Website Updates: Ideas to help Graal
 

My ideas are getting buried in the Lifetime Classic thread, so I'll start a few new ones.

Website Updates
Purpose: to show prospective players (and prospective upgraders) that Graal isn't dead.
Options: The halloween costume contest would go great with this. Someone said fanart contest, also good. Either some admin everyone trusts, or many admins that are generally trustworthy, should be able to put up news, and should be expected to. Possibly global event admins can use it, and can give away upgrades as prizes the way Unixmad used to.
Expansion: As long as we're editing the website, do we want to move all the worlds to their own links? I mean, the Kingdoms theme is nice, but I'd rather see Graal treat itself as a development platform that loves Kingdoms than the Kingdoms game with some player-made mods you can also download.
Requires: Someone to dust off the Website Admin Password and give out a login or two, the webmaster (is he still here? Tux? Hey, he's on my ICQ, how 'bout that?) should handle any heavy lifting...

Once upon a time graal.com was my homepage. I don't bother anymore, it never updates. I'm sure I'm not alone in this: Unixmad and Stefan announce new tech here instead of there, whereas once they'd post the link here for us to see it there. That was the better way of doing things, we can't expect newbies to troll through the forums to find out whether or not they want to bother trolling through the forums...
Since I doubt anyone's going to say updating is a BAD idea, let's discuss the "gritty-nitty": Should it be Kingdoms-centric, or should Kingdoms have its own "Fan"site same as everyone else? Should it be redesigned at considerable cost and effort, or is updating it going to be enough? Does anyone still have trouble with the Flash? Should each server get to post their own news on it, or should it be global news and events only? This is our Best Foot, let's proudly put it Forward.

As I mentioned before in http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...ad.php?t=68391, and as many other people have in this topic, the website needs to be constantly updated. I'm not going to repeat what many other people have already said, though. The current website, forums, and the client seem to be based around Graal Kingdoms, rather than the wide diversity of servers we have online. I can understand why this is done, but advertising should be done as a whole to boast what we have here. Classic servers have a lot to offer, and players may find more interest in them at first glance than they do the gold servers, I would only hope this was more reflected in the website.

The art used on the website, in my opinion is highly unattractive, and no offence to the person who designed it, but there is something about it that I just don't like. If you look at other online games, you'll notice they have gone for an anime feel to their art.


The example I've provided, in my opinion looks much better then the Graal art, which in return attracts more people. The game in question is not necessarily flexible, in fact it's quite the opposite where as Graal is, but it still attracts people through the audience they have targeted.

Anime attracts a wide range of people of many ages with different interests, attracts a wide international audience, the audience that the example tries to attract, even Zelda has the said style. Anime fans are often depicted as “nerdy,” obsessing over anime, gaming and collecting related merchandise, this is how games gain a fan base, it's not all about the game in the end. If there was an investment in a nice set of commissioned art, which was updated frequently I think it would attract a lot more people to the game.

It obviously isn’t necessary to have anime styled art to help advertise for Graal, but considering the amount of gamers that style would attract, it is a definite winning choice. Other good choices would be to aim for a typical gaming style, possibly taking into consideration the way Zelda is advertised, the style in which it is drawn, and similar games. Remember that, despite the fact that not all gamers watch anime, all gamers invariably play games. Try to look at how other games advertise for ideas.

's a good idea...maybe replace that specific one with something more inspired by the original Zelda cartoon. Inspired by, because we want Graal to be Zelda flavored without getting sued...maybe something animated?
See, my gut says all with the slashy and the intense and the Grr Manly!, but that's not very anime. Baka hammer is very anime.

As far as artwork... I made this rough concept a long time ago... I'm sure I could do something much better now, and actually put some style into it...

But I think this is more of a "Graal" feel than GK has ever been... in my opinion.

I agree with the intention of this thread on these grounds:

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...play.php?f=127
(make it so it shows threads from the beginning if you want to understand my reasoning more fully)

Alright, so new banner aside - who should be in charge of updating the contents, and what should these contents be?

Didn't they used to have that Graal News team?

Wasnt that just a guild of wannabe-reporters? bef was the head of it, I remember that much.

I always thought that they were a legit global guild who were just there to help update the site, actually...

I dont remember.. :x

Regardless of whether there was, should there be now? Who should be on that team if one is formed, or which admins should get Posting Rights if one isn't?

You could always stream in the data from the login server...? Player designed skins would be good for the website, but even better for the client.

It would be nice to have the news from the login server shown on the front page.

It would also be nice to show some ther live statistics on the website.

/agree

Make the live statistics link from the "Players Online" thing, and make the website and login news an RSS feed or whatever you can do in GScript nowadays.

Why follow everyone else? RSS Feed yes is currently the hotspot for Wifi users now. But this is Graal we wish to get on things. Have a access lounge players and guest can chat on. Am sure alot of guest who have common issues getting to know what graal really is don't realize what features it has. A website chat would be helpfull alot moderated by admins of course or bots. And help bots/old players who can help with downloading problems/help with setting up accounts ...ect What graal need also is stress from lagg why add more content/programs to the client and it's basically unused on the client (IRC) i vist the irc server many times and yet none is there. HWy not add it onto the website so guest may enter and see what all the action is about. And for the graal lagg stress. I believe loading is the problem with Graal yes the common files download instantly now when you start Graal. But thoese are just common files each playerworld should have an auto download file progress whenever they enter and upadate files also. If staffs adds new contents which is located on the server it updates the folders. News database should be run by the far most well know playerworlds. The playerworld content is just a picture gallery now? Am sure adding fetures to improve Graal is fun but it lacks and now laggs.

Lots of people on wired connections use RSS!

Chat rooms are very dated, I don't think they are they worthwhile. I see many high traffic websites with "chat rooms" which are always empty.

When I said RSS I meant it as an example to convey the method of allowing the Login Information and the Website News to be in sync or something.

Or, the Login Information would show specific server-only news, while the site displays various global-wide events and whatnot like that whole "Halloween" and "Winter XMas" stuff...

When I actually take the RSS seriously... who the hell would actually subscribe to that? (I mean that in a practical sense... I mean its not like you could imagine somebody at a party checking their cell phone and be all like "OH SNAP SON ITS THE DST TONIGHT I GOTTA GET HOME N PLAY GRILL!")


btw, the DST is tonight @ Delteria click here for more info



Then again... why are we talking about this stuff? I don't really see any current globals remarking on any of the ideas we've mentioned... but in all honesty I haven't been reading all of the posts throughout this forum lately.

Yea, it's sort of ironic that I've sent suggestions to Microsoft regarding Longhorn and they've said they've forwarded them to the dev team to be worked on... actually worked on. On Graal, there's no paid team; it's all Stefan. That's the major problem. Players use the scripting language to build interesting things. If the game were free, it would be a major attraction for people who love programming and want to get into video game design. In scenarios when the game isn't free, usually the developers need to develop the applications of their own features.

I say everybody go idle on Delteria Dev till we're done. If you're a LAT though you're welcome to detail parts of islands and make inside levels...

We'll save graal. Don't worry yall :D We're only on the bottom right now to help the whole underdog "wtf where did -THAT- come from?" impression.

RSS could be fun. What exact information would we want though? The usual web stats - This many people online now, This many people was the peak on This date, This server's got the most people?
Or have people announce events on the Hubworld/Serverlist and that's reflected on the website too?