AskED The Admin: Answer Compilation (10/14: Reincarnation)

[Platonix]

UPDATE OCTOBER 2014

I'll go ahead and make a post here for the folks who'll find this info most easily this way.

Ask the Admin has been resurrected after a year, as Ask the Staff.

I have decided to get back to archiving the answers.

But I'm not going to do it in this thread. Given all the changes that have happened to Gaia since the newest CEO came along, I've decided to consider this a fresh start.

AskED The Staff is a new Public Guild I've created. With this, I can offer more and better features; answers are available sorted both by date and by topic, and we won't have comments from visitors to the guild mingling with the answer archives. You don't have to join the guild to view the info or even post comments, but if you want to join, it's free and easy.

Welcome!

This thread serves as a compilation of the answers given by Lanzer and the other members of the Gaia Staff in Ask The Admin topics. Originally created because many people were asking questions that Lanzer had already answered on previous days, this thread now chiefly serves as an easier way to see exactly what Lanzer and others said, for those who can never make it to a session before it ends.

FAQ

Ask the Whosywhatzit!? What's this you're compiling?

In late July of 2007, Gaia co-founder Lanzer started hosting Sticky topics named "Ask the admin" where ordinary users can ask questions of Gaia staff, and (hopefully) get them answered. Lanzer's always the thread starter, but other members of the Staff have been known to appear as well, from artists to code-writers and more.

OMG Awesome I wanna join! Where When How?

Ask the admin is hosted in the Gaia Community Discussion (GCD) forum. When it started it was daily, but before long it settled into a weekly schedule: it's now held every Monday, except for special holidays. The fun is scheduled to start at 5 PM California time (8 PM New York time), though it's occasionally a bit late.

Hey, I was there last time and Lanzer didn't answer my question! crying Why not?

Lanzer's not the fastest typist, and he doesn't follow the topic in real-time. What this means is that he typically only responds to posts on the first one or two pages of the thread. Other staff members are far more likely to answer questions posted later in the thread than he is...if there are other staff members available that day, who work in the right department to know the answer.
Another reason you might not get an answer to your question is if Gaia Staff have already answered that one a bunch of times recently. Pay attention to what's happening in the thread; maybe someone else asked the same question as you and got answered.
In fact, here's a helpful FAQ Siskataya put together, possibly to be updated in the future:

siskataya

Before You Ask: Some Answers to Frequently Asked Questions We See in AtA Each Week

Hey everyone - happy Monday! Glad you could stop by the Ask the Admin!

As you all know, though we try to get to as many questions as we possibly can during AtA, it is just not possible to get to them all. We thought it would be helpful to post replies to some of the regularly asked questions ahead of time. Our hope is that these answers will provide you with status updates on these topics so that even if your question on one of these subjects is not answered directly, you'll have the information you need!

Alchemy - Any updates?
Sorry, no updates right now, but it is on the road-map, and definitely not forgotten! ^^

zOMG! - Any updates or bug fixes?
Sorry gang, nothing new to report on this subject. We'll let you know once more bug fixes are done, and once we need help testing some issues. Not to worry, you haven't been forgotten! In the meantime, keep looking for more interaction on Fridays, and community contests! We can still have fun biggrin

Inventory Arranger - Any updates?
We're still working on the inventory arranger - it's coming along nicely, but again, it's a big project. Thank you all for your suggestions and ideas on how to improve the inventory arranger - we'll definitely consider the proposals!

Guilds - Are you going to fix them?
Not right now - as we have said before, Guilds is a massive undertaking and currently not top priority. That said, it is on our road-map, or "to do" list, and we'll try to get to Guilds when we are able to do so.

My Ticket/PM Hasn't Been answered Yet - What's going on?
We're so sorry if there has been a delay in resolving your ticket or issue. We try our best to get to everyone as quickly as possible, but some issues simply take longer to resolve than others. As well, please understand that we are all extremely busy with resolving a wide variety of issues for a lot of people, and handle these in the order in which we receive them. Please know that we do care about all of you and are not ignoring you - we will get to your issue as soon as possible. Thanks in advance for being so patient!

More Facial Hair and/or Mantises please?!?!
No news on the facial hair or mantis fronts, but as always we appreciate your suggestions! We actually love that you are so passionate about certain items and want to request them - they are definitely being considered! biggrin

Y'know, there's this thing called Post History...why bother making this topic when I can just look up Lanzer's posts?

Three reasons. First, not everyone knows how to look up Lanzer's posts.

Second, this topic is more convenient than a Post History in a few ways. I keep a Table of Contents in this first post, so you know what pages of the thread cover posts made on certain dates. Also, this thread is perfectly capable of retaining more than 500 posts at a time, so barring a truly horrible server crash, the posts enshrined here will always be available.

Third, as said before, Lanzer isn't the only member of Gaia Staff who appears in Ask the Admin. Here you'll also find responses by folks like artist crazy spork i am, Marketplace expert Sagger-AT3, former Gaia CEO fin, Community Relations Manager SimplySimone and many others. You never know who'll decide to show up at Ask the Admin!

Geez, this is a lot to go through...how will I ever find out if my question's been answered before?

I'm actually working on a little something for that...but in the meantime, I recommend you use your browser's Find function. For example, if you want to know whether Lanzer prefers pirates or ninjas, just Search each page for the word "pirate" or the word "ninja", and you'll find the answer. (Ninjas. The Art Team, on the other hand, seems to prefer pirates on average.) One caveat, though, is that sometimes the answer to a question changes...if you want to know Lanzer's favorite NPC, you'll find three or four different answers scattered throughout this thread. Also, I've been working on kaning this thread easier to navigate by putting the compilations in Spoiler tags, so you'll probably have to open those to run a search; the search function might not be able to see inside closed Spoilers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 1: 7/24/2007 through 8/03
Page 2: 8/06
Page 3: 8/13 through 8/27
Page 4: 9/10 through 9/24
Page 5: 10/01 and 10/08
Page 6: 10/15 and 10/22
Page 7: 10/26 through 11/05
Page 8: 11/12 and 11/20
Page 9: 11/26 through 12/10
Page 10: 12/17
Page 11: 1/07/2008
Page 12: 1/14 and 1/28
Page 13: 2/04 and 2/11
Page 14: 2/18 through 3/14
Page 15: 3/17
Page 16: 3/24 through 4/14
Page 17: 4/21
Page 18: 4/28 through 5/12
Page 19: 5/19 through 6/09
Page 20: 6/16 through 6/30
Page 21: 7/07 through 8/18
Page 22: 9/08 through 9/22
Page 23: 9/29 through 11/10
Page 24: 11/17 through 12/08
Page 25: 1/05/2009 through 2/09
Page 26: 2/23 through 3/23
Page 27: 3/30 through 4/27
Page 28: 5/04 through 8/10
Page 29: 8/17 through 10/26
Page 30: 11/02/2009 through 2/15/2010
Page 31: 2/22 through 6/07
Page 32: 6/14 through 8/23
Page 33: 8/30 through 11/29
Page 34: 12/13/2010 through 1/24/2011
Page 35: 1/31 through 5/23
Page 36: 6/06 through 9/19
Page 37: 9/26/2011 through 2/22/2012
Page 38: the rest of 2/22, through 4/02
Page 39: 4/09 through 4/23
Page 40: the rest of 4/23, through 5/30
Page 41: 6/04 through 7/02
Page 42: the rest of 7/02, through 7/30
Page 43: 8/07 through 8/27
Page 44: 8/31 through 10/12
Page 45: 10/15 through 12/10
Page 46: 12/17/2012 through 3/04/2013
Page 47: 3/11 through 4/22
Page 48: 4/29 through 7/01
Page 49: 7/08 through 9/09
Page 50: 9/16 through 10/14

NEWS
Update 9/23/13

A kind user nominated AskED for inclusion in the Minishops and Resources Center! This thread lists various threads and guilds throughout Gaia that provide useful services, some for gold and some for free, and people can give a resource Kudos to improve its rating in the thread so that others can see which resources are the cream of the crop.

If you think AskED is incredibly awesome, tell MRC owner Goldine about it by posting over there with this post template:

[color=green][b]I LIKE THIS RESOURCE![/b]
RESOURCE TITLE: AskED The Admin: Answer Compilation
LINK: gaiaonline.com/forum/t.30840637
MRC NUMBER: 41.7
WHY I LIKE THIS RESOURCE: [Explain your experience. No length limit.] [/color]

Comments and questions are always welcome.

[Platonix]

July 24th
The first day was also the most productive, by far. In addition to Lanzer himself, there were a good handful of other members of the Gaia Staff on board answering questions!

ijustworkhere

Purple Hair Spray

Another question, can we send the staff cookies? XD

We LOVE cookies! XD

fulltimefailure

Oxymoronic Username

Just one question:

Just how fun is it to be working for Gaia?

Tons o fun!

Lanzer

omitto

New header out when?

We're hoping it'll be out in August! surprised

crazy spork i am

Oxymoronic Username

Just one question:

Just how fun is it to be working for Gaia?

i find it a lot of fun actually. normally i don't like working fulltime jobs and prefer contract or freelance work to avoid the general 9-5 atmosphere. but here at gaia i have a good time doing my work here because of all the co-workers and the projects that we get to work on :3

Sagger-AT3

Tales From The Crypt

How do you handle farting in the office space?

We've got wireless.

A mobile work environment helps you deal with all sorts of things burning_eyes

Lanzer

Famorge

Any plans of new games? Besides from the Battle system of course

Yes! We're working on having a lot small games. We're more spending time building a framework so that other people can make games for Gaia.

Sagger-AT3

Matriss Mana

Would you please do us all a favor and make an announcement explaining international copyright laws so that people stop getting so butthurt over not being able to do anime quests?

Also...um...

Would you at least send small delegations of staff to the other "big" American anime conventions like Anime Weekend Atlanta?

About the copyright law - it's complicated... but we're trying our best.

Check out the Kiki tour, we'll be visiting all sorts of places outside of the convention tour.

crazy spork i am

Rainbows_Cure_Pain

-Cough- Do you ever use the Ideas in Petitions? I have yet to something used. Anyway, great job. I LOVE YOU!

yes! often it's a great source or beginning point to inspire and motivate when it comes to conceptualizing those ideas out

Sagger-AT3

DJ Twissta

When will the battle system come out?
when will towns v.2 come out?
When will you upgrade guilds?
Boxers or breifs?
which came first the chicken or the egg?
will you answer all of the questions on this page?

1. Commando
2. Egg.
3. No XD

Lanzer

Hobarookus

What's the weirdest thing you've seen and/or done with/on Gaia? ninja

For april 2005 fool we had a joke that made some people's gold count display as 9 million. Turns out that wasn't so funny... sweatdrop

ijustworkhere

Zurg UFO

Just a simple question. Do you guys get stopped in the streets by people going "OMG! YOU'RE THE ADMINS FROM GAIA! XD" I would do that myself...

We don't get stopped in the streets because we have our secret identities... ninja

Sagger-AT3

ikiPAU

Stupid question but:

Do you actually look at all the petitions or only the most popular at the moment?

We all hang out on different parts of the site. We try to read as many petitions as we can, but we're bound to miss some of them confused

But keep on trying!

-S

crazy spork i am

Sila-chan

crazy spork i am

colleeny_beany

ANOTHER QUICK QUESTION: Do you like to play DDR in your spare time?

i love playing DDR :3

@Crazy spork: What level do you play on and what's your favorite version/song? biggrin

oh man, normally i like to stay inbetween the novice and the difficult levels since i like to go for ones that are fun but not like over the top stomping. i got really into it when i was in high school and i spent a lot of friday nights with my girlfriends and hittin' up the different arcades to play DDR in our dresses and heels.

i think my most memorable song would be that butterfly one. brings back so many memories :3

crazy spork i am

yru567

crazy spork i am

Your Little Bunny

crazy spork i am

i love playing DDR :3

In which case, I love you.
heart

You guys should release some videos of you playing DDR.
That'd be amusing. whee

i know i've got one floating around in my library back at home somewhere...

does it really float surprised

yes, yes it does >:3

Sagger-AT3

ensoul

Any possibility of bot stoppers?
Also, can we get that semi-nude Louie as a poster? Or something?

We'll work something out with Louie. Maybe a poster, maybe something...

ijustworkhere

[Kuraudo]

How often do you guys do something like this in the office?

We totally do cubicle wars. One is actually starting right now. We all have nerf guns. smile

fulltimefailure

[Kuraudo]

How often do you guys do something like this in the office?

we have nerf wars instead :O

Sagger-AT3

Hope Loneheart

What are you guys going to do to reduce the amount of botting and to stop more from being made?

