Well by allowing an offline editor, you enable people to work on their own in the secret of nite to learn and develop something that is completely theirs. Noone else can touch it and they can make it as massive as their computer can possibly handle. This would help LAT submitions, make sure all designers are familiar with the whole new and advanced scripting language instead of just some really old and outdated one.
In addition, unless ya make a way to build and test for free you will eventually notice more and more of a decline in player population. As I said earlier, being able to modify stuff on ones own leads to them enjoying building to the point that they are willing to pay extra in order to build their own stuff. I said myself that I would likely buy a server, or two even, if I had access to an offline editor I could learn from as I have some personal styles and thoughts on the game I'd like to play with but not allow some random RC to just have access to all my designs in order to learn. It would benefit GraalOnline by increasing the skill of the builders. It'd benefit the players by having a chance to gain the ability to create their own content, as well as having better (more immersive) content as the designers become more capable.
There are a billion reasons why an online editor would be AWESOME and I understand why GraalOnline is interested in such a venture. However, denying people the ability to build offline is/will hurt the community such that it very well may die. I sure hope not, as it is a very interesting engine dev-wise. Note though, I do not play consistantly on any of the servers I've seen as alot of what I have seen isn't immersive and seems chopped together or out of scew. This is my personal opinion and as such others do play...but how many people feel like me? I am sure that if people were given the option to learn freely, they would. Heck, people want an offline editor... You guys are being yelled at continually about it... why not just make it for them? Add in the scripts to the current editor and make it like an RC that only accepts one player. It means for scripts designed to heavy effect multiple players you'd still need to test online, but otherwise you'd be able to learn to use all the effects and such without requiring the use of either a Random RC or paying to learn.
Thanks again for listening to my flame.
Ecu