What are we? Noobies?  

The day that we will get the full map is the day that Thor will fart out flaming thumbtacks made of garnet.  

Ye old 2009 map for PC classic...so alike but so diffrent i dont know why people overglorify it.if theres not a wipe in the next 6 years we will have all those towns (diffrent from the one on that map)  

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hlight=contego

^^ (Guess the BTK guys did some good for Classic after-all).
On a side note, I clearly lacked patience for Rufus at the time though. =( Sorry Rufus.

But who knows maybe this didn't have anything to do with iclassic being born or maybe Classic would have turned into a card game like the direction it was taking. I dunno tbh I'd like to think our voices can make a difference. =p

Looks like we need to focus our attention on a really good server upgrade now. ;)

shh im huntin a unix. 0=)  

I miss 1999 particularly, and then 2000/2001 because it was an era of creativity & authenticity. I had creative control and quite frankly I have toooons of ideas, and the spirit of the original players was still around. However, contrary to how my ideas have revolutionized the game and continued to do so—I was banned because of politics & economics. I was accused of being "just some selfish kid who made some graphics" to cover some guilt; and so I keep my mouth shut. You don't get my ideas. Have your corporate disney land, but know that the enchantment of the inspiration of the holy grail was banned, and what is left is a bunch of modernized ideas.  

Posted by Conquest

I miss 1999 particularly, and then 2000/2001 because it was an era of creativity & authenticity. I had creative control and quite frankly I have toooons of ideas, and the spirit of the original players was still around. However, contrary to how my ideas have revolutionized the game and continued to do so—I was banned because of politics & economics. I was accused of being "just some selfish kid who made some graphics" to cover some guilt; and so I keep my mouth shut. You don't get my ideas. Have your corporate disney land, but know that the enchantment of the inspiration of the holy grail was banned, and what is left is a bunch of modernized ideas.

When Graal became p2p Stefan and unixmad's priority should have been customer service/training. Unfortunately it wasn't but that's when I took over in late mid 2001 and was often having to deal with upset paying players because of staff mistreatment/abuse etc. Then I deal with the upset staff about player mistreatment/abuse of the players. Server "Owners" thinking they owned the server completely and making their own consequences for paying customers. I changed that pretty quickly to "Manager". =p Sadly many were completely unreasonable and made it very unproductive for everyone. Frankly I didn't have enough patience because I was so worn out. -.-  

Posted by contego

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...hlight=contego

^^ (Guess the BTK guys did some good for Classic after-all).
On a side note, I clearly lacked patience for Rufus at the time though. =( Sorry Rufus.

But who knows maybe this didn't have anything to do with iclassic being born or maybe Classic would have turned into a card game like the direction it was taking. I dunno tbh I'd like to think our voices can make a difference. =p

DC (RIP) made the most relevant point in that thread. There still isn't a Classic with old levels and default hit detection. At best iClassic is the fourth option of your poll, but people are only playing it (PC natives included) because of its larger playerbase.  

Posted by Rufus

DC (RIP) made the most relevant point in that thread. There still isn't a Classic with old levels and default hit detection. At best iClassic is the fourth option of your poll, but people are only playing it (PC natives included) because of its larger playerbase.

There are several important reasons why Classic is popular, and some of which you wouldn't believe because you are atheist.  

no regrets that I quit client in late 2008/early 2009 based on the banter in that thread

Posted by Conquest

There are several important reasons why Classic is popular, and some of which you wouldn't believe because you are atheist.

lmfao  

Posted by contego

When Graal became p2p Stefan and unixmad's priority should have been customer service/training. Unfortunately it wasn't but that's when I took over in late mid 2001 and was often having to deal with upset paying players because of staff mistreatment/abuse etc. Then I deal with the upset staff about player mistreatment/abuse of the players. Server "Owners" thinking they owned the server completely and making their own consequences for paying customers. I changed that pretty quickly to "Manager". =p Sadly many were completely unreasonable and made it very unproductive for everyone. Frankly I didn't have enough patience because I was so worn out. -.-

Graal was not supposed to be P2P; this was all shortly after I launched Destiny, which due to its size they offered to host it on their server as the first playerworld for me. What happened was I was a game developer they knew who played with their free software, and came up with ideas for an awesome piece of groundbreaking new software as well as tons of other ideas that I needed to improve my own content—which they took and implemented into their own software. I created a new creature race messing around one day, then a whole new server world for it per their encouragement (though I always saw a much bigger vision for the classic server) as well as held holiday events and things. There was something called "New World" which was full of a bunch of developers, and they were trying to make something together but not much was getting accomplished.