Our moderators are doing the best they can.

I'm going to get me a new banhammer... ninja

Lanzer

yru567

when will the new furniture be released?
will there be a ninja set like the one fetured in this picture of the full set of under water furniture from otakon? link to picture: http://www.gaiacast.com/trisk/ota07/IMG_1593.jpg
will there be a magic the gathering quiz quest like the one someone leaked today?
when will the plot continue, if you cant say the exact date, will it be this summer?
will the plot be conected to the summer event?

We're hoping for next week. Got real busy with fixes. ^^;

We have plans for ninja furniture set. That might take time though.

As for the quiz, things are still being discussed. sweatdrop

The upcoming plot will continue later this year, after the summer event

crazy spork i am

Kairu S.

Do you as admins and whatnot ever feel like the gaian community is underappreciative of your hard work? Does it make you upset enough to just drop what you're doing?

i don't think it'd make me upset, but it can sometimes be a downer after i've spent like a few weeks of hard work in contributing to a project and then seeing how it's received in SF. but for the most part i try and glean something from the comments that i see, both good and bad...and save it for future reference :3

Sagger-AT3

Vixenated

HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN TO BALTIMORE/MARYLAND YET?
Tour-wise?

We were just there yesterady, but check the Kiki Tour!

Lanzer

ensoul

Any possibility of bot stoppers?
Also, can we get that semi-nude Louie as a poster? Or something?

We actually stopped a lot of bots already, but we'll add more to stop botting still. Every month we would stop thousands. surprised

We'll be posting the Louie pic pretty soon. wink

Sagger-AT3

mirror alchemist

Okay a non-stupid question: Will you be having more film contests in the future?

we will have more film contests sometime in the future.

Lanzer

snow_leo_luv

Oh, something thats been bothering me.

Will you ever re-release the H2K5 zombie skins ever, in whatever way?

I really hope not x(

Yes, many of us are zombie fans so we're definitely working towards bringing the zombie skin back. Though we are still thinking of how to add zombie into the Halloween storyline... sweatdrop

Lanzer

Kiss in Digital

totalanimefancaseclosed

Lanzer I Love You!!!!
but anyway.... can you make gold on gaia?
and Can you instantly get your selfwhat ever item your want
and lastly when are you gonna re-do the MP search?

Actually they've said they earn every item they wear, so.. yeah. As in, no, they don't cheat and grant themselves stuff. biggrin

Yup. It's tough being an admin, I can't use our status to help earn gold! gonk

Sagger-AT3

[ - Crystal Tears - ]

Tell me! Will we now have 3 MCs every month or go back to 2 MCs every month?!
I shall keep bringing this up until its answered. >D

Well, it depends on how many good ideas we have that month...

Lanzer

Someone asked for Louie's picture. Let me look for it...

Lanzer

Here's the first Louie picture



I'll post the second one tomorrow. wink

Sagger-AT3

Kuei Keiji

Hey Lanzer!

When you guys get up to Seattle for Sakuracon, need any body guard assistance? I'm certified by the state!

Also, are you guys taking applications/internship applications constantly? I'm a graphic design/viscom/digital media student in Seattle and I'd love to hop on with you guys!

Unfortunately, we only take local interns - they (us!) have to physically be in Gaia HQ, in San Jose, CA.
But we do take applications at all times - look at past anouncements, it should be there somewhere.

Lanzer

Ozmo Azarath

I heard rumors that the manga will be stopping and you all are going to animate the storyline.
I was wondering if you guys were replacing the manga with an animated version of it.
Or will there be like a Cinemas thing?
Maybe I'm just crazy.
emotion_sweatdrop

Many of us at Gaia are comic book artists, so I don't think that the comic format is going away. Though there is a good chance for a Gaia animation coming out later. We're actually working on it. surprised

crazy spork i am

Fang-tan

Hey! What's the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning?

for me personally, my first thought is 'what time is it?' followed by 'how many more minutes can i sleep in?'

Lanzer

Facile

Personals back soon please?
GD isn't funny anymore, and if I recall correctly, those were always funny.

The old personals aren't coming back... although we have plans for the same building. surprised

We're still thinking of making a new area that can carry the spirit of GD. More info to come once we have a solid plan.

Sagger-AT3

Da-Eh

Da-Chan has questions, too~~ >w<

1.) How do you guys deal with all of the bitching that we do? =P There's always a ton of it. x3

2.) Will we ever get back the old mouths and purple eyes? D:

1. Bitching means you care, so we b***h a bit about it, which means we care as well XD

2. More eyes and mouths are in the making.

crazy spork i am

yru567

all of the staff: what are your favorite foods?
(so i can stock up on them for when i kidnap all of you so you program gaia to my will..... mwhahahaha)

i am partial to junk food @_@. rice is even better since that was what i ate constantly while i was growing up at home.

Lanzer

yru567

all of the staff: what are your favorite foods?
(so i can stock up on them for when i kidnap all of you so you program gaia to my will..... mwhahahaha)

Sushi! (How'd you guess?)

Boxed Lunch

Info of stuff he posted in towns:

Things Learned from lanzer/other admins in GAIA Towns:

1. Snacktopia is refilled every TUE/THR
2. GAIA homes update soon but not sure the date.
3. Battle info coming up next week

crazy spork i am

Ozmo Azarath

crazy spork i am

Lady Zelda Dragoness

Are there only two people answering questions?And did either of tehm see my red fonted question?

if it's a question that doesn't pertain to my area i don't want to answer to avoid confusion (and stepping on peoples toes) :3

Awhh.
What is your area?
o 3o

i came on board and joined GHQ around march, so i've only been here for a short while. the projects that i've had the opportunity to work on are ring effects and animations for battle, the artwork and items for gaia: cars/rally, some of the recent MCs, and some other misc. work that involves art :3

crazy spork i am

The Adolescent Spirit

Do you really care about the small users thoughts, questions, and ideas?

personally i can say i do. i find it fun and sometimes helpful to see users' contribution and participation to the site :3

crazy spork i am

Jerrit

What's your opinion on a user-run storyline? o.o' Not like the Zurg event, which just involved users, but... something actually made by the users, with no Official influence.

from strictly my opinion, i think that'd be rather interesting :3

crazy spork i am

chhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

what's it like working at HQ?

pretty fun :3 i enjoy having the opportunity on working on projects for the users (even if they're sponsored because i still have some artistic freedom on what i can do). i enjoy being able to work alongside people like l0cke and lanzer in addition to the rest of the art team.

Lanzer

The Sexy G

Where will we be able to buy these Gift Cash things?

Where on gaia will we be able to buy the MCs with the Cash?

Are we going to be able to buy these cards at Wal-Mart, Target, and other retail stores?

Will the value of Gaia Cash go down? (You can buy a 30k item with 500 cash? That's going to inflate donation items like mad!)

Will there ever be a MC system where you can pay $30 upfront to get 1 Letter every month for the year?

Will the Weekly Comics ever be weekly?

What are some things that Cash will be able to buy/do besides use it for store items?

When will more guild features come out?

Will we ever have a steady anime-library? Or.. a sponsorship with a show so we can have a running show on gaia to expect every week or so?

Can we ever expect a convention in Minnesota?

Will Fleep ever get a scheduled time to update his journal on Fridays? :3

**Few more**

Okay, this is just.. a MC thing, sort of a question? ANYWAYS. Can we ever expect to have Bear/Panda shirts that come in S/M/XL sizes? I'm thinking they'd just be a brown or.. white-light-blue shirt with a cute Bear or Panda head on it.
I would love this, is this ever going to be possible?

This is an extension of the last question.
Can we ever expect any NORMAL items, not fantasy-based items in the MCs?


~The Sexy G
(I had more coming, but... I just thought that was enough for you guys to answer.)

Right now you can get Gaia Cash through Paypal, but very soon you might be able find Gaia gift cards from places like department stores or drug stores.

There will be an option to pay with Gaia Cash when you buy MC.

Gaia Cash will not go down in value, because they are tied to US dollars. One dollar = 100 points, etc.

If you have 10 dollars worth of Gaia Cash, you can choose to buy an MC anytime you want. Say, one MC a month for the next 4 months, etc.

Can't say much for weekly comic... we kept getting pulled off to work on projects!

Guild is about to go through a re-write. Hopefully after the marketplace re-write but we'll still need to plan more.

MC's will usually lean towards being "special" while normal items will be available for gold. That's the general direction, until we find an idea with regular real life item that we think is really, really cool. biggrin

-Lanzer

[Platonix]

July 25th

crazy spork i am

Blind Dog Pride

Only question I can think of at the moment:

What do you Admins/Devs do for fun? You know, to free your minds during breaks from Gaia.

if i'm at home, then i'm playing battlefield 2142 with kirbyufo and fulltimefailure :3

Lanzer

the posthuman apparatus

If you could be any piece of furniture, what would you be?

Bean bag biggrin

The Kitsune Hanyou

The Kitsune Hanyou

Why is your name Lanzer?

It starts with "L". biggrin

crazy spork i am

Purple Hair Spray

Okay. I think I've seen like three of the gaian artists now.

So, some questions for them:
Favorite medium to work with?
Most difficult project? (doesn't have to be a Gaia one)
Favorite project?
Any quick art tip?

XD

I tried. :'D

1. pen and paper. or if i've got a computer around then it's the wacom tablet. anything that i can draw on is all good :3

2. at the moment it's finishing up commissions that i've been taking on outside of gaia. in addition i've also held an art auction here for my guild and my friend and i are trying to find time to complete the illustrations.

3. it depends on what i'm in the mood for. the one i had most fun by far was painting up skate decks to hang on my wall.

4. can't really say since everyone has their own methods. i'd probably emphasize in experimenting and learning on your own...one doesn't have to be totally dependent in a single technique since different areas of art parallel each other. :3

crazy spork i am

Vicener Reborn

Does any of the admins or developers read Harry Potter?

yes. :3

crazy spork i am

[Nunzilla]

crazy spork i am

xXFracturedHaloXx

Will There Be Anymore Item Updates For Gaia Cars?

i hope so! we've been working on a few this week and putting some extra hours to get them done.

Well they include all cars or just the Scion?

:3

crazy spork i am

Purple Hair Spray

crazy spork i am

xXFracturedHaloXx

Will There Be Anymore Item Updates For Gaia Cars?

i hope so! we've been working on a few this week and putting some extra hours to get them done.

ninja

Anymore bunnies?

actually, yes! they're itty bitty though

Lanzer

Sylabus

Okay for any of the big wigs my question today is: Which do you perfer: Halo series or Gears of War?

Halo!

Lanzer

The Adolescent Spirit

What's your take on 4chan?

4chan's awesome! biggrin I like 2chan too. I love the humor in many of the forums.

Remember Lanzer's promise to post a second Louie pic?

Lanzer

Part 2 of 2

Lanzer

Keeper_of_the_triforce

Who's idea was it to kill the Elftechs?

Blame L0cke and VO.

Lanzer

Sae25

Oh.. And why have you chosen to support Edmund and not the VonHelsons sisters zombie/vampires?

But isn't Edmund way more cool??? biggrin

[Platonix]

July 26th

Lanzer

Dakota S

Lanzer, What town? and is there going to be a new towns update
where we can drive cars and add on rooms to the housees?

~Dakota S

We wish to add another car game, then after that we'll start looking at cars in towns. The problem right now is that there are no back poses for cars! surprised

Lanzer

PP2

Lanzer! heart

Ok I'm gonna be a bit of a whore and ask more then 1 question biggrin


-What happened to Gino? Ian, Johnny, and Edmund were all "Huzzah! were leaving the mansion!"...did they ditch him!? gonk

-What happened to VO? gonk

-Is Santa still a cow? xd

-Pirates or Ninjas?

-Add Me? rofl


w00t 3rd xd

Vo's busy working on an anime title!

Santa is, unfortunately, still a cow

Ninjas, of course smile

Lanzer

Da-Eh

No User Found

Will we ever get purple eyes back?
When will the old mouths come back?

Answer this, plz.
3nodding heart

We're working on new eyes, expanding the base eyes you can choose from. So the purple eyes might be back. Can't tell yet.

Same thing with the mouth, when we expand the eyes, there will be more mouths too.

Lanzer

t o x i c `

Lanzer, are you a fan of spam?
Do you like to cook it up and eat it in sandwiches?

That was a present at Otakon 06. Though it just so happens that spam onigiri (rice ball) is one of my favorite snacks!

