FAO All Graalians
 

I don't expect anyone to remember who I am, nor care. But for those who require some background info, I joined iClassic during its debut week in December 2009 as a kid playing games on a second generation iPod touch. I pretty much put this game down in 2016 due to real life commitments and I'm amazed this app still opens which at the very least does make me smile as for me its a crazy piece of nostalgia now.

I have met some really interesting and engaging people thanks to this bunch of pixels yet it is sad to see it just die out as - for the most part - an incredibly unique and diverse community who all share the passion for playing your game. I just wanted to highlight some topics and share some nostalgic thoughts that I really enjoyed playing this game and to reiterate that this game still has masses of potential and I still believe it's a wasted business opportunity to not keep this platform running at even half its capability or at a fraction of its previous forms.

Positives:

• Character Customs - This gave player a chnace to relly make their experience unique and really allowed people to promote various forms of artwork and for people (like my younger self) to learn this skill as part of the gameplay. Graal characters exploded into a new kind of diversity overnight.
• Guild Allies - the fundamentals of guilds were always astaple among other old graal servers hwoever the idea that a roster could be externally extended to incorpate other people ensured there wasn't an immediate limit to the amount of people could strateggically and socially communicate through the game at any one time alongside its multiplying player base.
• Engaging GPs - For the majority, staff would alwasy be friendly, there would always be someone online during your time zone and events were held frequently enough to remind us that they were humans too and could actually engage on a friendly level. There are a fewer still that went the extra mile all the time and you deserve to be working on bigger and better things and readily entitiled to way more credit that it seems you currently get under Toonslab comapred to EUROCENTER's ownership.
• Guild Sparring - THE SINGLE BIGGEST EVENT ON THIS SERVER. Barely needs an explanation but this would captivate the whole server for at least 7 days bringing back veteran players and giving randoms the chance to break onto the sparring scene. How you guys haven't expanded this or built upon this system baffles me as it never fails to fill up the server for at least hours. Currently this is the only thing keeping this game alive right now.
• THE COMMUNITY - There are so many individual players and content creators (I'll leave it to you to give credit where credit is due) that have challenged, innovated and preserved the way of the game for the better. Tutorials, Art, Streams, New Game Mechanics etc etc etc that have promoted this game tenfold in comparison to some official adjustments to this game. I'm amazed how this game still seems to thrive with little to no new content or relationship with higher-ups.

There are more of course yet these really did change the game for the better at their time of release.

Concepts you could still deliver on:

• Single Player Achievements - Something else semi-competitive to give players external and internal factors to keep them motivated to play this game
• Finishing the Renovation of the New Guild System (instead of dismantling the old one and leaving it to dry up) - how you can afford to abolish whatever hype you somehow created and lose out on all that potential revenue is beyond me...
• Server and Connection Quality - At one point this game actually amassed thousands of players at every waking hour all online at once; I can't begin to think of the total number of monthly and annual players (playing through the Facebook application alone was between 250,000 to 320,000). Surely you'd want this game to grow and grow and grow? That's the idea of any kind of business, right? More happy customers equals more money, hence a better reputation consequently encourages even more people to join your player base. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This post is to just bring the game's current state to the forefront; the vision of what this game could've been - what it could still be - in comparison of what it one was when all the people cared about was pushing the boundaries of 2D pixels, role playing, fantasy online multiplayer games. This isn't a dig at Unix. Its a polite reminder that this game is still worth saving.

I just hope some of you somehow manage to enjoy this game as much as I once did, because at one point in time this game was the absolute s**t and was going places.

To lazy to read.Only thing I saw it.s ngs so ^^^^

What a thought provoking response

i feel that classic always has alot of potential, and yet it sometimes feels so choked up when it tries something new or when it releases a new shop/area/quest
sadly, some things aren’t going to happen due to limitations of the engine

Classic no doubts has a lot of potential. But I'd argue and say Classic, Despite it's potential. Will likely either die, Or it will never really achieve the title as a very well known game that most irl people will play.

Reason i say this?
1. According to Coco. Graal has no way of detecting 3rd party apps. So basically this means when a certain someone *cough* xyz *cough* makes these hacks. Graal has no way of really stopping these things to begin with. I mean look at how they tried to stop auto farmers with macros or bots, they put a "Are you there" message. Not like there isnt bots that can be programmed to tap the message or aim bots. I know 7 guilds at the top of my head that have autofarm bots daily in their GH. Guess what didnt stop them? That crappy message. Instead now it bugs any other person who farms legitly. so hacks basically are like bullets to clasic that kill it.

