An Open Letter To GaiaOnline

[Eternally Gone]

Dear GaiaOnline,

You and I have been together for just over 8 years. Our romance started in 2006, when you were still exciting, hopeful, and you never asked me for money. In fact, you were giving me new items just because you had created them and wanted to share them with me. You pushed me, and watched me struggle to earn that first 10,000g.

Now you’re lazy, pushy, in my face with advertisements, you want me to spend my real money that I’ve worked hard for, for virtual items that I can’t even enjoy. You throw gold sinks at me, and at the same time want me to pay for gold gens. You are recoloring things that don’t need to be recolored, then releasing them as something new. You never used to lie to me Gaia.

I remember seeing your Admins on all the time. Now, all I ever see are Moderators who can’t do anything but babysit us [and they do a very good job]. But Moderators can’t code the site – they can’t fix the little things that you used to be on top of. They can’t put a cap on this inflation, and they can’t give us useful things the site needs, instead of spamming us with 10 announcements about Cash Shop items. By the way, I don’t like being spammed with that in the span of 5 minutes. Is it really necessary?

Shall I lay down some of the things you should fix? Would that make it easier for you? I’ll even make a list for you, so you don’t have to read a block of text.

• Cash Shop – Stop announcing it. Stop flaunting it. Stop making it so that’s the only way we can earn these special items. Announcements are for special purposes, to get people’s attention. However, you’ve earned the disdain of your demographic by force-feeding us these spam-announcements, instead of using them for updating us on the actual site.

• Marketplace – Put a cap on how much an item can be listed for. That’ll help with inflation. If an item can only be placed at 100 million gold, more people would have a better chance. Why am I seeing PAPER [Crumpled, Xerox, Construction, Newsprint, etc] on the Marketplace, going for 1.2 billion gold? Why are bugs, flowers, and inks, selling for so much? These are VIRTUAL items, so why are they going for such obscene amounts? Because people are greedy. Put a cap on Marketplace listings.

• Gold Shops – There are multiple things wrong with the Gold Shops. UPDATE them. Give us new Gold Shop items. Not just seasonals. Give us a shopping cart, or a Quantity option. MAKE THIS A GOLD SHOP ONLY option. I know the Cash Shop has this already - take it away. Regain control of the Gaia economy. You've got new people signing up every day who will never amass that 20 billion needed for a Cash Shop item on the Marketplace.

• Alchemy – You now gave us GoFusion. The Cash Shop answer to Alchemy, but you never fixed alchemy. Remove the Premium items in the formulas, or make them Alchemy only. Many of the formulas contain items that Alchemists cannot obtain because those items are Premiums which are either A: No longer in the Cash Shop, or B: Not being sold on the Marketplace. How do you expect us to be able to craft these formulas if we cannot even access the parts to make the item?

• GoFusion – Really? Fix what you gave us before coming out with something else. Simple as that. This is just a useless game.

• Moderators – Get more of them, and let them do their jobs. Have you seen CB lately? Between n***s and the other sexually explicit content, I’m surprised you haven’t just shut it down. Proof that you don't care about the well-being of your demographic. You want us to basically police ourselves in that regard, and let me tell you, it doesn't work.

• Tentacl.com – We all know this is your “18+” site. It’s advertised on the site, which is a tacky move just so you know. And we are all aware that money generated from GaiaOnline is funneled into this site. Maybe you should re-think spending money on that site, and put it back into Gaia. Fix the pile of messes you’ve made here, before jumping ship, yeah?

I’m sure there are a multitude of other problems that Gaia has going on, but these are things that I personally live with as a daily reminder when I log into this site. You used to be so good, and now, I’m doing all that I can to get people to switch over to another website that doesn’t ask me for my money every five minutes, and isn’t clogged up with things that are useless.

This is it Gaia. I don’t know how much more of this any of us can take. I thought we had something, but obviously you are moving onto other things, that aren’t necessarily better, and you don’t care about your demographic the way you used to. Not all change is good change.

Love,
Eternally Gone

[bye wig]

Quote:

Threads giving feedback on multiple topics ARE NOT allowed in the forum. Usually these take the form of "My opinions on Gaia" or "The Current State of Gaia and What Should be Done." The purpose of the Site Feedback forum is to give feedback on different aspects of Gaia, so a thread designed to give feedback on a dozen different aspects of Gaia is redundant to the purpose of the forum. These threads also have the tendency to get off-topic, turn into hang outs, or serve as a means of attacking users who disagree. If you wish to give feedback on several related topics in one thread that is acceptable. However, if you wish to give feedback on many different aspects of Gaia, please do that in different threads.

To clarify: A thread entitled "The State of Flash Games" that encompasses all known issues in all flash games is too general, and would not be allowed in the forum. A thread specifically detailing Aquarium features would be acceptable, because it focuses on one specific issue (Aquariums) and then discusses features related to said issue (suggestions on fish, feedback on the Overseer/music/backgrounds, performance issues, etc).

source.