Lanzer

copy_cat_ninja

Were you scared of getting sued when you heard the BIG Harry Potter leak happened on Gaia?

Nope, because technically we didn't host any of the pirated content. Someone happened to link to the pictures on Gaia.

Lanzer

DJ Twissta

will you release new zombies or old zombies in the future?
and will the battle system have testers like towns , and profiles?

Yes and yes

Lanzer

Mumii

Hrm... question. Question...

Are we going to get any more kinds of games? Possible Daney Dancey Revolution, or more card games?

Multiple player Go Fish maybe? xD

New games will be released before the end of year. We're thinking of small single player games first, then multiplayer games later.

DDR/music type game is definitely being considered

Lanzer

[Nunzilla]

Have you hired full-time writers? Do you plan to in the future?

also:

Will zombie skins clash with any new skins or will they be hybrid? Can you change back?

We do have a full time writer, he helps a lot with the messages around the site and newsletter.

No additional info on zombie skin yet, sorry

Lanzer

[Nunzilla]

King Of Aquatica

Eh, I really want this answered:

Is Louie gay or bi?

And

Will there be any yaoi or anything in the plotline?

Good question. Do you ever plan to introduce gay/bisexual male/female characters into the plot? Soonish?

-Nunzilla

Louie is straight... for now. smile

Lanzer

`Arina

Lanzer~! < 3

. . .

Paper or plastic? .___.

Just curious.

Paper = recycle!

Though I try to bring my own bag to save from creating junk.

Lanzer

Nucleotide

The Zurg Stargate thing: Will it be used for something?

I want more Ron Bruise, can I have some?

Yes! Though I can't tell you what it's for... emotion_sweatdrop

Cory 2.0

Lanzer

Cory 2.0

Cory 2.0

Will Leon or Meredith ever play substantial roles in the plot? Or are they both fated to be backround characters forever?

And On another note, are Leon and Rina related?

Quoted because I'm begging for an answer. x_x;;

Sorry to disappoint...

You can't answer? or No to both?

x_x; Thank you Lanzer

Lanzer

Nucleotide

I have heard that you can no longer create complex events such as the Zombie thing of 2004 because there are so many users and Gaia will go boom. Is this true?

Nope. We can easily program the same zombie event as last year. Though we wish to do something new... confused

Lanzer

[Fishnet Kisses]

What do you guys like to eat for breakfast over there?

Have you ever tried getting an office pet?

Is Snacktopia really that great? gonk

I prefer corn flakes, but I usually wake up too late for breakfast. When I stay late, I usually eat instant noodles for snacks. It's terrible. :sweatydrop:

We tried getting an office pet. Someone have fishes while someone has a rat, but we can't have bigger pets in our building. ToT

Snacktopia is awesome. It's like walking into a candy store every day. biggrin

Lanzer

J.Foxfire

First, I'd like to thank you and your team for creating Gaia. My question is simply this: many people have had problems accessing Towns whenever they want. Even with my cache cleared I cannot get into Towns. Is your team working on a possible solution to the problem?

We're replacing the Gaia Towns server. Hope to have it done by the end of year. It might be ready much earlier, but we're still setting it up.

Lanzer

iMurky

DO YOU LIKE RED BULL?

Red Bull taste like cough syrup! gonk I don't like coffee or energy drink actually. Much prefer green tea. 3nodding

Sagger-AT3

Para

Do any of you guys in the office have TV shows or movies that you get excited about? And does that work itself into Gaia (other than the 300 stuff)?

I can only answer for myself on this one -
I don't have a T.V. surprised

Lanzer

Triskellion

Who specifically controls the NPCs?

Specifically who were we all interacting with during the Zurg Event?

I would really like to know. (Could you thank him/her/them for me?)

A big group of people sit down and decide on most of the events and some of us also play the roles of the many NPC. That's why some are really great writers, while some others, like me, are not. sweatdrop

Sagger-AT3

Transient Prophet

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Roughly the same amount of
sea shells she sells on the sea shore

Poor Sagger didn't get too many questions that were within his own field of expertise today...

Lanzer

Sasuke_Cursed

<< >> Lanzer, what's your favorite anime? << >>

Favorite for this year is Mushishi 3nodding Last year was Monster I think. Beck was really good too.

Lanzer

`Dark Choco

What inspired you to create The Wonderful World Of Disney Gaia???
domokun

My friends who are terrific artists. I wanted a site to offer their artwork, then ideas for community, RPG, and virtual world came together.

Lanzer

gravijiga

Hey Lanzer! Remember me from towns yesterday? I was so exited to see you I pee’d myself ^_^;;

I have a Towns Question. Will there be more effects and emotes in towns in the near future such as the Drama Llama and talk to the hand, or toys like the soccer ball?

And another thing, Who came up with the drama Llama!? It’s the most random awesome emote ever! :drama:

Dramalama came from an art intern by the name of Gwee. biggrin Now you know how we came up with the name of the dragon!

Lanzer

Nucleotide

Are you happy with Gaia?

Very happy, because people who work with me and our users are happy too. 3nodding

Sagger-AT3

ZakuMent

O_O *waves to Sagger* hi!

So your job as an intern is making the economic reports following the market?

That's part of my job: defining price indices so we can measure inflation (in case there is any xd ), defining what economic growth would be in this economy, and looking for ways to make the economy grow. Trying to define what monetary, fiscal and other economic policies are possible to implement.

There are also some other smaller issues that I stumbled upon since I got here.

Lanzer

Para

Sagger-AT3

Para

Do any of you guys in the office have TV shows or movies that you get excited about? And does that work itself into Gaia (other than the 300 stuff)?

I can only answer for myself on this one -
I don't have a T.V. surprised

Woohoo! I got an answer and I didn't have to keep spamming the thread. blaugh heart

You don't have a TV??! How do you live? TT_________TT
Do you guys play music in the office or is it that you listen to your own stuff in your own workspace?

At the office we often talk about Planet Earth, The Office, and Heroes. biggrin

Lanzer

[Q]

Shoot, thought of some more.

- Will navigation for Cinemas ever be cleared up? (Right now you have to hunt down for the announcement to find the profile to find the links)

- How'd the internships go last summer(or this summer? My memory is horrible)?

- When you made this site, did you ever expect for it to become a career or business? Were you anticipating this as a lifepath, or just as a hobby(this being Gaia)?

Yes, we're working on a version 2 of cinema which is much more like what we wanted since day one.

We've got great interns last year, and even better ones this year around

Gaia was planned as a hobby site, but in a short 3 months it took over everything. surprised

Lanzer

Saichen

Lanzer -=-
Been a user since sept 2003, I have been in love with Ian since the first ball. As a lover of Ian, I have to ask if we will ever know his last name, will we ever see pictures of his parents, or anything else related to Ian?

Also: Who is Peyo's father? heart heart
<3 Sai

You'll at least know his last name in the upcoming event. surprised

Sagger-AT3

Purple Hair Spray

What's your blood type?

And have you ever donated blood?

xd

Finally, a question I can answer!

B+,

Yes, more than 20 times. And only fainted once.

Galados

Inferno04

Who are the Admins' favorite characters on Heroes? xDD

Hiro is mine, for sure!

[Platonix]

July 27th

Lanzer

T0tto

Hi, Lanzer! <3

1. What's your favourite Sushi?

2. Zhivago pictures? Oh god, please. ;--;

3. MARRY ME? 8D

4. What kind of music do you like? Favourite artist?

5. What's your favourite item on Gaia?


Kyaaa~! *Sends you love.*

Hamachi! (yellow tail tuna)

Zhivago? Let me ask. :O

I like alternative rock, like Nickelback

Favorite item? Kill Lanzer set biggrin

-Lanzer

Lanzer

Van Cane

Lanzer, will Jack (( Halloween King )) be giving out more pants stare gonk this Halloween or something even cooler, along with the pants


I've been wondering this for 2 years


Also to all the team, have you seen the Transformers movie yet and what did you think of it? sweatdrop


(( I saw it twice and liked it ))

There will be more Jack items, but we still have to find out if he's going to be in this year's event...

Transformers? It's great! Though I miss Soundwave....

Lanzer

Vicener Reborn

Any more stuff you can tell us about MMVII?

or

What do you think will happen to Gaia in the future, I mean after you leave the team/die...?

It might sound harsh, but you gotta think about it.

There are more than 70 of us working on Gaia, so if I'm not around, I'm sure everyone will still continue to work on features that are most requested from all our users. But hopefully I don't get run over by a truck or something. biggrin

Lanzer

Indigo bloom

Hi Lanzer.
ILU...

But anyway, does the staff get offended/annoyed by Gaia "copy-cat" sites?

We think there can certainly be a lot of great virtual world/hang out on the internet. Much like videogames, I think that there are rooms for many great sites, so we're definitely not offended by any of them. Always love to see others bringing creativity to the masses. 3nodding

Lanzer

Arcane Psycho

Lanzer, what do you think of Guild Wars? Alsoalsoalso, wanna sell me a ninja band for 140k? biggrin ;

Okay, serious question, is there ever gonna be an item update that has fantasy clothes? Like, a priest outfit, knights armor, like the people in the old Gaia banner? D:

Yeah we'll release fantasy items soon. We hold back because of battle system but now that we decided the game is not clothing item dependent, we'll probably start releasing them.

Lanzer

Platonix

It's clear that you support the use of image maps in sigs; if you didn't there wouldn't be an ImgMap button in the post interface. However, even though all five destination URLs in my own sig are in Gaia Online, clicking them results in the "This site is not part of Gaia Online" frame because the imap.map file is offsite.
Is it possible to upgrade that frame so that it can detect when the third-party site redirects back to Gaia Online, and remove itself if that happens? Or is there too much potential for scammers to find a loophole in that?

Exactly, the re-direct header was made strictly because of security concerns, and people making Gaia-like login pages to fish for passwords... So they'll always be there

Lanzer

Lady Zelda Dragoness

Will there ever be a Gaia poetry contest?

Just wondering,because those who are better with words than pictures would like a chance to win nice things. biggrin

Something like a poem/writing arena? That's a great idea! The next arena update should have that.

Lanzer

superior_manic

LANZER!

Will we be getting new skins this year?

Why do you keep your avi so simple?

More options for base avatar are coming! We've been too busy working on features, and need to spend more time on the basics...

Lanzer

Diet Poison

Will we ever get odd colored skins?

(Pure white, blue, pink...)

We're deciding if that should be base colors or tattoo options...

Lanzer

KHandHSM

-How are you able to mash up your everyday life with Gaia?

Gaia is my life (eat, work on Gaia, sleep, repeat...) Now days, however, on weekends I do spend time working on other stuff or hobbies. smile

Lanzer

Hope Loneheart

After re-reading the other Ask the Admins I have some questions that have yet to be asked, they don't all need to be answered but I hope that at least one of them will be.


To Lanzer; 1) How do you feel about all the allegations (from the GCD) that Gaia has sold out/selling out every time a new sponsorship come up?

2) I saw a van with the license plate LANZER a few days ago. Were you in Calgary or
dose the name/word "Lanzer" actually mean something?

3) How do you feel about the changes of what Gaia used to be about and what it is now. i/e How Role Playing used to be a huge part of Gaia and now the old Role Plays are ... dead.

4) How do you feel when people (The GCD) Are complaining that Gaia is becoming more like Neopets?

5) What are your thought on forum wars/ hate that one forum will have towards another i/e the GCD's strong dislike of the GD/Chatterbox


General question

What are you going to do to try and hinder botting what about having to fill in a code filed (you know, where there is a pic of random numbers and letters and you need to repeat them ) when making a new account. Lots of other places have done this.

Just having mods banning bots is not cutting it. A good way is to look at the housing arena; nearly all comments are from bots due to this arenas lesser popularity the bots there run ramped and quite often go unnoticed


Question about The Battle system and homes

I had a dream a while ago about the battle system (Yes, I dream of Gaia, used to be quite often at that), I had gotten a quest (this was before the quest system) after completing the quest I was granted a castle hiding place where I could let my friends have rooms in it. To get the quest I had traveled to a hidden place towns and talk with Jack (or had to collect some of the jack head things for it, cant quite remember anymore) There were other people around the area where I had to go to make progress on the quest but they didn't seem to see it. When I actually got the castle it was a big deal as no one else could get one and it was in the middle of the battle system, in a place that was like towns but open, no houses around.


So the actual Questions; Will you make quests that are part of the battle system and not part of the current quest system?


Will there be quests that are hidden and extremely hard to find and are time sensitive, like needing to talk to a holiday spirit, so if you missed they you'd have to wait another year?

