Regarding opening DMS to the public

[wreaks_havoc]

True Manticore

Took we a minute to understand this one but I agree with your statement. The amulet should remain soulbound. Should they unbound the amulet, hang onto yours for a bit. Should they be unbound, the market may be flooded with them initially but there are still only 5,000 of them out there and they will become scarce again. There are lots of players, like myself, who will not sell them even if they are unbound.

[True Manticore]

allegoriest

Unfortunately, you can now un-soulbind. I waited until I also had a gem to DMS so mine wouldn't get soulbound. ;__;

I still say this means they should re-release halos and stuff, since they seem to be okay with going back on things they said. (I also don't see how allowing you to unsoulbind is the middle road either.)

Silly manticoala, having trust and whatnot.

Yes I was silly to trust Gaia's guarantees, I will definitely think twice before trusting again. The amulet was by no means cheap.
But now it is. Cheap and useless.

This is not the first time Gaia cheats their own supporters out of their investments. Not long ago, Phin Phang only-cash items for which we paid a lot were added to the Daily Chance. And now most of them are commons that sell for less than 100g.

The staff said they would think of a solution that would please most, but this "solution" only pleases those who not only enjoyed their head-start in DMS but now are given the choice to enjoy it some more by selling the amulet. So they had a total 3 choices.
Whereas our only choice turned out to be missing the head-start fun for nothing and feeling stupid for trusting Gaia. This is what I feel worst about, that I could have had first-hand fun there too after all.

The choice of equipping the amulet or not was to be an informed decision for everyone. Those who chose to use the amulet knew exactly what they were doing, so if it remained soulbound now they wouldn't be loosing anything they didn't sign up to in the first place. It's like changing a contract after it's been ratified and paid.

I've got to remind myself that Gaia is a money-making enterprise, because many times they trick us into forgetting that.

[True Manticore]

wreaks_havoc

True Manticore

Took we a minute to understand this one but I agree with your statement. The amulet should remain soulbound. Should they unbound the amulet, hang onto yours for a bit. Should they be unbound, the market may be flooded with them initially but there are still only 5,000 of them out there and they will become scarce again. There are lots of players, like myself, who will not sell them even if they are unbound.

Yeah that's the only thing I can hope for now. But even at 5000 units, considering the amount of zOMG players, and the number of those who are level 10, and yet from that number those who are interested in DMS, all added up how many of those few will still be interested in buying an expensive item that is no longer needed? That's what I was counting on when the amulet was advertised as soulbound forever, that kind of rarity. I mean it was hard enough to sell before, when it was an actual key to DMS, and now... I wonder if it will ever compensate at all.

[The Invisible Mango]

Yay!

[allegoriest]

True Manticore

allegoriest

Unfortunately, you can now un-soulbind. I waited until I also had a gem to DMS so mine wouldn't get soulbound. ;__;

I still say this means they should re-release halos and stuff, since they seem to be okay with going back on things they said. (I also don't see how allowing you to unsoulbind is the middle road either.)

Silly manticoala, having trust and whatnot.

Yes I was silly to trust Gaia's guarantees, I will definitely think twice before trusting again. The amulet was by no means cheap.
But now it is. Cheap and useless.

This is not the first time Gaia cheats their own supporters out of their investments. Not long ago, Phin Phang only-cash items for which we paid a lot were added to the Daily Chance. And now most of them are commons that sell for less than 100g.

The staff said they would think of a solution that would please most, but this "solution" only pleases those who not only enjoyed their head-start in DMS but now are given the choice to enjoy it some more by selling the amulet. So they had a total 3 choices.
Whereas our only choice turned out to be missing the head-start fun for nothing and feeling stupid for trusting Gaia. This is what I feel worst about, that I could have had first-hand fun there too after all.

The choice of equipping the amulet or not was to be an informed decision for everyone. Those who chose to use the amulet knew exactly what they were doing, so if it remained soulbound now they wouldn't be loosing anything they didn't sign up to in the first place. It's like changing a contract after it's been ratified and paid.

I've got to remind myself that Gaia is a money-making enterprise, because many times they trick us into forgetting that.

Hey, it also tricks people into buying more. I didn't DMS until I got a gem too, so I essentially have both items, so they got the money for both. (And uhh, DMS kinda sucked.) I'd be perfectly okay with having the item, being all, man, this sucks, and leaving. I still have my item I can equip and possibly use as an investment at a later date.


I still think they can re-release halos now, since the agreements they made with items when purchased can apparently be voided out later.

[Yun San]

CheshireKttty

Honestly I was never aware that the area would ever be made permanently public. I realize now that was my own fault for not researching this more. Yet I feel the staff failed to really make it more well known as well. I've barely been able to get much use out of my amulet and it's also been made soulbound so I never even had the opportunity to sell it back when it was worth something.