2. It takes a unbelievably, and unnecessary amount of time for classic to progress as a game. NGS for example. Took classic ages to do anything with the tent. Ect. I mean solo game developers have built entire games within the timeframe it takes classic to do something or improve a much needed thing.

3. Toonslab + Staff, I'm pretty sure anyone who has randomly got banned for no legitimate reason understands this. You get banned while farming for "sexual misconduct" or hacking or whatever the random reason. Message toonslab. And watch as they either ignore your email or dont rightfully unban you since you did nothing wrong. I've once sent a ticket about a girl who was harassing my friend. I got a response saying they cant unban me. When i wasnt even banned nor even talking about a ban. 10/10 support.

Not really even counting the fact classic has a absolutely terrible habit of destroying itself. Removing 1k hats with nothing to compensate. Nerfing loot so bad that now it is a worse method then farming. Crippling farming by removing explosive arrows. And among other things.

trueeeeeee

As far as I know, practically all mobile apps are sandboxed and can't see outside of their own memory. That means on mobile devices(iphone and android make up 90% of the playerbase) there will never be a way to detect third-party apps. Pretty sure flash is also sandboxed and thus can not see outside of its own threads. Not like it matters, Graal has tried to detect "hacks" and "cheats" via trying to detect third-party apps and it never worked that well.

Not like it would matter, most games have this problem. If it's clientside hackers can access it, there's not much that can be done. The only games I have ever seen successfully deter clientside hacking is VAC(Valve Anti-Cheat System) and you know... it's Valve. They've spent a lot of money on that system.

Is there a reason that iClassic doesn't have the same detector that Classic had for speeders? That'd take care of a lot of the basic, day-to-day hackers.

From what I remember, they used a system based on Ping, since adding speed hacks to Graal sped up the frame rate, your player ping, etc etc

I agree with you tbh, i've been saying this for awhile. classic is a gem of a game but it has a habit of destroying itself for no actual reason.

IDK why graal staff thinks we're asking for an arm and a leg when we just want a fun playable game. I won't even bother diving into all the issues that make this game a small fraction of what it could be, but here's a few.

-Key gameplay features being removed with no alternative in place. Examples, CTF being removed with no alternative cause of "Boosters" when you could just make pks not count. Another example: New guild system, theres been 2 entire years with no actual working guild system in place. Why would you remove an existing system with no replacement? It's like having a working government and preparing to transition government forms, but having total anarchy for 2 years before the new governments specifics are done. It doesn't make any sense at all.

-Server being terrible. This is self explanatory. The servers suck and they make things much worse then they should be. Constant freezing certain times, heavy lag when practice gsing at belle, etc;. A functional server is legit the most basic of requirements for a game and graal fails to deliver. There are plenty of routes graal can take with this, and they've simply decided to take none of the routes.

-Toonslab support. Everyone complains about new admins but what the hell is up with this ****? There are GPs ingame and staff members supposedly available to deal with your problems, but rather then actually helping to solve problems players have, the staff directs people to the "toonslab support" site to send a "ticket." These tickets never actually get read or responded too, so players legit have been LOSING THEIR ACCOUNTS because they have an issue and toonslab/gps decide not to help them.

I haven't even begun to dive into all the things that hurt graal, and I really think graal is a great game at its core. The simplistic combat system, attractive and simple graphics and great community help to make this game fun. But until certain issues are fixed, it will never see its true potential.

We do detect framerate. Doesn't work all the time. We can't use ping though because we can't afford to ping every player who is sparring on every tick.

ok.

i stopped reading after i saw the first sentence

Actually posts. Only talks about the first thing said because it's a technical thing but avoids the rest even though we would like to hear his thoughts on the classic killing itself stuff, having a slow progression, and the poor support from higher-ups. (He didn't even quote the 2nd and 3rd point only the 1st.)

Anyone who doesnt remember this dude is a 2015+ player and must be removed from forums.

Thank goodness I remember clearly seeing this guy on the forums before.

The return of the dev-guy. :O