Will there ever be houses that have more rooms?

Will there ever be more then houses? i/e Castles, Caves, tents, ect, ect

Will we be allowed to let friends make use of the rooms? Like if we let a friend use a room, they can rearrange the stuff, it'd be there stuff and only they can take it out, kinda like a house inside of some one else's?


If you guys could answer a few questions at least, that'd be awesome.

By working on sponsorships, we can earn more money and expand our developer workforce by 50%. We think it's a reasonable trade-off.

Nope, I haven't been to Calgary, though I lived in Vancouver, Canada for 11 years.

Lanzer was just a name I chose.

Gaia evolves with user activities, much like the Internet itself. Our goal is to make sure that it's fun and entertaining. biggrin I don't think RP aspects are gone, though I do see a lot of users doing other activities.

Lastly, we're putting a lot of thought into enhancing the forums so it's easier to find great posts. Stay tuned for more details!

Lanzer

DJ Chainz

SO lanzer what do you think of this?

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb85/JokerInTraining/amy.jpg

WORKING FOR GAIA IS MY DREAM. . . . that seems sad now that I've said it. I don't care- it's still my dream.

Good work, should start referencing life pictures and photographs too for practice

Lanzer

Troll Dillinger

hello lanzer.

now, this isnt really a question about the site, or the plot, or really anything that has to do with YOUR WORK.

no no this question is about the thing that makes your work worth while.

the community

So lanzer, what do you think about trolls?

Are you displeased at times with GCD, and Gaias, fickle nature?

Does our attitude torward most of the updates so far sometimes bumm you out?

It's sad that there are trolls around the forums, though we spend more time figuring ways to improve the forums than in grief.

Overall, I think that Gaia users are the most passionate people I know. If anyone is unhappy, that just mean we need to check on our direction and raise the quality of our work. I have the confidence to make most people happy. smile

-Lanzer

Lanzer

Seirya379

Silly question:

Did you see the movie 300? If so, what did you think?

I pre-ordered the blu-ray DVD already... I can't wait to watch the movie again! (and again...) It's awesome!

That's all the time I have for tonight. See you all on Monday!

Lanzer

BASTAS knife STOLEN

this has been asked, a hundred times, and i dont think its been answered as of yet~ :C LANZER PLEASE THERE ARE LIKE, 10 GCDERS DYING TO KNOW~ ;OO;

is there going to be an update or two put aside to make previous items unisex, maid dresses in particular?~ <3

ps.ily♥♥

Unisex is a high priority project, we're definitely working on it. :O

That's right, he answered BASTAS' question after he said he was done for the night.

[Platonix]

July 30th
July 30th was a Monday. Lanzer had recently rediscovered the miracle that is weekends, so no weekend Ask The Admin sessions.

Lanzer

Ichigo-Hollow-Shinigami

OMG Lanzer!!!!!
I wanted to know is there going to be any Bleach items coming in the near future? and I will probably ask some more stuff too later on and I am shaking right now to actually talk to the creator of gaia O.O

Bleach items? Might need to ask for permission, but we will have more weapons...

Lanzer

Platonix

Good evening and welcome back Lanzer! Hope your weekend was fun and relaxing!

Before I get back to the usual questions, here's one I feel is very important. When you were late Friday, and when you didn't show Saturday (even though you said you'd be back Monday) some people thought the Ask the Admin event was over. How long do you plan to continue doing these sessions?

I was planning to do this once a week eventually, but I have some free time lately so I plan to do this a few more days.

Lanzer

[Death Blossom]

I'M FEELIN' GREAT! heart

just got done with derby tryouts, and so I test my luck again and ask:

will we be getting rollerskate-type items in the future?

oh! and do you guys like to skate? I mean, I know about the skateboarding, but what about other wheeled recreation?

We talked about roller skates items quite a few times, it's tough because we only have that much space underneath the avatar, then came concerns about it working in towns... ^^; Once we figured out the technical side we'll release skates.

Lanzer

Penn Almasy

Welcome back, Lanzer. Will there be food-themed items in the future, like onigiri?

Oh wow, that's a great idea! I'll forward it to the artists. :O

Lanzer

Spufflez

When will Word Bump be giving out gold again?

Yes, we are in the middle of figuring out how to stop the botting activity in word bump right now...

Lanzer

crystalmuse

When do you think (guesstimations acceptable) guilds will be re-written/updated?

It's a big project and it'll take at least a few months, so don't hold your breath! Until then, we're working other new features like additional quests.

Lanzer

Ramshackled-Lamb

What is your response to the Gaians who say that the team behind the items, quests, etc. isn't really putting their effort to work?; Some Gaians are mad at the head honchos for putting out "lame items" for the MC's AND quests and that the Gaia team is reaching out to other companies. What is your honest reaction as part of the team who creates these?

:O The art team spend days brainstorming for the best MC to be released every month. We start with a list on a white board and everyone vote on the best items. Nobody hold back on this group effort and we're trying very hard, though it is our 4th year working on MC's and it's tougher to make cool items than ever before. sweatdrop Though I believe that we're still coming with cool items every month. 3nodding

Lanzer

Inai

Any idea when the big quests are coming out, like the wings ones?

And about the plot, when can we expect another update? The mmvii trailer looks really, really good.

Also are there any plans to release any more music-related items, or Japanese street fashion-style clothes?

When the new eyes come out, is there any chance of getting purple eyes back in the older styles? I lost purple eyes on one of my accounts because I thought about giving it a newer skin tone, not knowing purple eyes had been deleted. D:

It's a lot of questions so I don't expect any or all of them to get answered, but just one would be fine. :3

We're still working on the small quest, though the big one is not far away.

Meanwhile, I've heard that there are multiple story updates being worked on, unfortunately I can't give anything away. sweatdrop

Japanese street fashion style items are in the list. Though not in the immediate release.

I can't guarantee purple eyes, but I'll definitely make the request. Hopefully it's not too much work to expand another color to the eye.

Lanzer

Spufflez

Will the cards glitch be fixed?

Yes, though the same guy is busy with battle system... cry

Lanzer

Midnacht

1) At Fanime in 2006, a slew of new [NPC]s were shown that have yet to be released. One of these was a warrior monk named "Xiao-Fahn". Are there still plans to release him? Or has he been officially scrapped and replaced by the guy who runs the Sig. lab?

2) Are there any plans to make a Nitemare Sash?

That's Xiao Fan's day job! biggrin

Lanzer

Amigo_amigo_amigo

Lanzer, will you ever dress up in a carrot suit? xd
Also can you reveal any info on the next item update. I love the Amigo Items xd . I know you were thinking of me.
Another Battle system update soon?

Carrot suit? gonk I don't like carrots....

Battle update goes out tomorrow I think. surprised

Lanzer

[ Laquitia ]

Where do your weekly Nerf wars take place? In the office? Sounds like it's a very roomy place. xd What other fun things do you people do in there when you have time to spare?

IMPORTANT:
Also, what are you going to do about these numerous hackings from those cookie grabbing scripts and ripway sites? Some people have been using other shops' banners to mislead them into a cookie grabbing page to get their passwords. The mini shop owners and others will/already have trouble advertising their shops if this keeps up. Especially, if so many people are using tinyurl and urlcut in their signatures, etc. You never know what's under those links except for the tinyurl when you hover over it. Right now, I have to be very cautious on forums, journals, and profiles and be sure to hover over every link I see.

Nerf gun wars take place in the office. We had a ton of fun, and now 7pm is kind of the official Nerf fight time. wink We are also doing other stuff like watching anime, movies, and some of us are thinking of building Gundam models together.

Regarding the cookie stealing sites, we are definitely doing everything to eliminate all the exploits on Gaia, though outside of that is hard for us to control. We're thinking of changing the login process to make it harder for fishing site to mimic Gaia.

crazy spork i am

Ty Taralom

How did you come to work for Gaia?

This question is for those other than Gaia's founders. Sorry Lanzer.

i was a regular user for a few years and then out of the blue last year lanzer contacted me and asked if i wanted to come in for an interview :3

crazy spork i am

Da-Eh

Yo, everyone!

I have a question about the con tours and such.

Do you think you guys will ever be able to make it to the AWA-con in Atlanta, Georgia?
<3

I would love you guys forever if you could.
heart heart

personally, i'd love it if we could travel to other cons. i've always been interested in checking out places over on the other side of the US since i've never been :3

Lanzer

Matousai

Dear Lanzer,

Are their going to make new trash accessories/ hats? It wold be nice to have reason to save trash that is left on the grounds of Gaia Towns :swaet: ......

Yes definitely. We are working on making item updates for rare items, then game items. Rare item update will come up really soon!

Lanzer

The Kitsune Hanyou

What are these features that are going to use "cash only" that Admin mentioned in an announcement? Some users are worried about them, and how it will affect Gaia in the great free vs. Pay only site debate.

I would like to know, because it would certainly help stop a lot of the GCD's bitching about it. :/

For the time being, Gaia Cash is for the convenience of not having to do the paypal thing every month, and for gift cards that will be available in stores. Other ideas still need to be thought through, such as users asking for features to put ads up on Gaia etc.

[Platonix]

July 31st
Today was a bit of a special day: Lanzer and Sagger-AT3 came on eight hours earlier to catch the Eurpoe Europe crowd!

Lanzer

Dakota S

Lanzer, Will you ever make Spartan Type items? Ones that are like the 300 movie. But based on the Spartans from history?
I would like to have spears, sheilds, helmets, swords, and cloaks like the spartans had. I would love if the developers could make
us something like that. I have wanted ones like these since I heard about the movie 300. Please cry I want these bad. I would
love if you could respond and tell me something.

Also will the new Housing Items, and Rally Items be released soon?

~Dakota S

You know what? The 300 DVD is out today... wink And we're all a big fan of the movie...

Sagger-AT3

mirror alchemist

'Ello Lanzer *waves*

My friend and I was talking after the Ask the Admin last night. She was trying to cheer me up because I gave up. So she brought up a good convo about tattoos. That kind of sparked something that was discussed. But anyway, here's my question:

- Females have a tough time with the back and chest tatttoos because of the basic bra. Is there any plans to make it in a way so that females be able to equip those types of tattoos without the basic bra interfering with it?

You can try wearing a swimsuit - it takes away the basic bra. I'm not sure about how it inteferes with tattoos, but it might help.

Sagger-AT3

Pritchard

It's pretty early for me here :p I'm at home all day, Lanzer! ^.^;; Ohio, USA here. (I will step aside for the Europeans if this was a special day just for them biggrin )

Any chance on users developing games/utilities for Gaia? Any idea on what would be safe/possible for us to even create? I know users already create a ton of content, but besides your recreational artists, there's a lot of creative developers on the site!


Thanks!,
Pritchard

People have been playing around with this idea for a while. It's not simple, but we're thinking about it.

Lanzer

Ramshackled-Lamb

What is the deal with all of the company agreements and the random items that're based upon their products? Some say that's "selling out" and ruining the true Gaia. What is your response to that?

I think that there is a difference between Gaia being able to afford more developers and selling out because we want to make more money. Take banner ads for example, we could make more money by having more than one ad on all our pages, but instead we choose to only have one ad on 20% of our pages. Similarly, we make sure that all sponsorships are not intrusive and are rewarding and/or fun. 3nodding

Lanzer

Gem-Thief

Please answer my questions ^___^; heart

1.How are you? ^w^
2.In your profile it says you like laputa, do you like any other Studio Ghibli films?
3.Why don't you like carrots? gonk
4.Are there anymore pet items planned? (Another kitty perhaps? ^.^ )
5.Is Moira going to quite an important character in the upcoming storyline?
6.Who's your favorite NPC?

Thankyou ^.^ heart

I'm doing great!

I love Laputa because I watched it in theaters when I was 10 years old... Made a huge impression. Though I love all Ghibli films in general.

I'm a meat eater. Veggies do not concern me. :O

We know that pet is the second most requested feature on Gaia, so we're definitely thinking hard about it.

Not the coming storyline, but we definitely have more to come for Moira, my favorite character. wink

Sagger-AT3

Evelyn w h o

Hello Lanzernator wink

Do you ever plan on bringing back old features such as Gaia Personals or the Link List? I understand that it's probably a no for the personals, with all the spam and other unmentionables that went on there, but what about the beloved Link List?

Do you ever see you and the rest of the team of admins selling Gaia anytime in the future, or do you hope to stick with it for as long as it's running? I'd love to pop back in ten years time and see Gaia still going strong, under the same few that created it initially!

