And he's not an admin on the forums, either.

Well sometimes it is hard to understand the logic of people who are posting on the forums, first they complain about missing additions for gold accounts, next week they complain about the additions for gold accounts

Hey baby, I didn't pull out the big guns but I can. :cool:
This is true.

Correct me if I'm wrong but people are complaining about the missing additions for Gold servers, rather than accounts. The problem is how you guys are implementing things, in my opinion.

Only when the additions are going to be a huge improvement for graal (one I really, really, want to use on my server), that classic accounts can't use. It would make part of my server not function for most of the users x_x

We complain about the lack of content for gold accounts... That doesn't mean add scripting features like this that only gold players can enjoy. It means we want more gold servers, more professional staff, better customer support, a better website, etc, etc, etc.

I really wish you'd read my posts... and if you did read my posts... I really wish you'd give me your feedback on my ideas... not just make some vague statement about how people seem to be contradicting themselves.

I complained about the flying system being less than meets the eye, but I'm not one of the people complaining about a lack of updates.

Would anyone object to making VIP the subscription you need to buy in order to get lifetime access? I mean, otherwise, you just get access to occasional program updates faster, a Guild tag, and the ability to create a single guild of your own.

Meh, I don't like that so much, it takes away from their ability to make money :\

That's a fairly good suggestion, however it doesn't fix the current "Classic" issue.

What could be set in place in conjunction with that to make things work out more effectively?

I wouldnt complain if there were some insentive for me to update. One lil tiny update after another isnt gonna keep me interested so I wouldnt waste my money on VIP. Not worth the money to pay for a game that seems to have so little amount of professional looking/created gameplay.

Edit: Discussion below.

Or you could just discuss it right here in public like everyone else. :rolleyes:

So the panel of experts could have their own educated input? :rolleyes:

Drop the rolley eyes, we're legit experts. My educated input is that calling him M. Portha isn't impressing anybody, least of all Unix.

And then if you're a legit expert you'd understand why it's beneficial to have a private discussion with an executive to formulate a plan before presenting it to a committee (your panel of "experts"). Can't have too many chefs in the kitchen at first.

I just think him and I can have a quick couple conversations exploring different models, seeing what he likes, customizing it to GraalOnline's situation, and then I guess it's really up to him if he wants a committee to review it.

I might be able to see how it could be beneficial for someone to.

Oh, come on, I'm a business major too :rolleyes:

mmmm brownie points...

But seriously... let's not go off topic here. Shaun, this isn't supposed to be an opportunity for you to snuggle up with Unixmad. We're just supposed to be throwing some ideas out there. I'm sure you have tons of great ideas that nobody else here could think of, so please share with the rest of the class.

That would make you the only business major here.

Therefore the best to give marketing advice :D

He doesn't realize marketing is it's own major...

I'm not trying to snuggle up to Unixmad. I don't want a position at CyberJoueurs or GraalOnline. I think the whole staff thing is stupid and really don't want all that responsibility. I am a student and professor's assistant in the Department of Economics at the School of Business at my university and it would be beneficial for me to get work experience when I apply to law school.

I think GraalOnline needs to move back a bit. Remember the GServers, when people were sprouting off their own worlds? I think GraalOnline would financially do best capitalizing off that. They're losing lots of profit from server costs. Licensing GServer software would both cut costs and increase revenue. It was the natural evolution for GraalOnline, commercially, and I don't know why they went down the path they did.

Again, it's difficult to just spout off every possibility of how to approach this, and that's why the details would need to be discussed with Unixmad, to see what direction he wants to go in, because it's all really open ended.

Um...yeah...I know...but If you're majoring in Business administration, you take marketing classes.
The difference between a business admin major and a marketing major aren't that big.

Shaun, the point I'm trying to make is that Graal got this way because the players weren't being heard. Asking Unixmad to talk in private about how to improve Graal is taking yet another step backwards. We don't need any more people privately planning the future of Graal. :/

ROFL.

Ok then, if you're the best to give marketing advice, please share some options Graal has here in the way of marketing itself.

It was a joke ;)
Shaun does know quite a bit more than me, and probably could help quite a bit. I just don't want to say that his opinion should be the only one, every one here has had some good ideas, and Unix should read through all of them.
As for Graal's marketing, it's in piss poor shape, they're not advertising, they're targeting a group that doesn't play or become as active in graal, and a group that does not stay with a game as often or as long. (Younger kids) This group also has more difficulty in subscribing. The administration has created a rift between themselves and the players, and they refuse to take them seriously, Unix sees classic account users as people who are not customers, as opposed to potential customers, and a large part of his current marketing strategy, the image of graal is hurting, and they're not doing enough to fix it... Overall, Unix's made some bad business decisions, and he's lucky they've worked out this long. It's about time for some reform.

Everyone knows mistakes have been made, no one is denying that. The topic is about idea's and I don't see you giving any of them towards this topic.

That sure sounds like a fancy way to say you mark stuff and fetch coffee.

No, I do research and help prepare/discuss lectures and papers.

Who cares?

This isn't about you and fetching coffee.

I think it'd be nice to open a VIP serverlist where only VIP members can go. This would include beta testing new things such as this, and this would create a feel of "wow, it'd be real nice to see how everything works and learn how to use it."

Update features regularly and it will become something worth buying. After a while of keeping it on the VIP serverlist, you can revert it to gold, classic and trial access. Another thing you should consider is making a gold account something more valuable. Give it something more than two servers to play on and access to hidden playerworlds. I know I'm the little guy, but if you'd like to discuss things more thoroughly send me a forum PM. I'm sure we can reach a compromise that would benefit everyone, including you.

I'm not convinced that these costs are very high seeing as hardly any of the playerworlds people paid to create are very extensive or consume much bandwidth (because they pretty much just have some idling RCs, at most). If you license GServer software (at a lower price than the server rental fees), the number of people who would stop renting servers because they no longer have to could potentially be large, and I doubt that very many people not already renting servers would want to buy the software. Plus there would be piracy concerns.

If the costs were not high, then GraalOnline would not be making a policy change to make up for them, would it?

I tried to explain this to him over AIM. There are like 100 private playerworlds with 0 players on them right now. How much could that seriously be costing Graal? That's $10,000 if all 100 of those are 1 year rentals. I highly doubt it's costing $10,000 to host 0 playercount servers.

Graal's main drain in funding would be hosting the gold/classic servers/website and forums, as well as office rental, paying staff, and whatever other fees they might have that are unrelated to playerworld hosting. His idea is for Graal to basically remove the Classic list and host only the gold servers... and then charge people for gservers in which they would have to pay for their own hosting but they could make up their own rules and charge people to play there. Like I told him, they are already making $100 off each playerworld rental and those playerworlds are doing nothing... so what makes him think that any player run server would survive on it's own? Let alone be good enough to make people want to pay for it.

But this pretty much sums him up right here:

ShaunAndresen: I have absolutely no faith in the global GraalOnline bureaucracy
ShaunAndresen: And I have no care for the members of the GraalOnline community

The only policy change I see being suggested by Unix here involves removing "lifetime" accounts, nothing to do with the people paying $120 a year to have a server that goes nowhere.

Fine. I'll spare you guys and do something better with my time from now on like fetching coffee.

You guys win. Or will when a forum admin or supermod or whatever gets online.

Woah, nice work Koni. We beat a professor's assistant. We must be pretty awesome. Like, as awesome as an actual professor.

I think this calls for a round of high fives, wouldn't you say, Professor Googi?