Thread: Paying for PW
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Old 01-04-2003, 06:51 PM
Tyhm Tyhm is offline
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No, no;
Graal "lost" a lot of "players" as soon as it went Registration Required For All Classic Servers (R2P). These players fell into two groups - those that were too cheap to pay for the game/those that thought Graal unworthy of the $15 investment, and those that would later upgrade - either because of a temporary argument, because they were out of money at the time, or because they used to belong to the first group but realized over time that they were Graalcoholic and needed a fix.
Graal has since gained (or regained) a substantial ammount of these players. It is nearing the high-water mark - Graal had roughly 300 players on Classic, 100 on Bomy Moon, and 100 on the other PWs combined. It doesn't usually average 500 accounts like it used to, but it will in time. Meaning that yes, Graal will soon have more paying customers online than it had nonpaying customers a couple years ago. It is less than Graal would have in a hypothetical world where Graal never went pay, but only in such a hypothetical world that Graal ran without server costs.

Incidentally, as of last check Graal's only breaking even - it covers server costs, but Unixmad still has to pay Stefan's salary out-of-pocket. They get around an average of $10 a month net, including the months when they lose money. The overhead on a massively resource-eating server like Graal's is prohibitive.
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