Why have you chosen for the new logo to have a lowercase "g"? Don't you think that makes the site a little less like "Gaia"?

1. No and No. Too much cybering and improper meterial confused But we're working on addind other features biggrin

3. Actually, it makes it more like Gaia (look at the address bar of the browser...) biggrin

Lanzer

TheOMFGLOL

Are there any other plans for interwebz themed hats such as the OMG, AFK, BTK, OMFG and ORLY?

YES! And might be sooner than you think. smile

Sagger-AT3

Kellkolo

Are Bachelor credits going to be used for anything more than the current Bachelor hats?

Yes exclaim

Lanzer

Long username is looooong

Lanzer, What has become of the Mining game that was shown to us but never released?

That game was scrapped because it sucked. XP I shouldn't have tried writing a game in Javascript...

Sagger-AT3

Ichigo Ayakashi

Will there EVER be a BTK hat in the Gaia Store? biggrin DD?

No plans so far...

Lanzer

Elegant-Bunny Rose

whatever happened to the idea for moderator application forms? you hinted at that a while back.

Any day now, the MSR team is getting it ready.

Sagger-AT3

Qwake

Back when Towns was released I heard rumors of Guild Halls, large homes for members of a guild to hangout in towns. These homes would be bought with gold in the guild's account.

Were these just rumors or are there plans for Guild Halls?

This is planned...

Sagger-AT3

PP2

Lanzer! Hope your doing good today


-What do you think of the few users that are still Grombies and havn't taken the vial? Proud of us? XD

-Have any users ever found Gaia HQ in person? surprised If they ever did would you give them a tour? XD

Gaia HQ is the eye in the sky - It's an airplane circling San Jose, landing every couple of hours to refuel and refill snacktopia.

Lanzer

PP2

Lanzer! Hope your doing good today


-What do you think of the few users that are still Grombies and havn't taken the vial? Proud of us? XD

-Have any users ever found Gaia HQ in person? surprised If they ever did would you give them a tour? xd

Those who found the Gaia HQ never lived to tell the tale... domokun

Lanzer

Donovan Farshadow

Is there going to be a big update today?
Is that why you are online at this time of day?

We're here because people in Eurpoe asked us to. biggrin

Lanzer

Voice of Reason v2

1Wii, PS3, Or XBOX 360?
2 Did you steal those monkeys?

We love the Wii

and flying monkeys

Lanzer

ShoyChan

What flavor ramen d'you like best?
Personally I like shrimp, but chicken's good too x3

I like beef ramen, closest thing to red meat. domokun

Lanzer

Sila-chan

How many times have you been proposed to at cons? Do you even keep track anymore?

Do you collect avvie art?

How many of the HQ staff have accents of some sort? ninja

I get about one every panel.. sweatdrop

Yes I collect every avvie art that was PM'ed to me.

Yes many of us have strange accents, and Darknrgy loves making fun of them. blaugh

Lanzer

Ichigo-Hollow-Shinigami

Lanzer!!!!!!! G'Morning ^^
I wanted to know what video game system do you have? if any.
and also Is Gaia pools a possiblity? like a community pool? that would rule!!! and you can make Ian a lifeguard!! xD

For the longest time I haven't been keeping up, but recently I got a Wii and then a PS3 after I bought Planet Earth on blu-ray. Though I only have one game on the PS3 - Gundam Musou (Dynasty Warrior).

Lanzer

Fruity

Oh oh!

Waaaay back in the day, there was something said about old Monthly Collectibles (Though they were called Donation Items back then) in the Quest System. Now that it's here, are you still considering it?

Yes! The questions is - how do we roll this out without making people upset...

Sagger-AT3

Baconpeople

Hey, hey Lanzer I have a few questions for ya.

1. Are we going to have different cars on Gaia
2. Is the car game going to change so we could actually win a gold cash price?
3. Are there things being done about the stagnant inflation in the MP.
4. How tall are you?

What is stagnant inflation?
We're working on measuring inflation, and possibly on controlling it (if it's there, which I'm not completely sure).
Inflation, just like anything else, is good to have a little bit of...

Lanzer

Zweizi Galon

Is this an [NPC] or just a design for Profile backgrounds? She looks like a love child between Agatha and Edmund.

That girl was one of many designs for the profile system... Anyone want her to be a character?

This was followed by several different varieties of Yes.

Lanzer

squkyshoes

Will there be another olympics like in 2004?

Yes! Especially now that we have more NPC

Sagger-AT3

Iceketch

Sagger what's the cloud near your avatar?
From your profile it says that it doesn't exist O_O

One burrito too many... redface

but actually, it's a cloud of lethal gas, a MC from a couple of months ago.

Lanzer

PhantomOfTheComputerLab

I have another question for you Lanzer. Has anyone at Gaia HQ ever burst out in song for no reason? And do you like musicals?

Someone just did when I read out your question... it's a very dangerous question to ask...

Yeah I like some musicals. Things like Phantom of the Opera and Catz are excellent.

Lanzer

The Phantom Dork

I don't know if this has been answered or not but it is a matter that is sorta big. What are you guys gonna do with the botting/profiting from botting accounts that were banned unfairly?

We wipe those accounts clean, so everything is gone from the system. We need to make sure that gold is given out fairly to all other users.

[Platonix]

August 1st
Today Lanzer was pressed for time, so he started the topic and then departed, planning to return later and answer some of the questions that users had posted. He stated this in the topic-opening post. Very sadly, this didn't stop people from spamming reposts of their questions. The first answer was on Page 16, from crazy spork...and it was a repeat of an answer given on July 25th. sweatdrop The thread basically turned into Ask Crazy Spork, and Lanzer didn't get around to answering questions until nearly midnight Pacific Time. I have decided to omit answers from crazy spork that are basically just "I don't know", unless she directed the asker to the staff member who would know.

crazy spork i am

Lady Zelda Dragoness

How often do you guys look in the Site Feedback?I'm just curious,there's some really good ideas there.

i tend to poke and lurk through that forum often, especially during my breaks :3

crazy spork i am

Wolfram Lee Ysud

Spork - i don't know if you answered this, but how many hours do you clock in for your work, and is it worth the paystub?

kinda personal, hehehe :3 this is my full-time job and from my perspective, yes, working here is totally worth it. i love the projects that i'm able to participate in and i love working with the other employees. this was the only full-time job that i decided to take because the work environment is so awesome (i normally stick to freelance/contract work because i like the independence and freedom). :3

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

Who doesn't love ice cream? ^^

The real question is what's your fave flave?

chocolate chip cookie dough, no doubt about it!

crazy spork i am

Nomana Daha

crazy spork i am, how is it being a developer?

i find it really enjoyable to be able to be a part of the art team. it's so much fun and inspiring to have this opportunity to work in a place such as this. especially since before i got hired i was a member here so it's interesting to compare and contrast my views towards this place before and after joining the team.

crazy spork i am

C.J.M.

Spork-
This may have been asked before but...What developnt are you working on right now?

and...
Are you in the Gaia HQ right now? xp

i tend to be all over the place when it comes to working on stuff, depending on deadlines. i currently did some work for gaia cars and cinemas, and finished up some ring effects for battle.

and no, i'm not at HQ, just at home :3

crazy spork i am

Arancia

crazy spork i am

Arancia

I was gonna ask that. D: But to expand, what previous things have you worked on as well? And also, which forum is your favorite~? XD

i tend to lurk in SF and GCD, but my usual haunts are over in picture post and art discussion :3

Do you ever go into the avatar edit sticky? :O

nope sweatdrop

but if there's a link, i can probably check it out in my spare time :3

crazy spork i am

Lyca_Watyre

Question for Spork:

Since yer in the know of the prettyful arts you guys give us to play with,

How difficult was it to figure layering items for new skins that have been developed so far?

truthfully that's still a mystery that's yet to be uncovered, since i haven't had much practice in that area! i'd like to think that juno is the pixel/layering guru :3

crazy spork i am

Musical Note

For Crazy Spork I Am:
I'm so sorry if this has been asked before D:
i haven't read the other ask the admin(s) !
So, do you get paid? I want t sort of be a developer for websites and a graphic artist but my mother constantly tells me that i would go broke! D:

Spork-
do you get paid?
Did you find a very lucky job or is my dream reachable?

yes, i do get paid since this is my full time job! before being hired here kirby and i were doing pretty well in designing websites and doing motion graphics...so i like to think that we did alright in that department. :3

crazy spork i am

AnaI Lube

@ Crazy Spork I Am: When were you promoted to Developer? I never noticed.

heheh, interesting name :3

i started working full time here around march, and that was roughly around the time in where my account was changed to dev status :3

crazy spork i am

T.r.o

Hello Sporkii!

I have a question for you. Do you love the watermeat? I have a link to your watermeat video in my profile. <3

Also, chocolate chip cookie dough huh? Me too. ^^

i love the watermeat! i bought one of the plushies to put in my cubicle at work, alongside a hand made one my best friend made for me :3

crazy spork i am

C.J.M.

Working on the rings?!
Can you show us a preview? wink **nudge nudge**
[I bet she's gonna say she's not allowed.]

they recently put out a preview for battle:

-gaia battle

there's a video at the bottom that shows an example on what kirby and i worked on :3

crazy spork i am

T.r.o

I'm jealous. D: I want a plushie but I can't afford it yet! Also, you have a friend that makes you things like that? Lucky!

So, ever dabbled with programming?

if actionscripting in flash counts as programming, then yes...just a little. kirby does more of that than i do, i like coming up with the concept and drawing them out :3

crazy spork i am

mirror alchemist

crazy spork i am

Spufflez

Hey Spork!

I just have one question, Do you like Anime?

And another, sorry. What's your favourite show then? 3nodding

y'know, sailormoon will always hold a special place in my heart. it was the first anime i ever got hooked on.

but yes, i like watching anime. i can't really pick any of my favs right now since there's so many i like, but i love the work of satoshi kon

I love Sailor Moon. I'm in the middle of rewatching the Live Action. Tuxedo Kamen = heart

That just inspired a new question: Who's your favorite Sailor Senshi? I've always loved Sailor Mercury.

oh man, i recently went and watched all the pgsm episodes, hehehe. as for my fav...i'd probably say sailorsaturn.

crazy spork i am

AnaI Lube

-Do you mod any other forums?
-Will any of the other mods be answering questions in this thread?
-Do you have direct contact with Lanzer and the admins?
-What are your current projects? That is if you are allowed to discuss them.

i don't do any of the modding since i'm more on the artist end...i'd hate to mess up their job if i dabbled in that area!

yes, i do. most of the employees end up eating lunch together :3

right now i've been helping out in battle, gaia cars, and the cinema

crazy spork i am

Nomana Daha

crazy spork i am, have u played D&D before?

nope, never had an opportunity to. but if given the chance, i'd give it a shot :3

crazy spork i am

Stray Bullets

Spork~ How old are you?
and and and, how old were you when youjoined Gaia?

hahah, wow another personal question! i'm 23 and i joined gaia back in '04.

crazy spork i am

]Pencil Fetish[

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

crazy spork i am

i'm at home, eating dinner and replying :3 hehehe. multi-tasking~!

What's for dinner? domokun

chicken tikka and basmati rice with a side of garlic naan :3

Will you mail some to me? ;_;
Especially with extra garlic on the naan please. Mnn. Garlic.
Does spork like Garlic?! O:

I LOVE GARLIC!

crazy spork i am

Stray Bullets

Oh oh and another question, Can you eximate how much time till the bs is finshed?

wish i could say. you'll have to ask qixter about that one :3

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

crazy spork i am

i was approached by gaia around december. lanzer emailed me asking if i was interested in coming in for an interview. my first immediate reaction was that it was someone impersonating lanzer and i didn't reply back until i was sure it was from him, hehehe.

Oh wow, that's wicked.
Forgive another question, if it's personal or something, but were you approached through art you had done on Gaia, or did Lanzer find you through, say, DeviantArt or elsewhere?

i think it was through my profile. my old layout had links to my demo reel so i had that up for display. a funny thing...i remember putting my layout together and then posting a thread in the profile discussion to get some general critiques. someone asked me why in the world would i put my demo reel in my profile for gaia since it's not generally a place one would get job opportunities. well...one could see how that went :3

surprised

That's insane.
Who knew that general users' profiles ever get looked at? That's a new one on me.
Learn something new everyday.
Would you happen to know if Gaia is always looking for Artists or Developers, or only just the set amount they already have?
I'm sorry about more questions again. X3 I'm just really curious about this subject.

i'd like to think that're constantly looking, since there's always more stuff to do!

crazy spork i am

TehCorn

Oh! Spork! I have a question to ask that you might be able to answer!

