What Happened To Classic?
 

Well, i use to play Graal ALONG time ago and Classic use to be THE best and most popular. It brings back good times. But why have people moved to UN? Hope Classic boosts up one day.

Because its the first server noobs see.

Short answer - the future happened. Stefan saw it was a losing battle trying to keep hackers contained while all the processing was done clientside, so he introduced serverside. Then as he focused on G2K1 and Kingdoms, support dwindled for those servers such as Classic that still used default arrows, movement, damage, baddies, maps, minimaps, weapon scripting, signs, etc - and eventually all those things were effectively disabled. So the valiant LATs I left in charge made a few mighty attempts to convert all...let's see, 7033+ levels, either by hand or by their own tools, to compliance.

If it succeeded, neither of us would be on this board right now - it didn't, it's waaaaay too much for any one person, for any one team, for any one community to convert in a reasonable ammount of time. So they all quit in dismay, and the new team did something lame with a new map and Peen Lake which they'll never live down, then they left and Mass and Mass did a pretty good job of rebuilding the system on serverside - so it looks like Classic and works like Classic but works on the new server software - and they just have to reconvert all 7033+ levels to work with the new system. By hand. Preferably without taking artistic license. Which is even harder for a scripter to do...I've been playing around with rebuilding Baddies (a common project without a clear answer), and every time I start on "This baddy moves...hey, I should make it drop bombs! Make a bomberman baddy! Hey, I should make a gani so the player can ride it like a horse if they jump on it somehow, a Baddy Rodeo! Smash it into walls, that'd be awesome!" - but not very Classic, not the Classic you and I remember.

Tyhm, I think I'll save your short answer for the 2394 times I get asked "What happened to Classic." My version has slowly reverted to "it died"

Why not remove it then? Along with the other 6 dead servers?

^
That was stupid.

Classic isn't dead, it doesn't need to be removed.

27 players on a weekend afternoon is dead to me:P.

It should be deleted. It lacks playerworld requirements.

What are playerworld requirements? I don't think there are any. And if there are some, then no one is enforcing them.

Then there's the argument of BUT CLASIC ISNT A PLAYRWURLD!!!!

It shouldn't be removed, but if I understand the requirements correctly (the last time I read them), it seems it should go to hosted while it is being worked on, or something.

Oh yea...forgot about that. x.x

It isn't.

It's obviously playrun now.

What happened to classic? P2P happened to classic.

You're obviously mistaken.

Simple solution. Remove UN. The players will play somewhere. :)

Agreed, UN is trash.

A lot of people would disagree with you.

Trial accounts and "LOLZ I R LEET" people don't count.

*shrugs* I don't play UN, but the fact remains that there are a lot of people who play it for whatever reason.

And alot more would agree with him.

That's a fix, sure, but it's not a Solution. That's just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic - another UN would rise and all the newbies would go there instead.

The Solution is for Classic to reclaim its title as Official Newbie Server. The method is to sticky it at the top of the playerworld list, so newbies go "OOH I GO THERE" and everyone who doesn't want to play there just ignores it, as though it were the column header or an old announcement.
Then, ideally, relax the restriction on Newbies Can't Save and Playerworlds Can't Give Passwords, so newbies can play Classic without the "Mask of Majora" syndrome - "Every time I go there, it's the same day! I have to redo the [by now] stupid Push The Block quest, then I have to redo the [by now] lame Save The Castle quest..." - instead they just get frustrated at having to remember a 20-character password on a nag-screen: "Just $20 to buy the game and upgrade forever, you'll never have to deal with another one of these Password Saves!" - but people will suffer through such things to play a Free Game, they're used to it.

Way to prove me wrong? Last time I checked people were going "OMG STEFN DUN 4GET ABUOT US ;-; WER UR BABIES"

Gee, I wonder what that's hinting. Classic is as player-run today as UN and the other servers. Sure it may have history, but thats just it. It's history. Its just another classic server now...it's player run. Not one global works on it.

Who's working on it doesn't make it player-run. The manager ensures it isn't player run, and if you wish to get that technical, all servers have always been player run.

"What happened to classic? P2P happened to classic."

agreed.
What happened to Ludas overworld he like converted 3/4 of the main old map get that online :P

they rejected it when I showed it to them, then I reformatted and lost all the files, all storm needs to say is "okay if someone will convert the levels we'll upload it" then i'll get back to work from scratch.

The day they get rid of Classic is the day I leave graal.

Ok so would you like to explain why Classic isn't a playerworld?

Because Stefan and Unixmad have decided its one of Graal's Official Servers.

Orly?

I really do miss old classic. I don't understand really the technical aspects of the NPC server or how clientside acts now, but apparently it's not an easy matter of just switching a few vars around.

Nobody is really expecting Classic to be transformed into the server it should be in a day or even a month. However, so few ppl are actually working on it and updates take forever. That in no way justifies that it should be removed, however. Classic is an official Graal server and shouldn't be done away with despite its current position. I personally can't wait until the day everything *is* brought back up, and that will most likely be the day I upgrade and bring more friends here. =P

As for "stickying" Classic to the top of the serverlist, that's a fairly simple thing to do, all you need to do is have a separate folder between Gold and Playerworlds and name it Classic. Then click on the server named Classic. (Graal > Classic > Classic) I think that's a good idea.

Give them time, they will see the waste of space it currently is and remove it.

Keeping classic alive is like pushing **** up hill.

Actually, it's more so a problem of getting the player base involved in development like it used to be. I'm making horses, and I ask players if they could make a spyfire gani since I don't have anyone I can ask on staff to make it, and not one submission yet.

What's a "Spyfire"?

Spyfire=the partial-explosion used for horses-breathing-fire.

But if you have an explosion gani, it's kinda trivial.

And if you don't, then you don't have the bombs for them to eat in the first place.

You're supposed to be semi-smart yes?

Get the point, no one wants to help because they know their submission is a waste of time and know it won't bring in players. It's dead, let's move on hey?

Era has a password system, but it's basically just for staff and players who want the extra security of another password (or who feel that their account might be compromised). As soon as you log on the coloreffect of the level is set to black, no items can be dropped and you can't move until you enter the password. The passwords are encoded and stored in the players strings, but it probably wouldn't be hard to create something similar that stores all the players strings in a text file and then re-sets them from the textfile to their strings when they log back on and enter the password. It wouldn't be legal to do that though :P

Maybe something like this:

A trial account logs on, and starts playing. When they beat the first quest, they are given a (unique?) password, which the player would input the next time they logged on. In doing so, their account is restored to the last quest they beat (item and heart wise only, deaths/kills/etc wouldn't be saved to keep the incentive to upgrade).

The passwords could be preset on the server, saved in a server string, and then could be combined with a piece of personal (to the computer) information to prevent password sharing (maybe combining the PC ID into the password in some manner?).

Just borrowing ideas from other games.

Remember when UN did that? Stefan and Unixmad won't go for it.

I don't remember anything UN does because I don't really care about it.