I feel that those of us stuck with them, should still be able to turn them in for SOMETHING. It wasn't as if the public never got the chance to play either.

Either way, seriously unhappy and pissed. If it wasn't for the B/C community I'd have left this site long ago. Every day Gaia never seems to fail to make me hate it a little bit more.

'But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently."
link to announcement:ZOMG Announcement
you didnt know because it was not made clear that they were going to make it permanent they just say "If" and "May"

[WingedGirl 57]

I purchased the bloodstone gem on August 26rh from the marketplace for around 600k. This was more than a week ago, but not much. I'm just wondering if I can still get compensated for it.

siskataya

Hey everyone!

I wanted to make this thread regarding the recent decision to open DMS to the public. We made this decision because it was always our intent to one day have this area open for all Gaians to enjoy. The Bloodstone Amulets and Gems were head-start items to allow their owners to have first access, but not exclusive access, to this area. For 11 months, and 2 weeks, you had just that - first access, and we hope you enjoyed it!

At this point, we felt that enough time had passed and that finally opening the area to the public would be a good thing for the Gaia community. We had previously stated the following in an announcement from Sept. 2011: "But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently." We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!

Now, all of this said, we do understand why, if you happened to buy the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem within the past week, you might be upset that you didn't get a larger amount of time to explore this area before it became public. If, within the past week, you purchased either the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem from the marketplace for gold, or used Gaia cash to purchase either of these items from the cash shop, we'll remove the item from your inventory and refund you the gold or cash you paid for it. You'll need to file billing ticket through our Help Center, however, to have the issue addressed.

Hope this helps, and we hope that you can make even more new friends as they come into the area.

Take care and have a great evening!
Sisky


UPDATE:

I just posted this in the thread, but wanted to re-post it here so everyone was aware of my post!

siskataya

Hey everyone!

As promised, I'm back in the thread today! It was probably a good thing I headed to bed when I did last night - I was beyond exhausted. If it is any consolation, I had weird dreams all night about my car breaking down and instead of being given a replacement vehicle to use in while the car was being fixed, I was given a giant scorpion the size of a car to ride around town. I have no idea WHAT motivated that dream... I digress.

Anyway, I have been reading through all the posts/threads and messages I've received about this issue. There a few things I want to say here:

* Regarding the complaints that not enough notice was given that DMS was being opened to the public, we agree that we could have done better on announcing this. We just got excited that it was now open, and thought since we has said before it would one day be made publicly available, that a fun surprise dev notice would be a good way to let everyone know. Sorry if this seemed random and out of the blue! From now on, we'll try our best to give at least 2 days notice that such changes are about to happen. This does not, of course, include any surprise features/changes that we want to be fun surprises for the community, in which case it makes no sense to make an advance notice! That would be silly!

* We've decided to revise our offer (made in the opening post) to refund anyone who purchased the Bloodstone Amulet or Gem from the marketplace/cash shop for gold/cash from one week to two weeks - yay! We feel that perhaps one week was too short a time period, so extending the refund period to two weeks will be better for the community. Also, if you had the amulet for more than two weeks, you probably had enough opportunity to use the item and try out the area!

* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky

[Asian Sins Asians]

siskataya

Hey everyone!

I wanted to make this thread regarding the recent decision to open DMS to the public. We made this decision because it was always our intent to one day have this area open for all Gaians to enjoy. The Bloodstone Amulets and Gems were head-start items to allow their owners to have first access, but not exclusive access, to this area. For 11 months, and 2 weeks, you had just that - first access, and we hope you enjoyed it!

At this point, we felt that enough time had passed and that finally opening the area to the public would be a good thing for the Gaia community. We had previously stated the following in an announcement from Sept. 2011: "But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently." We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!

Now, all of this said, we do understand why, if you happened to buy the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem within the past week, you might be upset that you didn't get a larger amount of time to explore this area before it became public. If, within the past week, you purchased either the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem from the marketplace for gold, or used Gaia cash to purchase either of these items from the cash shop, we'll remove the item from your inventory and refund you the gold or cash you paid for it. You'll need to file billing ticket through our Help Center, however, to have the issue addressed.

Hope this helps, and we hope that you can make even more new friends as they come into the area.

Take care and have a great evening!
Sisky


UPDATE:

I just posted this in the thread, but wanted to re-post it here so everyone was aware of my post!

siskataya

Hey everyone!

As promised, I'm back in the thread today! It was probably a good thing I headed to bed when I did last night - I was beyond exhausted. If it is any consolation, I had weird dreams all night about my car breaking down and instead of being given a replacement vehicle to use in while the car was being fixed, I was given a giant scorpion the size of a car to ride around town. I have no idea WHAT motivated that dream... I digress.