Is there any built-in support for parties in the Battle System, or is it a mostly solitary affair? I know there are rings that can let you use support moves on other Gaians, is this as far as support for parties goes? Or is there a system in place that would reward non-solitary gameplay? Can you talk in Battle, much the same as you can in Towns?

oh man, those are questions that's probably better answered by qixter and the programmers, since they're the ones developing the game play.

crazy spork i am

Nomana Daha

crazy spork i am, have u seen a movie called "October Sky"?

no i haven't, but i remember expressing interest in wanting to see it :3

is it any good? should i go out and rent it?

crazy spork i am

Sci_Wiz_AJ

crazy spork i am

Sci_Wiz_AJ

Spork-Do you live in San Jose or do you comute?

i lived in so.cal until getting hired by gaia. so i moved up to live in san jose :3

Ever heard of Bellarmine College Prep?

kirby tells me it's an all boys school (kirby is a bay area native).

crazy spork i am

Stray Bullets

Spork do you going to marry somone on the Gaia team?

i should hope so. we've been together for more than five years :3

crazy spork i am

AnaI Lube

Sporkie:

That's good. So you actually moved to San Jose just for the job. That's dedication. A personal question:
-Did you go to a college?

yes, i went to the art institute along with fulltimefailure and kirbyufo (that's where we all met!).

crazy spork i am

AnaI Lube

Another question: Did you get to choose the color of your screen name? Haha.

no i didn't get to pick it. i think if i were given the opportunity i'd probably end up picking pink and then having all the guys get mad at me, lol.

crazy spork i am

Sci_Wiz_AJ

crazy spork i am

Nomana Daha

crazy spork i am, what type of coffee do u drink?

garlic : vampires :: coffee : sporkii

:3

What's your faveorite drink then?

coca cola used to be my beverage of choice until i decided to stop drinking soda cold turkey. i don't really have a favorite drink. if it's alcohol then it's most likely a midori sour :3

crazy spork i am

AnaI Lube

Sporkie:
I hear Gaia makes a huge profit. Over $8.9 million. Is that true? Or does most of the profit go towards improving the site or upgrading the servers? Linkage.

Ever hear of Chaos Programming? A guy claimed he had a program to unban accounts. Is that possible? He had a video on youtube. It seemed legit yet could have been easily made to look that way.

that's...probably a question for lanzer :3

crazy spork i am

]Pencil Fetish[

SPOOOOOOOOORK-SAAAAAAN~
(Oh god, I sound like a weeboo)
Curiosity strikes. Herd. Across my face.
Last time I sleep with its sister, insanity. D:

Anyways~
If not coffee, what of TEA?!
Garlic is love.
And tea i s love.
But what for Sporky?!
Does Sporky have a tea-fetish too? Someone who totters out to buy milk and comes home with $60 of specialty teas?! D:

I'm bad with money. ;_;

Also: Letter Subs: Ever?

i haven't found a tea i really like...apart from green tea, hehee. if i did start looking around, i'd probably want to go all out and find funky teapots and tea cups to go along with it.

crazy spork i am

Stray Bullets

Spork~How did you come up with that username?

it was my old screen name from back in high school. when i started putting up my work online i couldn't think of another alias to go by so 'crazy spork i am' has stuck ever since :3

crazy spork i am

Druki

crazy spork i am

Druki

Spork-unit:

I remember reading that you were from So. Cal. correct? What part? Ever hear of either Los Altos High School or Mt. San Antonio College?

Favorite pastime?

Seen the Simpsons movie yet?

mt.sac cool almost went to school there.

i haven't seen the simpsons movie yet!

D: Why not? Found a better college?

You should! Arrange an office field-trip for a Friday evening! Fun is always had in impossibly large groups. Or large groups in general.

i got contacted by the art institute before i started to actively look for a college to go to. :3

Lanzer

Prince Haijin

Is it possible for you to show us the Zhivago pic that was released at the con, dearest Lanzer? Haijin and all the other fans of that lovely vampire would so love it if you did.

Also, if you were a superhero, what would your power be? Would you run around in spandex? Oh, and what soda is your favouite? The world must know~! heart

Also, are any of you into Rocky Horror? 'Cos that'd pretty much be awesome.

I'll hunt for the Zhivago pic tomorrow wink

My favorite power is lightning speed. I could get to shop in Japan every weekend. biggrin Hey could probably get more work done. Favorite drink is this weird orange soda called Orangina.

I love horror flicks though I missed out on a lot of the Rocky Horror shows...

Lanzer

Captin Kion

Hey Lanzer. I just have one question and im basicaly going to try once.

Who are you looking at for the Presidential Race of 08?

I'm secretly hoping to see Al Gore in the running, though it's probably because of all the big media influences. biggrin I'm still Canadian so I can't vote actually.

Lanzer

Cirala

Hi HI lanzer will there be any other Video Game quest like the upcomeing Blue Dragon?

Possibly, depends if any video game sponsors are interested in working with us. Personally I think it's much more fun working on game related sponsorships. Though it all depends on the title I guess.

Lanzer

ngaurhoth1

Hey lanzer hows your day?
So let's see question....
Um will there be a muscle body released in the future? like Logan and gambino's avatar.

Nothing in the Gambino size yet, though check out the Spartan set that are trickling out...

Lanzer

superior_manic

What sorts of skin might we get in the future?

do you enjoy these ask admin threads? getting to know us small folks of gaia?

We wish to open the possibility for all sorts of skins, starting with the most requested skins like animal types.

I definitely enjoy talking to everyone, otherwise I wouldn't be here! biggrin Though there is a secondary goal, which is to help introduce everyone to other admins and developers of Gaia, and let everyone know that Gaia is the creation of a lot of people's hard work. Those people deserve a lot of support from the Gaia community also.

Lanzer

Nomana Daha

If u had a chance, would u play Dungeons and Dragons?

Definitely! I first learned about D&D from playing MUD and playing Capcom's D&D arcade game. crying Then I finally played traditional D&D followed by Magic.

Lanzer

Cristaly

WHy won't you spiffy up your avatar? gonk it needs change add an MC or something honestly.
Any new cities (like Barton, Aeka etc.) coming soon?
DO you guys like to read our crackpot theories in the GCD and laugh at how wrong we are? (I'd like to)
Is the plot completly planned to every detail, or do you think as you guys go?

Heh, I keep my avi plain because I really don't have much time to shop, and I'd like to just be recognizable while letting our users show off. wink

New areas will be added with the addition of the battle system.

We love reading the threads in GCD, infact, sometimes we change the plot according to some of the threads posted! surprised

Lanzer

Han Von Helson

Will there be any more towns like durem, barton, etc?

Yes, once we got all the server problems fixed we will roll out other Gaia Towns with more features.

I'm very lucky to be talking to the head of the gaming division of Sun Microsystems today and they're happy that we're looking into their game server technology. We'll be getting more help from the cool guys at Sun and hopefully we'll soon have a scalable and rock solid game server up and running!

Lanzer

Voice of Reason v2

Can I tell people I know you?

Can I PM you and have a conversation?

V_O_R v2

Yes you sure can, and anyone is welcome to PM me. Though I only have time to read PM and hardly have time to reply these days. There were times when I answered every PM, though I only get around 30 PM back then. Used to be scolded for answering PM and not working on features. ^^;

Lanzer

Witch Endora

Howdy Lanzer and other staff!

Here are afew questions:

1. Will the rest of the new team members, who applied for the summer be announced soon?

2. How do you decide which conventions to attend? Is there a way to suggest a con, and if so, how?

3. When planning for item updates or MCs, what are the main things you take into consideration? Basically, what influences your decision to create what you have made thus far?

4. Does the sponsor decide on quest items or is it up to the admins/staff or both?

5. Last but not least, does Gino wear a thong? Francisco Bagels (Kiki) is dieing to know.

Thank you for your time. If you can't answer certain questions, please atleast answer the ones that you can. Thanks again. :3

Setting up profiles and stuff are totally voluntary for our staff members. We'll be adding more as they get their profiles done. Though we might be having a staff page soon, showing more info.

The convention forum is where you can suggest which con we should visit. That's the reason we setup the Kiki tour. It's our effort to reach out to more users in different places.

The main determing factor for MC is the genre. After brainstorming for ideas, we then group the ideas into what type of items they are, and we make sure that the two or three items go well together for this month's release, and we also make sure that we have a good variety of themes and styles throughout the year.

It's usually our call though the sponsor do have requests at times, or sometimes the decision revolves around copyright issues, etc. It's a collaborative process that is different in every case.

Gino? Thong? Dear god! :O

Lanzer

ngaurhoth1

Lady Zelda Dragoness

How often do you guys look in the Site Feedback & its subforums?I'm just curious,there's some really good ideas there.

Ya and they should look at the large petitions. Like the tetris petition.

Definitely we frequent the site feedback forum. It's my most visited forum actually. Also, don't be surprised to see Tetris on Gaia. wink

Lanzer

That Crazy Botvinnik

Why has the battle system taken so long from the first time it was promised?

Any chance of refraining from exclusive pay content? Exclusive, as in donation letters that cannot be given to others or special games.

Any chance of game rewards that cannot be traded? Stuff that you have to work for by solving puzzles, battling really hard, etc.

EDIT - Why was that Magic: The Gathering item sooooo crappy?

It's taken us a long time to release battle because we haven't done an MMORPG like game before. Nor where there any flash based MMO in the market that we can easily learn from. On top of that, our entire team was about 15 developers (we now have more), and only some of them can work on battle, while others build features or keep the site running. Many RPG games have a team that's bigger than Gaia's entire staff count. surprised

We're not inclined to make items that cannot be traded, unless it doesn't make sense. It's still being discussed right now.

We put a lot of thought into the items, and we thought they are pretty good... crying

Lanzer

Vicener Reborn

Will users under the age of 18 ever be allowed to join the Moderator team or will we all have to wait between 1 to 4 years to have a chance?

Or if not moderators could users under 18 be mod helpers of part of the staff, maybe a junior police?

We're just starting with the process, so we're starting with the safest and fastest route. Very soon we'll be reviewing the process again and making changes. Can't promise anything yet, however.

Lanzer

Stelle Scure

Mister Lanzer; have you ever played Gaia, liked posted for gold and dressed up your av and all that stuff, or are you not really interested since Gaia was your idea in the first place?

Almost every idea are features that we think is fun and cool, so definitely, I had been building features that I would love to use and play. The problem came when I couldn't get any free time to "play" Gaia like a regular user... When a free minute come up, I'd rather try to answer another PM than to play around, etc.

Lanzer

Beramode

Any chance any more NPCs will be available for friending? A lot of minor NPCs have normal users on their friendslists, so I was just wondering~ ninja XD

And... any favourite console/PC games? XD Mostly asking Lanzer but if any of the others come out of the woodwork and answer that's cool too. heart

Adding NPC as friends had been on my wish list. :3nod

Favorite game? Uhhh... D&D Shadow of Mystara by Capcom, and SF2 of course. wink

[Platonix]

August 2nd

Lanzer

Dakota S

Will the summer festival be coming by August 15th 2007? Because I have school a few days after that and I want to be able to participate in it. Also what is your favorite Gaia MC Pet?

The summer festival might be delayed by a little because of our current workload, but we'll keep everyone informed once we have more info. We'll definitely shape it so that it won't conflict with people's school schedules.

My favorite MC pet? Gotta be the Gwee.

Lanzer

FylkSoul

Hey, lanzer what kind of cellphone do you have?

The Q :O

Lanzer

Silver Archangel

Hey Lanzer, did you guys get a chance to check out my sitefeedback thread about the Logo, or did you get to talk about it? :3 I'd appreciate any answer either way X)

Yes we did! Thank you for your suggestion. I've been going back and forth between the alternatives.

Lanzer

Lady Zelda Dragoness

Amarilyn

Hi Lanzer, can we have new flowers for towns?

I never thought about that question...
Yes,I'm wondering this too!Lik ethe leaked flowers that came out when the DC did?Many Gains want them back.

Not just yet, but we'll get to it. First we're updating rare items, then game items, then car and hair, then flowers. The order might change but not too far from that.

Lanzer

Coal Wealth

Would you rather be a Lion, or a Tiger, and why?

Liger!

Lanzer

Overlord of Teh Lawlz

Lanzer, does literacy have an effect on a user's chance to be selected for a moderator position?

In a way, yes, since all the communication between moderator and user are through text, ability to communicate is important.

