Buy a server with "classic capabilities"?
 

So, has Graal Online ever considered the possibility of letting people buy servers that let classic accounts be staff/play on them? You would obviously charge more (let's say $75 for 6 months and $150 for a year?), but I'm sure they would sell like hotcakes.

They'd have to be more, and there'd have to be a difference between the ones that paid for their spot, and the ones that earned it.
Although it may not be a bad idea.

Uhm it sounds like you talking about servers buying into being classic instead of what the thread is about where people who pay for classic can work/play on the server. Which sounds like a really good idea to me.

I would think graal MIGHT lose money - a lot of people pay VIP for such - but who knows?

What if I just make people pm me there accounts if they want to play then just jot it in staff=

:)

Ah, you're right, I read it wrong :)

The bandwidth used would jump like crazy.

From my business experience and educational background in Business Economics, I personally have come to the conclusion that GraalOnline's largest profitability would come from licensing out server software. Users would rent the software, but have to host the server themself. The newly server owners would then host their servers as they see fit, and charge players what they see fit to access the servers. There would be no central account records, but rather each server would have it's own. Think back to the old GServer days. Update the technology, and license it.

The user's GServer would run a check every hour or whatever with the central Graal server to check to see if the license is still valid. GraalOnline could charge $500/year on this and I'm sure it'd sell. Why? People could license the software for a year at $500, then charge players to make up the cost. It would also advertise the game itself, as each server would advertise itself as it's own game.

Really, I think that's the best step for Graal to go, from a business/economical perspective.

No offense, but if you have your own idea(s), please make your own thread(s). This thread was intended for discussing this idea.

Cracked Licenses etc..

Though I'd have to say I would probally end up buying 1 or 2 maybe even 3 licenses per year ( i guess I'd need to do some work and all - but yeah ).

Would also be good if the serverlist showed all servers being paid for or so.

Anyway, If I were to do this.. I'd buy 3 servers for:
Graal X
Elven Lands
Graal2001

:P

If you really have "business experience", you would understand that it would be cracked in less than a day.

Being cought with cracked software can cause the "cracker" / "user of cracked" software a lot of trouble aswell as a law suit.

Now your saying if the gserver does an update check say.. every 24 hour and checks your license.

Why would bandwidth jump like crazy from just allowing classic accounts onto the server? Surely Graals playercount wouldn't actually increase in any significant way due to this unless a lot of the UC PWs began to have great content which classic accounts wanted to use, but that is unlikley?

Cyberjoueurs already offered this, anyway. They apparently had 1/2 people interested, and it never went anywhere (granted prices were a little higher). It definately didn't sell!

Then you would figure out how it works, set up a small web server, forward Graal's IP in hosts file to localhost, and you got rid of the license checks. Something like that.

I have yet to see a system that doesn't have flaws to it. Even Steam has issues of people pirating games.

The playercount would be low since the Classic status isnt earned its just bought

And when your sued - you can have fun in court while unix makes money off you.

Why would the bandwidth jump? Because now instead of having maybe 1 or 2 people on each little playerworld, you're going to have maybe 10 people on each. More people across more servers means more npc servers being used and more triggers being sent. This means more bandwidth.

I guess my hypothesis is based on a guess that classic accounts greatly outnumber gold/vip accounts.

Poor marketing and implementation. I emailed their supposed contact website and to this day have never received a response.

...

As for the cracking of the software, the check would be written inside the executable file itself, and not editable by the user. That would be silly. Plus, if GraalOnline ever found a Graal server online that didn't match their account records, it'd be pretty easy to shut down. GraalOnline did a well enough job purging the old independent GServer playerworlds like Damasca, Odin, etc back in Graal's older history.

People run cracked CS:S servers, they don't get sued. ^.^

It is easier said than done.

A cracked CS:S server? Are you stupid?

Counter-Strike: Source you can get servers for free as long as you can host it.

Oh okay. Sweet, thanks guys. =/

I asked why would it jump LIKE CRAZY. I dont think it would be any significant increase to be concerned about. Besides, as I said, without the content it wouldn't get any player attraction - most of them have no real content!

And yes, it wasn't handled great at all
:\

Semantics. I used the word 'crazy' to mean it would be a noticeable change.

Also, I never said GraalOnline would abandone the idea of having official servers, either. It would create it's own, much like Nintendo has it's first party software competing, in a way, with third party software.

Of course, I'm really not going to get detailed into how it would work for maximum efficiency or elaborate much more than I have. That would be work. Voluntary work.

Isn't all of graal voluntary work? Developing a server, becoming a global etc..?

EL OH EL.

Seriously do you think before you type or what?

If they license out the server/game they can pretty much kiss Graal goodbye. For one, they lose 99% of their money since players would rather go to a server that is cheaper/free. Two, they can't control the content that is put on these server using their product, so that could cause problems/legal issues. Giving out the server software is a security risk. What's to stop a hacker from modifying the server software to connect to someone ELSE's server? Nothing really.

Even if it were capable of working, $500 is a measily amount of money to have to pay for a license, and I'm guessing since you said "rent" that this wouldn't be a one time fee, which is even worse. It would be better to sell a more expensive one time fee than to charge a cheaper rental fee. Nobody wants to make a popular game that outsells Graal just to have them turn around and say, "hey we are cancelling your license rental, no more game for you!". It's all or nothing when it comes to licenses like that.

Yes, it is. Hence I don't do it anymore.

While it is fun to assume hackers can do everything, it's not the most realistic thing to imagine they would use their divine abilities to reverse engineer Graal's GServer software when they could just say, hack into PayPal.

A lot of what you speak of is theory. I'm looking at this from experiments done with the community. I'm using results.

Fact: GraalOnline released GServers in the past, having those servers compete with it's own.
Fact: GraalOnline maintained it's own official server (known as Main Server), which was still the most popular.
Fact: GraalOnline was able to disable/shut down said GServers when the time came to it.
Fact: GraalOnline was charging people an annual fee of $100/year to host limited playerworlds on it's server. And many agreed to such.

Everything you base your theory off of is hypothesis. I'm basing mine off past historical events that have happened with GraalOnline specifically.

Well, crazy is a big emphasis word to throw around. Maybe I'm wrong, others can say so if I am, but I think anyone reading that would take "The bandwidth used would jump like crazy" to mean the bandwidth would considerably increase (not just a noticeable change). Yeah, it's turned into semantics now, but I don't think you can really argue that what you said was ever to suggest a minor change, it implied a rather significant or large change in bandwidth!

Was the 2nd point directed at me :eek: ?

Why dont we just pay 500$ a yearto cyberjouers to get classic then? :O

Because if you host it, then they save money on bandwidth.

Spark: For me, if it's a noticeable change, it's a considerable change.

But they ovbiously dont want to handle with sueing for illegal use

Sweet guys, move it to another thread.