Feeling Nostalgic for GraalOnline Classic

Continuing on my nostalgia journey, I just logged into my old side account on Graal for the first time in about 6-7 years. I played it a lot during 2013-2016. I lost my main account though since it was attached to an old email I deleted a while ago.

Luckily, I was able to get back into my side account. Here’s some pics of my old player house:

Lol at my pets’ names. You can definitely tell I was watching Game of Thrones when decorating this house.

Here’s the interior. My favorite furniture piece is the knock-off Dance Dance Revolution item that causes player avatars to automatically dance while standing on it. Also, I’m digging my character’s hat that’s definitely not a Pokemon reference.

Background on GraalOnline

For those who are unfamiliar, GraalOnline is a simple pixel-based MMORPG. It was originally supposed to be an online version of Zelda called Zelda Online, but they changed its name to avoid copyright issues and eventually, Graal became its own thing (Graal History Link).

Still, the core gameplay is similar to the Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past, which it’s based off of. You fight enemies or other players with swords, bombs, and arrows in a 2D top-down action game.

The biggest difference from Zelda is that in Graal Classic, the focus is more on Player vs Player and collecting gralats (the currency) to buy cosmetics for your character.

Another big draw is that Graal allows custom graphics if you spend enough gralats, so players could import their own pixel art into the game if they so desired. I always thought that was a cool feature.

Finding my old guild: slumber

I looked up my old guild in the game and unsurprisingly, it was inactive. Most of the members hadn’t logged on in years. The guild I was part of was called slumber. We were one of the guilds that managed to accomplish over 1000 hours of defending towers, so we got to have a custom hat. That was one of my greatest accomplishments as a child, embarrassingly enough.

I lost access to the account where I was part of slumber, but my username was Toilet because that was the most creative nickname I could think of as a kid. One of the other members made art of everyone’s in-game avatars and drew a toilet in the thought bubble to represent my character. You can find it on the left of the above screenshot if you zoom in. Seeing it now still makes me chuckle a bit.

I was one of the guild officers and took my “job” very seriously. I remember we would coordinate everyone’s schedules to maximize our tower hours since we all lived in different time zones with some of the other officers being from Canada. We were surprisingly efficient and strategic for this silly little pixel game. I can’t believe it’s been almost a decade since then.

I didn’t keep in touch with any of my guild members unfortunately because I didn’t want to give away any personal info as a kid, but if any of you are somehow reading this post, “Toilet” says hi and I hope you’re doing well!

Graal Today

Nowadays, Graal Classic seems to be on the decline like many old online games. It’s gained some traction in Brazil and the Philippines, though. But even with the influx of players from those countries, the player base is still relatively low compared to what it once was. I remember there would be a few thousand people online at once when I played in 2015, but now the player count struggles to even reach 1000.

Nonetheless, I think Graal will survive. It’s been around since the late 90s, after all. Graal Era, the gangster version of the game seems to be the most active and it recently had a Steam release. The dev team is mainly volunteers which is why there’s not many updates, but the game is still kicking.

The original creator even developed a new game which is basically Graal with updated graphics: Avalonia Online.

Personal Reflection

After realizing it’s been almost a decade since I was in that guild, it made me feel pretty old lol. It was nice to revisit Graal, but I don’t think I’ll be staying.

Its jankiness was easy to look over as a kid, but nowadays, with its inactive community and lack of new content, I’m finding it hard to find reasons to continue playing. It’s like running into an old friend that you don’t have much in common with anymore. It’s nice to see them, but you just don’t have that same connection you once did.

This burger lounge used to be filled with players during peak time, but I was the only one inside when I revisited it. 😔

Getting 1000 tower hours now doesn’t even seem like something I would want to accomplish as an adult, which is probably for the best. That’s over a month of defending a virtual tower just to get some pixels. Still, I miss that childlike sense of wonder I used to feel when playing games like Graal. It’s like I’ve been trying to recapture the magic of playing it for the first time to no avail.

This is very much the nostalgia speaking, but I feel like it was way easier to meet people in video games back then. I would play games like Graal, Animal Crossing, Club Penguin, and Maplestory, and have no problem making online friends. Nowadays, online communities seem much more insular where they interact almost exclusively over Discord.

Looking on the bright side

Although I am nostalgic for the past, I try to be hopeful for the future. It is still possible to be a part of these communities, just gotta dig a little deeper and find those Discord servers.

With Graal, there is a small community that still plays. Some of them have even been playing since the original version from the 90s. (Maybe there could be another resurgence like there was in the 2010s.)

When scrolling through the GraalOnline subreddit, I found out that one of the audio staff members does live concerts by playing instruments in-game. A few days ago, he did a cover of Jingle Bell Rock for Christmas.

It’s so niche to have a concert in an old online game, but I thought it was the most charming thing. It reminds me of the in-game concerts people would have in Guild Wars 2.

Small moments like that are why I love online games. It’s a cute way to make the experience more immersive.

I was feeling a bit down in the dumps from realizing how much things have changed since I’ve last played Graal. But it’s comforting to know that there’s still little things like this to appreciate.

Happy New Year everyone!