Lanzer

fishy asparagus

hey lanzer (or developers...)

is there an alternative to shockwave that could be used for arranging houses? shockwave doesnt have a platform for linux, you see, and i would appreciate it a bit sweatdrop

also, assuming you have free time, what do you fill it with? do you ever take vacations? what are your destinations, if so?

:O We wanted to turn the arranger to flash, but so many other flash projects fall in higher priority... the next project is to enhance the item inventory system. We might not get around to it anytime soon. Sorry! But we definitely want to do it.

Gaia used to be a 24/7 thing, but now I try to keep my weekends available to do my own stuff, I even took a vacation earlier this year! Lately I've gotten into building Gundam models. 3nodding

Lanzer

ChibiTenshi91

Puke Queen

Ramshackled-Lamb

Has the Gaia team ever considered making a user-made NPC contest?

PQ wants! <3333

That, and a contest similar, although with items instead.

I'd love to see an item I thought up as an MC.

Oh yes! I want to see an usermade NPC contest too!

Great idea! Aside from user created item, we will try to host a user created NPC event

Lanzer

The Kitsune Hanyou

Hey Lanzer, is there ever going to be a way we (the users) could have tabs to change the layout to previous ones on our browser? I mean, I don't mind a pic on the layout we have now, but I do miss the redhead and catgirl every once in a while. sad

We'll provide the previous images as backgrounds and on other places in Gaia, though the changes to the new layout and header involves a lot of engineering changes. Things such as daily chance to new event notifications are going through code changes because of the new header, so it'll be difficult to let the old header to exist at the same time.

In the future, however, we should have ways to customize your environment to add in some of the older graphics. That's a little far down the road.

Lanzer

Rain-claws

Will There be a PvP arena or will it be open world PvP?

Probably arena style. Open world style is a little to chaotic I believe. At the end, we'll probably ask everyone for feedback.

Lanzer

Bob Dobbs

In your new banner Ian and Sam are shown, will they end up being a new couple? Any info about Ian we don't already know would be greatly appreciated. Also, will there be more NPC Items/Gaia related items in the Gaia store anytime soon? *spazzes*

Not likely. And sorry, I don't have answer to the items.

Sagger-AT3

Joanne Sheila

Do any of the admin or devs play the mini games. If so what are your favorites.

I play blackjack (Spartan items, here I come xp ).
Used to fish, but too busy now rolleyes

Lanzer

Platonix

How will Gaia Online be affected by the move to Beta? Hopefully fewer glitches, but will it spell the end of item updates? Will there be no more minigames added after that?

Beta is a quality standard. After that we'll continue to roll out new features and items. The only difference is that pages and features should no longer crash.

crazy spork i am

Joanne Sheila

Do any of the admin or devs play the mini games. If so what are your favorites.

the jigsaw was one of my favs, i wish i had more time! but i do like to lurk in rally occasionally :3

Lanzer

Lady Zelda Dragoness

When will the summer festival be,and will we have to wait until Halloween for any new skins?

It's not solid yet, but the summer even will probably be released on the 27th. A little late, but we're spending a lot of effort in making it fun.

New skin wise, yet, it'll probably happen at or after Halloween.

Lanzer

K u z u

Hi Lanzer, I only have one question :
Do you plan on adding more fishing spots?

We were, but the current priority is to add more games before expanding existing ones.

Lanzer

Vanilla Cup

Just to add my questions to the pot. xD

1) Lanzer, will Halloween 2007 be much better than last year?

2) Do you like dogs? :3 (Siberian Huskies, to be specific?)

3) Have you ever directly eaten wasabi? (not just dipped anything in it?)

Yes, yes, and yes. biggrin

I love wasabi! I can have rice with wasabi and soy sauce for a meal.

Huskies are awesome, and I like Corgi too for some reason.

crazy spork i am

Simsboy114

mrgreen mrgreen mrgreen Hello to the other admins, mods, and site developers! Sorry If I'm forgetting others. But you guys deserve alot of the credit for the website! How's your work coming along so far? mrgreen mrgreen mrgreen

pretty good! :3

Lanzer

[The Bathroom Wall]

Oh, I have another random Q;

Is there a chance Avis could be animated, such a blinking eyes, stick out tounge, random peace sign action~

Animated or 3D avatar is definitely down the road, however, we will only migrate if:

- Avi's look just as good
- It's fast to load
- It works on all browsers
- People won't lose items

THere are a lot of technological challanges, but a lot of it is actually possible. The only question right now is compatibility with everything.

Lanzer

Blazing Neko

Another question for Lanzer~ <3

What are some of you plans to efficiently stop botters? Why haven't you guys put up one those required fields where you have to type in something that you see in a image you guys provide ( like mnO35z or something random like that) to stop botters from making accounts? Sorry, but I forgot the specific name for what these things are called. xP

I remember stumbling onto a thread about it and one of the users had said that you guys wouldn't implement anything like that, for a reason you guys could not disclose. Is this true?

The method is called CAPTCHA, and we've been discussing over whether we want to use it or not for a long time. There are so many pros and cons that we're on the edge. At the end, we did implement a lot of changes that discourage botting without CAPTCHA. If the need arise, we'll re-consider.

ngaurhoth1

Lanzer

Cruoreniss

Lanzer, when will our avatars ever have piercings?

Yes

Er lanzer.. Yes is not a date...

crazy spork i am

The Barton Baron

crazy spork i am

The Barton Baron

crazy spork i am

pretty good, a little tired from staying up late. i'm really bad at sticking to a schedule, especially to get a good night's sleep...i get caught up in working, heh. other than that i feel like i'm making good progress with the things i need to be working on for the summer festival :3

I know how you feel! But it's not work keeping me awake, it's the ghost in my room. D:

Have you ever had any encounters with the supernatural? :O

whoa, crazy!

i think i used to when i was younger...but i'm not sure if it was just my vivid imagination playing tricks on me. i used to have a hard time sleeping at night and sometimes i would think that shadows would move on their own accord.

*traps you in conversation*
Man, it's not even like that. My mom had these dreams like a month ago that freaked her out when she woke up and she felt like she wasn't alone in her room! She also had like major anxiety when she woke up.

Now it's happening to me, except before I go to bed... I don't wake up in the middle of the night 'cause I'm a heavy sleeper. cool

Anyhoo, if you don't want to conversate with li'l ol' me I understand. x]

i'm also a pretty heavy sleeper once i start falling asleep. but sometimes i have way too many things running around in my mind and that makes it difficult for me to get a good night's rest. that or i get too caught up working and i forget what time it is (i just did that last night!).

crazy spork i am

cc-Matt Jeevas-cc

When you were in High School, did you ever stuff freshmen in the trash can? 'cause you know.. I do. DX

i tried doing that to my sister when she was a freshman, unfortunately she's taller than me gonk

but i used to go around and scare her all the time at home, heh.

crazy spork i am

Wolfram Lee Ysud

Spork, have you heard any plans of more accessories? Silver ones, specifically?

like avie accessories? i haven't heard any word around here but i'm also not directly working into making items (i'm still learning!)

crazy spork i am

Golden Skulltula

crazy spork i am

Golden Skulltula

hello lazer and spork.


have you played a zelda game?

can you please say "Skulltula rawks hard" ?

yes i have played zelda games, i heart them.

SKULLTULARAWKSHARD! hehehe

yay! yeah, I love them, too.

and a dev said I rawk hard.

.3. my life is complete.


So spork, what browser do you use when developing gaia?

i normally use firefox when i'm lurking on gaia but the work i do doesn't really involve web development :3

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

crazy spork i am

Purple Plaid Pajama Pants

crazy spork i am

i like collecting avi art! some of my friends in my guild have been kind enough to draw my avi :3

You wouldn't happen to have a particular avi outfit that is your favorite, would you? >.>

nope, i don't have a favorite outfit, but one of my fav items would be the bunny ears :3

Hmm... Any other faves besides the bunny ears?
So I can come up with a general outfit since you don't have a fave. ^^

i used to wear this one often:

-avie arts

Hotaru-Neko

Stray Bullets

Lanzer

Kya-Kitty

Lanzer-san!
Three questions.

Does your avi cosplay you or do you cosplay your avi?
Is there a pattern to the battle updates?
Can you give us any hints as to this months MC Items?
~Waves Mike~

I play my avi, though I dress pretty conservatively on Giaa. biggrin

Pattern? Check the battle journal at the end of every month!

OMG LANZER MISPELLED GAIA!!!
O.O

He's hurrying so he can answer more questions! xD;

.. ::saves quote:: ninja

crazy spork i am

Kya-Kitty

Spork-san.
Myabe you can answer why the Deluxe Cat Ears dont layer with any headband item on Gaia.
Its hard to be a neko kunoichi without a headband y'know..... sad

i think juno would be the one who can answer that sweatdrop

crazy spork i am

copy_cat_ninja

Coke or Pepsi?

coca cola was my fav until i decided to stop drinking soda cold turkey. :3

crazy spork i am

LittleAngel13

@ Spork: - When did you first become interested in graphic design?
- How did you stumble upon your developing job for Gaia?
- Do you like it so far? :0
- What has working for Gaia taught you? Any valuable lessons you might want to pass on?

i first became interested in graphic design while i was attending college. kirby and i did some freelance work for interscope and that's how i started learning.

i love working here so far. probably one of the best jobs i've been in :3

i've been learning a lot here! when i started i wasn't very confident in using flash but since i've been here i've been getting more comfortable working in different programs. one of the things i've learned so far is to just try everything once, even if you feel that you're not confident in it...because just approaching something with an open mind will give you the first step in gaining experience to mastering it :3

Lanzer

Fortenra Askasa

Lanzer, where do you see Gaia in 5-10 years?

Tons more features, and much more features to allow users to create items, features, and events within the Gaia world.

Lanzer

Sauy Brigand

hey lanzer do you think you guys at gaia could make a constant updating storyline, not just on holidays, but like every other week or something have a story update or event update, so there would always be something to do on gaia, cause right now, i do go on every day, but gaia can be a bit boring at times, so for a while i just stare blankly at the screen, you guys are doing an awesome job, but if we could have a constant or sheduled updates that would be super awesome cool! thanks!

Definitely, we are now placing focus in planning for a lot of small but fun updates so nobody need to wait for months for new features. We'll have more info for everyone real soon!

[Platonix]

August 3rd
For the second time, Lanzer started the topic and then left it to crazy spork. This time he said it was because of a series of meetings he had to be in. He didn't answer any questions until the next morning.

crazy spork i am

Gamine

crazy spork i am

Ozmo Azarath

What are you wearing?
;D

a sporky shirt and a pair of jeans :3

lol sporky shirt?

yep, i found a shirt with sporks with faces on them. couldn't resist getting it :3

crazy spork i am

Klim

Hey Lanzer/staff!

How does one become a staff artist for Gaia? Do you check portfolios at conventions, or hire job postings anywhere? Or is it a tap-a-current-user sort of thing? Will you ever announce staff openings on the site like you did with the internships?

I mean, heck, I'm willing to relocate! wink

i got spotted through my profile here on gaia :3 i was a regular member on here before lanzer emailed me asking if i was interested in coming in for an interview

crazy spork i am

ngaurhoth1

So you having a good day?

i'm happy that it's a friday! i can sleep in tomorrow, hehehe.

crazy spork i am

Zweizi Galon

Okay! Two Questions:

1. Any hints as to what the Summer Festival will be? I mean, does it mean a plot update? An item update? The unveiling of the Community Swimming Pool?

2. Are there going to be any summon rings in the battle system? You know, kind of like how the Final Fantasy series has summons? It's be cool to see Gaia's own deities tearing up the battle field. :3

summons would be fun to try and animate!

crazy spork i am

Q Cumba FX

Question to anyone in the thread. There's a bug on my screen, should I squish it?

it'd leave a smeary mark on your monitor sweatdrop

crazy spork i am

Druki

Query directed at Lanzer unit:

What was your reaction to L0cke setting your car (more specifically, the trunk of your car) on fire? Your take on the story? Who else was there?

Query directed at crazy spork i am unit:

Ever heard the above-mentioned story?

i read about it somewhere. crazy stuff, yo. hahaha.

crazy spork i am

Jamie Bear Rawr

crazy spork i am

Jamie Bear Rawr

to spork:
what did you have for breakfast, lunch & dinner?

i skipped on breakfast...boston market was catered today for lunch at the office...and i had a couple of granola bars for a snackie. haven't done the dinner thing yet since i'm still at the office :3

what did lanzer have? :O

probably the same thing. we normally have lunch catered here so all of us get to eat together in the lunch area :3

crazy spork i am

g i z m o

@ crazy spork I am: I asked this for Lanzer, but I want to hear (erm, read? ninja ) your opinion.