I suggest you edit your OP to one subject if you want to be taken seriously by the higher-ups.

[I have a tissue]

wandering fish

Quote:

Threads giving feedback on multiple topics ARE NOT allowed in the forum. Usually these take the form of "My opinions on Gaia" or "The Current State of Gaia and What Should be Done." The purpose of the Site Feedback forum is to give feedback on different aspects of Gaia, so a thread designed to give feedback on a dozen different aspects of Gaia is redundant to the purpose of the forum. These threads also have the tendency to get off-topic, turn into hang outs, or serve as a means of attacking users who disagree. If you wish to give feedback on several related topics in one thread that is acceptable. However, if you wish to give feedback on many different aspects of Gaia, please do that in different threads.

To clarify: A thread entitled "The State of Flash Games" that encompasses all known issues in all flash games is too general, and would not be allowed in the forum. A thread specifically detailing Aquarium features would be acceptable, because it focuses on one specific issue (Aquariums) and then discusses features related to said issue (suggestions on fish, feedback on the Overseer/music/backgrounds, performance issues, etc).

source.

I suggest you edit your OP to one subject if you want to be taken seriously by the higher-ups.

Quote:

If you wish to give feedback on several related topics in one thread that is acceptable.

I believe they are talking about their all-over experience, which is technically acceptable. The different issues are related to their experience.

If they don't take these threads seriously then it just adds to the list as to why the user experience sucks unless you pay Gaia.

[bye wig]

I have a tissue

Quote:

If you wish to give feedback on several related topics in one thread that is acceptable.

I believe they are talking about their all-over experience, which is technically acceptable. The different issues are related to their experience.

If they don't take these threads seriously then it just adds to the list as to why the user experience sucks unless you pay Gaia.

Well, that's quite a stretch. So could one say; "they all have to deal with Gaiaonline, so they are related?"
I guess i should have PM'd a mod for clarification before i posted. I figured someone would challenge my suggestion.

However, i still believe that 2 sentence summaries on 7+ topics in one thread isn't a constructive way to give feedback.
& I haven't made a Gaiacash purchase on this site ever since i joined in 2008, and i don't feel that way, but each their own i guess.

[Princess of the Crows]

wandering fish

I have a tissue

Quote:

If you wish to give feedback on several related topics in one thread that is acceptable.

I believe they are talking about their all-over experience, which is technically acceptable. The different issues are related to their experience.

If they don't take these threads seriously then it just adds to the list as to why the user experience sucks unless you pay Gaia.

Well, that's quite a stretch. So could one say; "they all have to deal with Gaiaonline, so they are related?"
I guess i should have PM'd a mod for clarification before i posted. I figured someone would challenge my suggestion.

However, i still believe that 2 sentence summaries on 7+ topics in one thread isn't a constructive way to give feedback.
& I haven't made a Gaiacash purchase on this site ever since i joined in 2008, and i don't feel that way, but each their own i guess.

Okay...

It shouldn't matter what the rules say at this point. This is an open letter talking about a person wanting Gaia to listen through their point of view. Granted, even if you use the rules, this won't be looked at by the people this person wants it to. Stop policing the site feedback thread simply to be pushy on people stating their opinion. Nothing the higher ups have talked about beyond their cash shop has been that important anymore.

so, back to more important matters.

It's a good letter, and I agree that if you sent it into HQ you might get a generic answer back. But, as I remember, one of the ideas was to actually send paper letters to Gaia HQ. Print it and send it to them?

[bye wig]

Princess of the Crows

Okay...

It shouldn't matter what the rules say at this point. This is an open letter talking about a person wanting Gaia to listen through their point of view. Granted, even if you use the rules, this won't be looked at by the people this person wants it to. Stop policing the site feedback thread simply to be pushy on people stating their opinion. Nothing the higher ups have talked about beyond their cash shop has been that important anymore.

so, back to more important matters.

It's a good letter, and I agree that if you sent it into HQ you might get a generic answer back. But, as I remember, one of the ideas was to actually send paper letters to Gaia HQ. Print it and send it to them?

That first bit is absurd. Of course the rules still matter, even if you don't feel you are being listened to.

If you feel like it won't be seen in this forum, post it elsewhere. There is no point posting in this forum if you don't want your feedback to be taken seriously (not saying that is what the OP is doing, but that is what you are implying). If you have that mindset, get out of this forum and make way for the threads of those who still hopeful for change. Don't rob them of the little chances they already had for their serious suggestion to be heard. &You don't know that, there are many people in this forum who feel like they were listened to, its just some requests cannot be fulfilled.

I agree with your suggestion, a letter to headquarters would be much more effective than the SF.