07-10-2022
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Global Administrator
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Lynn, Ma
Posts: 693
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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.
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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.
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