Moderators should be voted.
Graal has lost ~ 200 players compared to twelve month ago (source: graal.us),
the administration should think about their policy to never ever accept or ask for the players opinion.

drama queen
still wonder why elizabeth isnt forum banned
darlene you are a way to weak for this job :(

No she isn't, she's actually pretty damn strong to have stuck around after, what, 5 years of constant criticism? Let alone unfortunate events irl.

Bad things happen to everyone, we're all still here.

Hmm if they like Graal they can play it without posting on the forum. If they don't like the way we run the forums they don't need to use it. The game is playable without using the forum. That's what I meant.
Do you think someone is leaving Graal because he/she don't like Unixmad's forum rules? o_o

Pretty sure you didn't continue being the same super mod while atleast two of your relatives died + everyone on the forum still criticizing you + groups of people dedicated to hating you.

Darlene isn't the only person in the world to continue doing something novel after someone in her family has died. It's not that I'm not giving her credit for putting up with us, but everyone goes through stress in their life.

The forums are a part of the community, and as this game is heavily community driven it adds to the overall experience. The forums shouldn't be a battleground for people bringing up threads that end up like this all of the time, nor should they be so uncomfortable with the amount of forum rules there are and it is because of the way these forums are ran that both exist.

The majority of the Graal community are registered to these forums, yet only a minority of these people post on the forums. The players don't post on these forums because of the reasons outlined above, and it should never be a case of "like it or get lost".

Do you even know what my original post was responding to?

dont get me wrong darlene isnt a bad mod ^^
but people start dancing on her nose and dont respect her
so she has to make an example...
maybe than more people "play" graal instead of spamming the forum

to the topic ... i prefer mods which are "old" like darlene "sorry for the old but i hope you know what i mean XD"
younger people care to much about friendship and try to act cool
and iam sure if we vote the mods we get people like elizabeth ...

3 within a year, and you wouldn't beleive the things said in anger about that. Truly ridiculous, and the really sad part is that it doesn't even phase me anymore.

Not all of them dont post because of the rules. I have talked to many that dont post here because they are attacked by some of the members of the forums that have been here awhile. not everyone can handle being treated like an outsider.

I prefer "mature" :), and I agree with you, except for pointing the finger at Elizabeth. She isn't a bad person, just a typical, young teenage girl is all.

She's strong enough to handle it, being a good or bad mod is a different story.

The forums allow us to communicate better. If we expressed everything through e-mails and pms it would make it difficult for any manager would be able to see how many people are in support of a certain idea. Not to mention anyone learning how to develop being able to gather advice for several people at once. These forums are more than a club house.

BTW Darlene I believe Darlene puts up with so much **** because she is the most interactive with us. I mean really, Sam is a great punching bag when it comes to words. So guys, don't forget to vent your anger out on Sam. He might be feeling left out.

That's faulty logic at best. Just because registered users don't post, doesn't mean that they don't like the rules/mods. Valikorlia is composed of nearly all Classic accounts, for example, and only two people (Inverness & I) ever post on these forums, because the rest of the people simply don't care to get on the GCC.

It's not "fault logic" when you get outside of your home server shell and play on a decent amount of servers to understand how the majority of the playerbase feel about these forums. Moderation is a large contributing factor as to why people do not post here.

preeeetty sure no one would vote for me... why would i be a voting choice in the first place?


if we voted for moderators, darlene would pick a number of people that she believes would be suitable for the job, and put them as the choices. she wouldn't pick random people, like me.

But to say that all unregistered users don't post here because of Darlene, Sam, and Unixmad is still completely ridiculous. There are 1000+ people on right now. You're telling me that 960 people, less the trials, have this hatred of the moderators, and don't post here because of that.

I would say that most of the registered users don't post because (a) they don't really have a reason to, and (b) they bought a subscription to play the game, not to the get on the forums.

Look, I see stupid rules here. Not being allowed to post URLs? Stupid. Not being able to quote somebody without writing something in return? Pretty stupid. Being forbidden from complaining about the rules? Oh, wait. Anyways, yeah, not a cool rule.