Anyway, I have been reading through all the posts/threads and messages I've received about this issue. There a few things I want to say here:

* Regarding the complaints that not enough notice was given that DMS was being opened to the public, we agree that we could have done better on announcing this. We just got excited that it was now open, and thought since we has said before it would one day be made publicly available, that a fun surprise dev notice would be a good way to let everyone know. Sorry if this seemed random and out of the blue! From now on, we'll try our best to give at least 2 days notice that such changes are about to happen. This does not, of course, include any surprise features/changes that we want to be fun surprises for the community, in which case it makes no sense to make an advance notice! That would be silly!

* We've decided to revise our offer (made in the opening post) to refund anyone who purchased the Bloodstone Amulet or Gem from the marketplace/cash shop for gold/cash from one week to two weeks - yay! We feel that perhaps one week was too short a time period, so extending the refund period to two weeks will be better for the community. Also, if you had the amulet for more than two weeks, you probably had enough opportunity to use the item and try out the area!

* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky

Excuse me. Even as good of a thing as you might think this is, and as happy as you might think some people are, Gaia needs to remember that there are tons and tons of hoarders on this site, and they all help to support Gaia in many ways. And these hoarders, myself included may have purchased large quantities of either or both of these gems in hopes that we could make some profit from them, just as anybody else does on here with just about any other item. And now, Gaia has turned around and stolen this opportunity for us who have spent lots of gold on these items. I honestly don't think Gaia has really put any thought into this before they went forward with it, or is it that they just don't care? surprised

So, to respond to your comment about anyone buying these items within the last week being able to get some kind of refund, how in the world does that help someone like me who has spent several million on a small hoard of Bloodstone Amulets? How? It doesn't. How does this help Joe on a different profile over there who has spent upwards to 20Mil or more on these amulets or gems? You REALLY REALLY shouldn't draw the line so narrow and soon and to say that you will only refund people who have bought them within the past week. If you are going to make such a rash decision to make these items worthless now EVEN after you know people were spending millions and millions of hard earned gold on these items, then you should definitely return ALL GOLD to us.

Please make the change and refund us back all of our gold and respond to us , the public, and me and use this posting to confirm said action, because you can't even tell us that you are seriously just going to make such a decision, then walk away with all of our millions like nothing ever happened. That is not acceptable.

[Whirlpoolriding]

jellykans

Whirlpoolriding

CheshireKttty

I've barely been able to get much use out of my amulet and it's also been made soulbound so I never even had the opportunity to sell it back when it was worth something.

I feel that those of us stuck with them, should still be able to turn them in for SOMETHING. It wasn't as if the public never got the chance to play either.

^ What she said!

Well - I started getting numbness in my fingers and hands, from bad keyboardng technique, and had to stop playing for a bit while upgrading eqpt./retraining my technique. end of story - I bought a bloodstone and DID NOT USE IT ONCE.

But that isn't why I am angry/hurt/frustrated/out of steam. We lost our last zOMG dev after October last year's opening of DMS....dev meats with [ JK] got sparse around late November in the rush to build a new game, but the community gathered together. New games are fine, but our loyalty was to zOMG. Then in Feb. 2012 it was official - no new content for zOMG. So that was the turning point, that only really slams home now.....I was surprised at myself, the hit-in-the-gut feeling when learning DMS was declared open. The 'no new content' decision was unlikely to change, but possible. Now - there is nothing to keep anyone from walking in to do an 'end run' and race from start to finish, if that is their choice. There is NOTHING to encourage them to stay longer. Emotionally, it is a huge difference.

It seems to be a huge unexploited area - that I Am items are largely bought because of zOMG. But perhaps it is just not of interest to admin. The items labeled as zOMG never took into consideration what most of us actually spent on the game; in attire, in I Am's and MC's and other fancy gear. I never minded Monster Galaxy, only that it required Facebook - and now, that it requires a flood of notices. (Yes, you can turn those off - but it also turns off aquarium glow notices and friends' feeds - their new threads, birthdays...)

Gaia has a habit of throwing out new content without supporting what it already has., the loyalty of users has compensated, but that is being stressed....has anyone really missed how the # of users has dropped?

Sorry, this is early reaction, only the 4th response since I got the news confirmed.

Yeah, zOMG! is the only thing that matters to me here. And with completing DMS, and a sloppily-unfinished Buccaneer Boardwalk, there's nothing left to do or see. cry

[Alannaa]

WingedGirl 57

The refund period is two weeks as of the 6th.

The Invisible Mango

-.- *Kicks.* Celebrate elsewhere.

