Posted by Kendrick

The Morano Family
PPA (Player Protection Agency) In other words, Agents.

The Morano Family has vanished from iEra and left no trace behind, except their gun. (Morano Thompson) There is a huge possibility that they'll be back.

PPA is very weak and are very sneaky. In fact, there is no proof of their work. Only their base, which is in Northridge. (Grab the rock above the Hotel.)

Cool to see that these are still kind of around. I created the Morano Family and much of PPA when I was lead developer in the earlier days of Era.

We were working to create a player run system of 6 or so gangs that had their own self-sustaining means of funding their wars.

Tachi was going to craft melee weapons and sell them, as well as elixirs. They were more of a triad-type gang. PPA was going to craft pistols and "enforce" the peace. They, at one point, bought 49% of Tachi leadership and the right to craft elixirs. The Blazian Bandits were going to craft assault rifles and were the urban-type gang. Black Holst were mercenaries and were going to craft explosives. Think paramilitary. I can't recall what Los Carteles were going to craft (we were avoiding drugs as a whole), but were cast as a hispanic-type gang.

The Morano Family came after this (prior to the police force, etc). They were to craft their custom tommy gun and they were going to have a wine import craftable that acted as a durability buff. I acted as its first leader as its functions were established, and then handed it off to non-developer players after a few weeks.

I helped develop much of the early Era content with Chrisz and others. Later on, people like Rick, BirdBird, GhostPirate, Angel, BlooKat, Gabriel, Mehido, Jenn, and others contributed immensely to Era's success while I was around. It's been so many years - I wish I could remember everyone!  

Posted by Phayze

Cool to see that these are still kind of around. I created the Morano Family and much of PPA when I was lead developer in the earlier days of Era.

Ayy, I was following your other two posts and waiting around to see if it was actually you-- your account was 1996MUSTANG or something like that, if I remember right.

Posted by Phayze

Tachi was going to craft melee weapons and sell them, as well as elixirs. They were more of a triad-type gang. PPA was going to craft pistols and "enforce" the peace. They, at one point, bought 49% of Tachi leadership and the right to craft elixirs. The Blazian Bandits were going to craft assault rifles and were the urban-type gang. Black Holst were mercenaries and were going to craft explosives. Think paramilitary. I can't recall what Los Carteles were going to craft (we were avoiding drugs as a whole), but were cast as a hispanic-type gang.

Yeah, I recall that a lot of the footwork was done in those days-- Shortly after Drak/Dell left BH, we had those plastic explosives in the B2 shop room, which created those hand grenades.

Los Carteles had one of the most beautifully open bases at the time(Second only to Rubeus-- I always loved their garage+main). But that aside, I got the vibe that LC was some kind of front for something. I recall that Kadar had a water-bong NPC that he used to run around with.

Their connection with PyroTech (Kadar+Bananas Chill) could have solidified the belief; though it wasn't out of the ordinary at the time-- Neo Technologies was ran by Kinetaro White, and the White family ran Black Holst (Kae,Chaos, Mistay, etc).

Unfortunately it seems that these gang backstories fizzled out after you left-- Each gang pretty much turned into just refaces of one-another, and eventually themes alltogether went to the wayside.

If you fastforward to iEra, the gang system is very impersonal; and it's turned into somewhat of a "king of the hill" style; presumably to accommodate a larger playerbase-- gangs don't even have their own bases anymore.

I think that is the greatest tragedy of iEra-- the lack of a decent basing system robs the newer generation of a great game.

Awesome fun facts, Phayze- I like to be taken back to those days when our trees looked like green fire.
Good to see you again!  

Posted by Meph

Ayy, I was following your other two posts and waiting around to see if it was actually you-- your account was 1996MUSTANG or something like that, if I remember right.


Yeah, I recall that a lot of the footwork was done in those days-- Shortly after Drak/Dell left BH, we had those plastic explosives in the B2 shop room, which created those hand grenades.

Los Carteles had one of the most beautifully open bases at the time(Second only to Rubeus-- I always loved their garage+main). But that aside, I got the vibe that LC was some kind of front for something. I recall that Kadar had a water-bong NPC that he used to run around with.

Their connection with PyroTech (Kadar+Bananas Chill) could have solidified the belief; though it wasn't out of the ordinary at the time-- Neo Technologies was ran by Kinetaro White, and the White family ran Black Holst (Kae,Chaos, Mistay, etc).

Unfortunately it seems that these gang backstories fizzled out after you left-- Each gang pretty much turned into just refaces of one-another, and eventually themes alltogether went to the wayside.