But, there comes a point when most people would realize that, hey, what I'm doing isn't working towards achieving the outcome I want. Maybe I should change my approach? That's all I'm trying to say.

:confused:

http://graalonline.com/

I thought they added the iphone players and graal players together to get that number...to make it look like more people play the game than they really do.

That number has nothing to do with how many people are on Graal, there's about 489 people online, going by the RC serverlist.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't people playing Zone on the iphone?

My point still stand, even if there aren't 1000+ people online. Rufus is saying that are roughly 440 people, less trial accounts, that do not log on to these forums because of the moderators.

The important part of that post, though, was the whole change of approach thing...

Do those people have access to the Graal forums? No.

No it's not the same Zone, I believe it's a dedicated one for the iPhone.

That's with the iPhone players included, i.e the ones playing adrenaline poker.

we could just perm ban you and get the same result.

I see. Thanks

i'm sure that ban would have a GREAT ban reason.

You're the one who said that.

I knew you were going to say something like this, so I decided to take the initiative and ask the players of various servers directly as to why they don't post on these forums. I logged onto the servers with decent playercounts, PM'd each player individually with the question "Why don't you visit the official Graal forums" and categorically tallied the results. I received 42 replies from Era players, 31 replies from Unholy Nation players, and 48 replies from Zodiac players. I did log onto other servers such as Valikorlia, N-Pulse and Classic, but the sample wasn't as large as these three. The results were generally predictable.

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...ult_zodiac.png

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...lresult_un.png

http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/l...result_era.png

Do you see the problem yet?

Content is the problem? So it sounds like we need more interesting threads!

i bet everyone lost interest when "person above you" was deleted.



moderation is also a large factor within the polls.

Nice poll Rufus

The Forums shouldt be so "unaware of existance"

there should be more links around graal =P

Who's denying there's a problem? I'm denying that moderation (which is the reason outlined above' that you speak of) is not as big of a deal as you make it, and it's certainly not the largest reason, or even an incredibly outstanding reason as to why people don't use these forums.

Although I probably should just stop adding fuel to the flame... when adding Valikorlia, N-Pulse, and Classic to your list:
'Uninteresting content' and 'no interest in forums' are practically the same thing, which brings that total to 59, which kind of justifies my '(a) they don't really have a reason to'.

But, I digress. I wouldn't mind voting for a moderator. :p I don't ever do anything to warrant any kind of worrying about who's a moderator and who is not.

Uninteresting content - these forums have stupid things

no interest in forums - I don't like forums

If you feel the need to nitpick, sure. Doesn't really affect the outcome, though.

You're the one nitpicking.

:rolleyes:

Is that the Valikorlia superiority complex kicking in?

No interest in forums
If you don't enjoy posting or reading forums, then this place is obviously not for you. I can understand that some people just don't enjoy messing around on forums and I know it's not for everyone, fair enough. The responses totaled to 12 out of 121. With that in mind, one would assume that 109 of that 121 could be potential members of this community.

Technical Issues
The respondents of the sample had very similar technical issues. The majority of these issues were to do with their passwords being refused. The issue was generally surrounding the change in how passwords were set, with your password being the same for everything Graal related. This change was only announced on the forums, so if you were not an active member at the time of the change you wouldn't be aware of that, and obviously the people who had this problem were not. As this thread is no longer stickied, it is up to the forum administrators to place this information in a place where people can access it easily. This is not the only technical issue that came up, and I helped as best as I could and have seen a couple of the players on the forums since I spoke to them. A little effort can go a long way, yet the FAQ hasn't been touched to deal with such issues.

Theme / Layout
It is not hard to notice that the forums do not reflect Graal very well. I'm currently using Loriel's forum style so I didn't really know what the fuss was about as mine looks like it could represent a lot, but then I remembered how bad the actual style is. We need some new forum styles and that's pretty much a given but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. The aesthetics aren't the only thing that received complaints though. The forum layout itself is very cluttered and isn't very consistent. I brought this up myself and although I did get a response, months later, even after reminding him, nothing changed? Heh.. I see what you mean by positive approaches!!