Whirlpoolriding

Hey, Whirl, good to see you.

jellykans

Sorry, I missed a lot of what you said due to errors, so I mostly paraphrased, but if my interpretation is right, then I support your opinion. Gaia stopped caring about customer satisfaction, which really saddens me.

The point of the stones and amulets was to let us in first. But most of us were sorely disappointed. I still am. DMS itself is a waste and we never got what we paid for. Now we're being cheated out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions worth of benefits. Make unsoulbinding an option and drastically raise the sell-back value of both items, and/or give the owners something of equal value to what we paid. A new valuable ring, or some form of rare item is fine. Just give us something that's actually worthwhile.

[baby_bear29]

i brought my bloodstone on august 26th from the exchange for 270k + black body dye can i still get aq refund? if i could is it general account inquiry or billing inquiry? im confused never filled a ticket before sweatdrop

[jellykans]

Asian Sins Asians

siskataya

...
* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky

Excuse me. Even as good of a thing as you might think this is, and as happy as you might think some people are, Gaia needs to remember that there are tons and tons of hoarders on this site, and they all help to support Gaia in many ways. And these hoarders, myself included may have purchased large quantities of either or both of these gems in hopes that we could make some profit from them, just as anybody else does on here with just about any other item. And now, Gaia has turned around and stolen this opportunity for us who have spent lots of gold on these items. I honestly don't think Gaia has really put any thought into this before they went forward with it, or is it that they just don't care? surprised

So, to respond to your comment about anyone buying these items within the last week being able to get some kind of refund, how in the world does that help someone like me who has spent several million on a small hoard of Bloodstone Amulets? How? It doesn't. How does this help Joe on a different profile over there who has spent upwards to 20Mil or more on these amulets or gems? You REALLY REALLY shouldn't draw the line so narrow and soon and to say that you will only refund people who have bought them within the past week. If you are going to make such a rash decision to make these items worthless now EVEN after you know people were spending millions and millions of hard earned gold on these items, then you should definitely return ALL GOLD to us.

Please make the change and refund us back all of our gold and respond to us , the public, and me and use this posting to confirm said action, because you can't even tell us that you are seriously just going to make such a decision, then walk away with all of our millions like nothing ever happened. That is not acceptable.

srsly, you need to choose your investments better

[hatters make me fap]

talk2hand pirate TINY TINY PEOPLWMWALIK ON THE FREAKING BEACH HOW CSN WE STIOP THEM OHHHH cheese_whine

[Asian Sins Asians]

jellykans

Asian Sins Asians

siskataya

...
* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky

Excuse me. Even as good of a thing as you might think this is, and as happy as you might think some people are, Gaia needs to remember that there are tons and tons of hoarders on this site, and they all help to support Gaia in many ways. And these hoarders, myself included may have purchased large quantities of either or both of these gems in hopes that we could make some profit from them, just as anybody else does on here with just about any other item. And now, Gaia has turned around and stolen this opportunity for us who have spent lots of gold on these items. I honestly don't think Gaia has really put any thought into this before they went forward with it, or is it that they just don't care? surprised

So, to respond to your comment about anyone buying these items within the last week being able to get some kind of refund, how in the world does that help someone like me who has spent several million on a small hoard of Bloodstone Amulets? How? It doesn't. How does this help Joe on a different profile over there who has spent upwards to 20Mil or more on these amulets or gems? You REALLY REALLY shouldn't draw the line so narrow and soon and to say that you will only refund people who have bought them within the past week. If you are going to make such a rash decision to make these items worthless now EVEN after you know people were spending millions and millions of hard earned gold on these items, then you should definitely return ALL GOLD to us.

Please make the change and refund us back all of our gold and respond to us , the public, and me and use this posting to confirm said action, because you can't even tell us that you are seriously just going to make such a decision, then walk away with all of our millions like nothing ever happened. That is not acceptable.

srsly, you need to choose your investments better

I wasn't talking to you. Mind your own business. You don't see me popping into any threads you've been in and making some sarcastic remarks on any of your postings eh? No, because I do have better sense than that. I want admin to respond to this. That's who I'm talking to. Not you.

[Asian Sins Asians]

Robertinha

Honestly I also was never aware that the area would ever be made permanently public. If the amulet and bloodstone was meant to be just a head-start item then why was it so expensive? 749 gaia cash and I used it like twice since I bought, since it is impossible to solo DMS and people just wanted to go with their own friends. Also there should be something about that "head-start" on the item's description together with something about the intent to make DMS opened permanently after a while. So we could decide to either buy or wait... I feel like if I got scammed...

Yep, part of my point there exactly. And, I'm sure LOTS of people feel this way.