we aren't scripters. We are just players like yourself who volunteer to ban players who break rules. But we do have something very similar that has been working out for us... a block button.

Please read my signature for further information.

THANKS!