Moderation / Restrictions
Era is the only server out of the three that has a dedicated area on this forum, and with that came the highest rate of distaste for the moderation and restrictions placed on the forum. Go figure. Like I've said before, these forums are being ruined by over moderation of content that doesn't require it. Rules will always exist on this forum, and so they should. Rules are generally used as guidelines however, rather than heavily enforced instructions on how to post. The context in which the moderators of this forum take the rules is far too black and white and far too heavy; the rules themselves wouldn't be that big of a deal if they served as a guideline and a reference for when "bad" posts need to be removed, but that is not the case here.

Negative Community
This is an amusing one. The "negative" community included comments such as people with massive egos, people who try to act like smartasses, people who are immature, and people who just all round enjoy trolling everyone else. You're always going to have those kind of people, this is the internet and this is how the forums have been for a long time. It has got to the point now however, where it is hard to avoid the negativity. The forum isn't populated with just negative nerds though, it is just hugely influenced. Another part of the "negative" community would be those people who just post complaints about the moderators, or end up fighting in these "wars" with no resolve. The constant battle of "them and us" is boring, but no matter what approach you take with Moon Goddess or Sam nothing ever changes, so people vent. If change was promoted and positivity was reflected, would these threads stop? Probably. Are these threads going to continue so long as nothing changes? Definitely.

Uninteresting Content
The largest reoccurring problem throughout all of the servers; the lack of content that interests the player. I can understand where they're coming from too, I also often struggle to find a thread beyond the spam or horrible suggestions that interests me.

The current content being posted is due to the community, though not entirely. Removing post counts and allowing 'spam threads' in the NGRT served only to alienate the players who look for decent discussions. Lets face it, there isn't that much to talk about when it comes to Graal, and that is why we have the NGRT forum. There is so much you can talk about in a general discussion forum, yet it is littered with MySpace forum games. It is up to the moderation team to encourage decent discussions and you cannot do this through heavily enforced forum rules, nor allowing the problem to get worse by just allowing crappy things like forum games to be posted every other day. Removing the post count and removing the shield from obvious spam threads just ruined that forum.

In addition to the NGRT, the forums does not have specific areas for some of the most popular servers and because of this they end up having to make their own. I have ran two Zodiac forums now and both times they were pretty popular, the community was nice, and the threads were quality. Every time I left the forum it went to hell and I think Zodiac gets a new forum every other week. Unholy Nation has a forum and it has a lot of characters on it, but again they've had 3 within the past year. There is a demand for forums within these servers, but the official Graal forums don't have areas for them and their homegrown forums just end up falling apart. If the administrators played on Graal they would be well aware of these issues and would provide solutions for the players, but they don't.

"No Gold" / Unaware of Existence
I was really surprised when I received a lot of responses stating that the player had no Gold time on their accounts, so it's obvious that the word hasn't really been put out there. What surprised me even more was the relatively large amount of players that didn't know Graal even had an "official" forum. I've noticed that some players have been on since I informed them that it existed and is now free and that's good, but that tiny little message that was in the login news for a few days just wasn't good enough. The forums should be listed all over the place and the administrators should be proactive in trying to attract people to visit and contribute to them.

With all this in mind, how can you say that Unixmad, Stefan, Moon Goddess and Sam are not at fault in their complete disregard for how the playerbase feels about the forums? They haven't even asked as far as I know. All of these issues are linked together in the lack of effort that is put in by the people in charge. What you guys actually do is assume from the minority of the people that post here and instead of branching out, being proactive in solving the problems, you just continue as though this is as good as it gets. Since the forums became free there was an initial increase in players, yet it doesn't feel like it has changed at all. This is why people complain, and this is why people are unhappy about the forums. Acting like an elitist and telling these people to "take a different approach" is fruitless, because the majority of us have tried it all before. I just don't know if they care.

win.