If you fastforward to iEra, the gang system is very impersonal; and it's turned into somewhat of a "king of the hill" style; presumably to accommodate a larger playerbase-- gangs don't even have their own bases anymore.

I think that is the greatest tragedy of iEra-- the lack of a decent basing system robs the newer generation of a great game.

Awesome fun facts, Phayze- I like to be taken back to those days when our trees looked like green fire.
Good to see you again!

That's me! Unfortunately, I lost control of *Mustang1988 in a successful phish through Angel and Stefan on ICQ and requested that it be globally banned many, many years ago. I never bothered recovering it as I was already "retired" and now I don't have access to my old Paypal receipt to prove ownership.

I briefly experimented with a few different visual drug effects but we never had the balls to implement it publicly. I'm sure it would have added a whole new dynamic to the game if you account for drug wars and busts between the gangs. Los Carteles definitely would have been the recipients of any manufacturing or importing.

Thanks for the flashback with all of the names! I remember you as well. I was younger than I let on during those days and I've only stayed in contact with a few people from the Graal community.

Graal as a whole seems drastically different... I'm sure the Facebook connectivity and mobile-focused redesigns forced much of it. I seem to recall it being a little more stable and more professional looking with regards to the login/playerworld GUI and the website! I'd be interested in what happened after those golden years!

Edit: More fun facts!

The first way to make money on Era was picking and selling flowers. I'm not sure if this still exists. People literally picked flowers for hours in order to buy weapons to kill other people picking flowers. This remained one of the only ways to "spawn" new money for quite a while.

Once the separate NPC Server was introduced, Chrisz developed a script that allowed him to follow players level to level. We had a problem with speed and no-clip cheaters being able to see what level we were in while invisible. It would recreate the player's current level's tiles and create NPC clones of anyone near them, showing their positions and ganis. Many people thought that the new banning system was entirely automated... It wasn't.

This was expanded to allow admins to view a world map of the server's levels, much like the actual game map. However, you could click it to launch "missiles" that would fly across the map and cause explosions in the target level. This wasn't really used, but Stefan loved it.  

yo phayze  

PPA was beast, I played for maybe 6 months when it first came out and Chrisz was manager. --Chris-- was FAQ Admin and I believe he also had powers to recruit to PPA. The only other PPA members I remember were Lyndzey and myself.  

Posted by Crono

yo phayze

Hey man! There's a name I remember. Hope all is well!

Posted by Thallen

PPA was beast, I played for maybe 6 months when it first came out and Chrisz was manager. --Chris-- was FAQ Admin and I believe he also had powers to recruit to PPA. The only other PPA members I remember were Lyndzey and myself.

I remember --Chris-- and Lyndzey! Pegleg, too, but he might have come later.  

Posted by Phayze

Hey man! There's a name I remember. Hope all is well!

ya man, where you been?  

Posted by Nabu Lapse

Fun fact, iEra is actually one of the few iPhone servers that doesn't have its own forum.

You know what's even funnier?

We were the first to create our own forums.
All others did theirs after us.  

Posted by Anero

You know what's even funnier?

We were the first to create our own forums.
All others did theirs after us.

You want to know what's the funniest?

Your desperate actions to promote your server.  

Posted by Illusions

You want to know what's the funniest?

Your desperate actions to promote your server.

You wanna know what's even more funnier?

Era's forum community is far better than what I've seen here at Graalians.  

Posted by Crono

ya man, where you been?

All over the place. I went to WoW and ran a guild for 6 years or so after playing Graal. My gaming was interrupted when I went to college and now I'm engaged and code firmware professionally for HPE.

One of my nephews actually posted an image from Graal on Facebook and I found myself feeling nostalgic! It looks like Graal could use some help and I'm thinking about poking around a bit.

What have you been up to!? It's been well over a decade since I've talked to anyone except for Icehawk (from Kingdoms).  

Posted by Mikey Zanereth

You wanna know what's even more funnier?

Era's forum community is far better than what I've seen here at Graalians.

The rules are too strict. Stop defending Anero.  

Posted by Anero

You know what's even funnier?

We were the first to create our own forums.
All others did theirs after us.

Fun fact: Era-go is the only succesfull independant graal forum .


Other fun facts:

* We had ghettoicedtea
* Auctions were a normal activity.
* Holiday events back in 2012-2013 were the best.
* Callimuc was a hero. (scripting guru).
* Dropping was comparable to gambling.
* M4 was easy to obtain.
* Skill-Play.
* Real-Spar.  

I'll defend whoever I want, because those who i defend don't deserve the hate they receive.

So shush.  

Era-Go is back online