What was your favorite project you've worked on since being a part of the Gaia team, and what was the most exasperating?

andalsoofftopic, are you really a crazy spork? :O

i think gaia cars has been my favorite so far. i got to draw a lot of the assets in addition to coming up with some fun items to equip the cars with. as for the most exasperating...i haven't come across one yet, there's just so many thing to be done and i enjoy getting a chance to work on some of them :3

and as to being a crazy spork...yes indeedy :3

crazy spork i am

Straight Ace

Whats being covered in the meetings?
you seem to like answering the personal based questions over the site based ones, any specific reasons why? =P

the meetings that i've been in has always been for the projects that i get to help work on. the last one i was in was for the summer festival in addition to brainstorming on the kind of fun activities us employees can do here if we do a good job with work.

and as for the personal questions over the site based ones...a lot has to do with the fact that i'm either not part of the project or things i can't really talk about until they're released.

crazy spork i am

Deandriea

crazy spork i am

Druki

Is L0cke really the crazy one there or is that just a show he puts on for everyone? Is there an ounce or three of normal in him?

no, he's seriously the crazy one. i sit a couple cubicles down from him and sometimes i can hear him attempting to do tricks on his skateboard here in the office, lol. in any case he helps keep the morale up with the art team :3

ooh, are there any other amusing details you can tell us about staff members? Who hums while they work? Who paces in the cubicle? Has tons of photos on their desk?

i sit next to CP and there are times where he'll hum, heeheh. i occasionally go after fulltimefailure to tickle him and/or sneak up on him and scare him in his cubicle. sometimes he'll retaliate with a nerf gun, heh.

crazy spork i am

vincikun

crazy spork i am

ngaurhoth1

Well Spork i'm back. If you could make a your own mythical creature what would it look like?

a sporkiicorn! or something related to bunnies :3

actually i drew up a cuttleSpork in flash as practice. i think if i could make my own, it'd be that.

-cuttleSpork

whoa! no wonder they hired you to be an artist..
do you do avi art? maybe on your mule or something?

i used to do avi art on this account. i do on occasion take up art auctions to help out my guildmates :3

crazy spork i am

golden skulltula

crazy spork i am

golden skulltula

@ spork:

your hawt.

butyeah....

have you seen 300?

do you have a special mule that you can talk to people without them saying "OMG A DEV!!!oneSHIFT11111"?

i love 300 B) i went and bought the DVD the day it came out so i can play it here at and listen to it while i work.

naw, i don't really have mules. i tend to lurk a lot so i don't post very often. these ask the admin threads are a first for me to actually post a lot :3

yeah.

I loved it too.

have you seen Edward scissorhands?

I thought it rawked.

does gaia provide you with the software you use to develope things on gaia?

i watched it a long time ago, i don't remember much of it gonk

and yes, they get us the software that we need in order to get our work done :3

crazy spork i am

Vicener Reborn

Are you planing to go at any conventions outside the US?
I'd really like you to come to Puerto Rico...
(My mom doesn't let me buy stuff with her credit card in the internet...)

if i could, i would. i love traveling...unfortunately my wallet tells me otherwise gonk

crazy spork i am

Zweizi Galon

Is the Gaia HQ work environment lots of cubicles? Or winding elaborate hallways, decorated in glitter and glamour, containing hidden thronerooms for admins? heart blaugh heart

mostly cubicles :3 there's been talk of turning the artist's area into a giant pirate ship though...

crazy spork i am

ngaurhoth1

crazy spork i am

ngaurhoth1

If you could make a anime item what would it be?

omg, it'd be sailormoon related, i can tell you that much, hahaha.

Hm major fan of sailormoon? I kinda like it but the episodes I saw got to being pretty much the same as the last...

true true. i love the effects animations they did for the transformation sequences. one of these days i want to recreate that using maya and after effects...

crazy spork i am

Q Cumba FX

Ooh, I remember what I was gonna ask. Do you lot call each other by your usernames in the office? x]

my real name is a lot easier to say (and less syllables!) than crazy spork i am, heh. sometimes kirby will call me sporkii though :3

crazy spork i am

Platonix

What do you think of www.gavsim.net, www.tektek.org and other sites that make useful tools for Gaia Online?

i like them, lets me plan out outfits i'd wanna wear :3

crazy spork i am

Packs

-High hope question- Can you make the mantis ring demo but with me there. XD

lol, i dunno about the mantis ring, but maybe i can ask kirby to put your avie in our flash file for testing :3

crazy spork i am

Jamie Bear Rawr

to spork:

where exactly are your headquarters in San Jose?
can anyone have a tour or walk up to the front desk?
is there a big marquee that says GAIA?! surprised

it's a secret cool

but no, we don't have a marquee...that'd be badass though.

crazy spork i am

Druki

You guys probably have a lounge room. At least, from what I've heard. Besides a Wii, what's in there? What is there to do on a...I don't know, however long any given break is.

we used to watch the simpsons while we ate lunch, but the tv was moved to make room for the artists cubicles crying . there's sometimes nerf gun battles that happen after hours too. it's a pretty fun atmosphere and it's one of the reasons why i love working for gaia :3

crazy spork i am

Zweizi Galon

Hey Spork, what is THIS???

hehhe that was some MC practice i did so i could try my hand at doing pixel stuff :3

crazy spork i am

Leo Boy

Spork, do you ever look at a user's avatar and draw them into the background or some feature of the site?

i do go on the avi arena to look for crazy avies i can use to test our animations for battle. the crazy ones help in seeing if there are masks i need to redo or if i'm accidentally cropping something off.

Lanzer

Jamie Bear Rawr

can you give us any summer event hints?
what will be going on? ;D

how was your day?
what did you have for breakfast, lunch, & dinner?

Summer event will happen all over the Gaia world, we can all fight with water!

I usually skip breakfast. For lunch we had Boston Market, one of my favorite places for chicken! Dinner I celebrated a friend's birthday over Chinese seafood. The seabass soup was amazing.

Lanzer

anarkhasis

Is it true that one of Gaia's main influences is MapleStory?

Nope, we used to play a lot of RO and I think that has more influence on us. Oh, and I think that MapleStory came after Gaia.

Lanzer

Oterua

Will we be getting different themed towns, such as Isle De Gambino or Durem?
When is the new layout coming out?

Definitely. Probably after we installed the new Towns server.

New layout comes out real soon! We're working on how Daily Chance would look like in the new system. :O

Lanzer

Packs

Hey lanzer. biggrin

How are you going to choose the beta testers for the battle system?

We would probably choose the most engaged users on Gaia as our beta testers. That would be determined by stats such as time online, post count, etc.

Lanzer

SF Creek

A question about towns, will you be incorporating even more ways of transport? Like how the UFO works? Possible cars? Hoverboards? Skates with special animations, etc, etc. Make the jet form of the mecha fly over houes, people, trees, etc. Make certain things allow you to go faster. Things like that.

Yeah one of the bigger ideas for a Towns update is to have transportation. Cars would be cool, and having public transport like a bus or plane would be fun.

Lanzer

Bleach Blonde

Are the Von Helson Sisters going to have a big role in the new event
or is it going to be more focused on Vladimir and Louie?
Why haven't the Von Helson Sisters profiles been updated?
Is Labtech alive?!

Yes, though I can't say much beyond that.

And yup, Labtech is still alive.

...note that neither Bleach Blonde nor Lanzer ever specified Labtech X...

Lanzer

Tasmanian Devil

If someone got a warning like 2 years ago, is it cleaned from their record or does it haunt users forever?

Depends on the type of warning or ban. Small things will not affect someone's mod application if that's what you wish to know.

Lanzer

Yuzi_K

Hiya Lanzer, hope all is well. heart

My question for the night is what kinds of things will we be expecting with the new marketplace write-up? ^^

Darknrgy had shared a lot of info here:
http://www.gaiaonline.com/journal/?mode=view&post_id=12545271

It looks pretty awesome so far!

Lanzer

Platonix

One thing I've been longing for is the ability to sort game items. I feel it's more important and useful to be able to do that than to be able to sort the equip items. Is the staff looking at ways to be able to do that for the upcoming Item Inventory rewrite?

Yes, we're thinking of an approach that can accommodate different types of items since there will be more than the three item types in the future.

Lanzer

Sgt.PepperHat

crazy spork i am

Zweizi Galon

@crazy spork i am:
I feel like I don't know what questions you could answer. What areas of Gaia do you specialize in, so I could ask you a question or two pertaining to your specialty? heart

i'm an artist for gaia. i got hired to do the effects animation for the rings in battle. in addition i've had the opportunity to work on gaia cars and cinemas, and i'm currently working on some stuff for the summer festival :3

Interesting how the word under your username says 'developer.' x D
In the future will there be better naming between the actual Gaia staff?
That way we aren't PMing an artist to fix coding or anything like that. x D

One of my goal is to highlight every staff member in Gaia. It starts with the staff listing posted in site feedback but there will be its own page in the future.

Lanzer

T0tto

Hey, Lanzer! ♥♥

Zhivago picture yet? o3o

I'm working on it! wink

Lanzer

Tai Naito

Lanzer or any Admin/Dev:

Hope you're doing well! I has... 3 questions!

-Did you ever take a UFO out for a spin during the Zurg plot? (mainly directed at Lanzer)

-Is Gaia HQ handicap accessible? My brother, who's handicapped, likes to evaluate offices and wanted to know.

-Are you familiar with... ninja Pee Salad?

Yes, yes, and no surprised Pee Salad?

Lanzer

Coffee Slave

Sup Lanzer! I've been trying to catch you in these threads for days! There's a bit of a time difference between Cali and New york. XP

So here we go,
Question 1: With the upcoming Vampires (or whatever they are), are Zombies and them going to be sworn enemies? Or better yet, is there going to be a rivalry between species on Gaia sometime in the near future? Like against humans, zurgs, zombies, etc. Also how would all these species play out in the upcoming Battle System?

Question 2: Will you marry me? wink

A vampire's enemy is usually not a zombie... but I can't give too much away biggrin

Lanzer

Vegie

I have one I have one!

Are you planning to upgrade/expand the Guild System so users can do more with their guilds?

Yes, guild system need a re-write pretty badly. We might remove the guild creation fee, add a lot features for spending guild gold, and make it easier to manage guilds.

Lanzer

Druki

Query directed at Lanzer unit:

What was your reaction to L0cke setting your car (more specifically, the trunk of your car) on fire? Your take on the story? Who else was there?

It's just a car, more important that we had fun. rofl

Lanzer

Mills Potiron

Scarlet Dark

Will you guys ever make the elf ears for all the different color skin avies...?

I want dark elf ears. crying

I 2nd this.

I'll remind the team again

Lanzer

iPocky`

Hey, Lanzer!

What influenced you on making the Von Helsons vampires?

Are there going to be 3 MC's per month indefinitely?

What's your favorite sushi?

In terms of gold and items, are you an average Gaian, or are you insanely rich and have 6 of each MC ever created?

Doesn't their names sound rather ominous to not be vampires? smile

We're leaning towards 3 MC because it feels really bad two release 2 items and see both failing, and people saying how they don't like them... Though it's more of a confidence factor. If we have two items that are really strong, we wouldn't worry over making three of them.

I love Hamachi (yellowtail tuna)

I have about 100k accumulated over the years. Other than that, I don't have much MC to make me super rich. smile

Lanzer

crazy spork i am

Straight Ace

Sounds fun
what a shame all the staff are so hush hush over everything though

yeah, sometimes i really wish i could say more!

Though we're really working hard to say more... it starts with the staff listing with profile and journals, and this thread is just one of many things that we have planned. Hopefully when you get to read through everything by our staff members, people will have a good idea about what's going on around Gaia.

Lanzer

X-RedDagger-X

To Lanzer,
Will we ever get real wings for the avatars that are "realistic".
what I mean buy that is that they are attached to your back and also don't look so hight on the shoulders.
Also if so will we get a demonic/fallen/angle wings that are not like stubby protrusions of the sholders?
also last thing. will there ever be a feature for scaly skin?

The answer is yes - the infamous back wing quest is planned. We'll start rolling quests out as soon as possible. 3nodding

At the end of the topic, Lanzer had this to say...

Lanzer

Thank you everyone for posting in the thread. From next week on, I'll be online every Monday at 6pm. Other times I'll spend on updating my profile and journal, and answering PM's. 3nodding See you next week!