I've been on Gaia for 10 years...and one of my favorite things was roaming the marketplace for the sheer endless choice of avatar items. I can still remember when I made my first 5 million gold by auctioning off an art commission. Gaia grew and so did it's apetite for our $$$...first the monthly items...then one by one cash shops came...and the rest, as they say, is history.
Let me tell you WHY Gaiaonline is doing this - it is because Gaiaonline is literally DYING:
Despite it's growth during the past decade, Gaia has been losing popularity and this has caused the owners of Gaiaonline to cause this inflation in order to demand more gold from it's rapidly declining user-base to finance the maintenance costs of the site itself as well as the lavish lifestyle of it's owners and the expectations of it's investors. They are....beating the dead horse and milking it's blood...
Due to backwards compatibility, the Gaiaonline website, which was based on a PHP bulletin board script from 2003, has missed out on several big changes, including but not limited to
screen responsiveness (the ability of a website's design to adapt to mobile device screens) website design and others. This has somewhat been solved by the Gaiaonline mobile app but not completely.
The graphics are tiny (and cute) are just outdated and can hardly keep up with new similar avatar communites, let alone the sheer number of incredible free online games that have been coming out. The new avatar items that keep coming out and that are worth having are mostly, if not all, cash shop items...and seriously overpriced at that...however~ if you're an experienced trader, you will know how to turn it around in the marketplace.
Be that as it may, it's a fact that Gaiaonline used to have 50k+ users online at one time, now it's less than half...
In general, I would love to see Gaiaonline reborn with all the available items remade in quality 2D or 3D HD graphics, the website and all it's features revamped, quality free content alongside reasonably priced payable content and with the old useless moneygrabbing stuff removed, but this may not be the plan of Gaia's current owners.
I haven't been visiting Gaiaonline recently and I was shocked to see the incredible inflation take over, rendering most of the new items unattainable without spending ridiculous amounts of $$$. This is from one point of view actually severe mistreatment of loyal customers and may ultimately lead to Gaia's downfall as it's economy has been destabilized beyond recognition.
crying crying crying
My *butthurt* advice to Gaiaonline:
It is unwise to piss off your old user-base when the only thing keeping Gaia alive at the moment is it's long term community, especially in the face of the fact that there are plenty of alternatives.
I have much love for Gaiaonline and also a lot of time invested in it, but if they plan on just driving this website down the cliff...I may as-well spend my money elsewhere. Lately I've been buying real life fashion dolls like Monster High and Bratzillaz, they're just $10-$15 bucks and you get a whole outfit with each doll, not to mention you can actually earn money making custom dolls. It's much more rewarding than spending cash on virtual items on a site that is inevitably going downhill.
heart heart heart
It's not ALL bad.
There is an upside to the while marketplace trashing in that the old elitist structure has been somewhat destroyed in that many items that have once been unreachable because of their inflated prices are now once again in circulation. In fact, it might just have been the adrenalin boost Gaia needed since I can't remember a time where there have been more beautiful lavishly dressed and stylish avatars...however, most of them came with a real life price...that's not so bad if you, like me, have been here for so long and now probably have a job and a credit card and all the other wonderful perks of being an adult *sigh* so spending a weekend on Gaiaonline instead of getting shitfaced in a bar might actually be less expensive. All in all, it's not that much different from the old Gaiaonline, only that there are more zeroes in the marketplace. 