I had my own visions, played the game a lot, knew everyone, knew how to get stuff done & created enormous amounts of my own content, and was very creative & practical esp. for 14. I didn't know that I had creative rights to everything that I came up with; I knew how to give people content and enjoyment without a team of 12 people taking over a year for something people would love; so, they took my stuff, used it, & sold it. Customer care should have been important, but company never planned for it. It was too busy trying to make money off my sudden goldmine to pay themselves, new people, and improving business expenses. I was the original Game Master for 2 weeks of my server as Graal when it came to life as a business, and there were so many death threats about exploitation I left. That's when you had to fill in.  

Posted by Rufus

DC (RIP) made the most relevant point in that thread. There still isn't a Classic with old levels and default hit detection. At best iClassic is the fourth option of your poll, but people are only playing it (PC natives included) because of its larger playerbase.

Agreed, RIP DC.

Iclassic is the closest to Classic since before 2003. =)  

Well, with the original post and with the followups, there's certainly a communication breakdown when it comes to paid admins and the volunteer player community, and it has been around since before I ever started developing. It also exists between volunteers because well, volunteers can only volunteer when they have time available to do so.

The original server map had grown with volunteers, many of which later retired (some banned) from the game. People who submitted content and then later couldn't maintain it created technical debt. To complicate matters more for Classic, the direction of Cyberjoueurs (then the owner shell of Graal Online), went to hosting many servers, and selling them to people who would pay to have their own game server as a business model.

The technical debt on Classic was too much for all of the active volunteers to handle with changes to the technical model that made it easier to develop server-by-server than for a single server. I had been working on trying to take care of that technical debt as a volunteer when the original Classic server was wiped. Master Storm, another Graalian working at the time, pulled an all-nighter coming up with at least a playable server with core levels and certain requirements.

What you see from the original map posted in this thread was my attempt to fuse together new and old content after the original overworld was wiped, and it was really only 4-5 other volunteers working with me with different time commitments. I somewhat regret being an asshole to some people when they didn't put in as much time as others, because they were also *volunteers*. I rewrote what Master Storm had implemented for movement and HD systems the next year, without any prior experience. HD was a bit controversial because it was serverside and very different from the clientside HD system that had existed before. It was also a requirement of the server management, which I guess changed later.

What ended up happening was that creating levels for the overworld took a lot less time than creating dungeons/quests, so there was a bigger overworld than in-depth content available. Dungeons and such need more scripting talent to add something valuable, and not very many talented programmers have enough time to commit to things like making baddies and puzzles function within deadlines. I fired volunteers because there was no progress on the Gnome Caves (which was intended to be the first quest, and still is incomplete).

Since then it's somewhat taboo to create new overworld content unless it has some depth of content that doesn't incorporate the overworld (i.e. what I didn't "do right"). I think that more open spaces could harbor similar depths of content without it needing to be densely packed, but everyone has their own opinion (the developers, volunteer staff, players, etc).

Gotta get back to family. Merry Xmas everyone!  

Well I think the server needs an expert editor and muse like myself, but I have to say that I definitely adore what you've done with Classic even after all this time. So much of it has been preserved, and that isn't easy to do considering most of the admins are new. I am impressed  

Posted by Conquest

Well I think the server needs an expert editor and muse like myself, but I have to say that I definitely adore what you've done with Classic even after all this time. So much of it has been preserved, and that isn't easy to do considering most of the admins are new. I am impressed

There are already a lot of muses and expert editors. What the server needs is professional-tier management and professional-tier developers.

 

Posted by deadowl

There are already a lot of muses and expert editors. What the server needs is professional-tier management and professional-tier developers.

Right. I am a professional tier developer and manager, but alas I am not offering my services; and I am not even offering my services as a muse, either. Not until someone apologizes to me like a grown man and fixes things. But alas, I wish you all the best!