Open letter to Gaia's management: killing zOMG [UPDATED x2!]

[Yilanti Midnight]

There are some parts in your OP and in the replied posts of others that really bother me. I think it's weird that you're using your own personal experience to prove that zOMG is a huge moneymaker. Saying that because of zOMG people buy more avatar items? I see a lot of people buy avatar items because it looks good on their avatar, be they in the forums, towns, rally or zOMG. But I highly doubt zOMG is the driving factor here.

Also if zOMG is so profitable I highly doubt it would be abandoned. From the moment zOMG was released I've seen nothing but criticism and people going: Nah, I'd rather play WoW/Allods/Rift/etc. Only when zOMG started to decline a bit, the true zOMG fans came out to fight. I've seen some great suggestions to help zOMG and the staff have used some of those ideas - but apparantly it wasn't enough. We can't see the sales figures but the idea that Gaia would abandon something that makes them proper money is absurd.

And now a bit for all zOMG fans: Currently work on zOMG has been stopped but that doesn't mean it won't continue. Be active, convince people to play zOMG, build up fun communities so others will join, make plenty of good suggestions to the staff so that they can earn a nice profit off of it and thus be inspired to constantly update it. A lot of people from zOMG seem so passive, unless I venture into their forum I hardly see them. Make banners, buy zOMG merchandise, be proud and show it off! Do user-run zOMG events! I've stopped playing zOMG because I felt so lonely, but I'd surely jump back in if there were people to help me out and have fun chatting with me while fighting monsters.

But if you just sit there and hope it will be alright, or think that simply complaining will fix it all, zOMG will just be doomed as a failed feature.

[Starshine]

Mortok

Sure, profitability is important, but profit isn't all there is to a company, and Gaia is plenty profitable right now.

There's a moral issue here, where Gaia has lost it's community direction. It also goes further than just zOMG. It has laid off staff after large profitable years.

A business needs it's community to survive, it needs to balance things, and right now the scales are skewed. There is no reason it can't run zOMG as well as FB apps.

Aileeya

GuinAoiichi

You know since Gaia IS a corporation i wonder how do you go about and buy some of their stock?? I mean haveing enough stock gives you a say.

This is worth quoting.

Unfortunately for us...gaiaonline is NOT a publicly owned company (i.e. one in which the public has the chance to buy stock) but rather a privately owned company. This means of course that all profits go to the relatively small number of people who do own the company...whether they be simple owners, or the owners and their employees--w/e. IF they were a publicly owned company, then their stock holders might indeed have a say in how they ran their business...and they would also have the obligation to expand and seek out the best dividends for their stockholders. Since they're NOT a publicly owned company, they have no obligation to expand, hence the laying off of developers after record profits at least two times according to articles I've come across. emotion_8c

2008 layoff
2010 layoff

If you've checked out the articles, please note that Sherman mentioned having 2 Million MORE unique visitors per month in the second article. Elsewhere, he's mentioned that on average, users pay $30 each and every month....and this is during a recession mind you! lol--they're raking in dough hand over fist. Once I learned (a couple of years ago now) that they were bringing in 1 Million dollars every month--and I combined that with the knowledge that they were a privately owned company...I knew they weren't going to do much more with zOMG. They've made that abundantly obvious....and as far as I can see, there's nothing we can do to force them to change their minds...gosh I hope I'm wrong. emotion_bigvein

Mitsumi-chan

Then you have to ask yourself, does fishing bring in lots of profit to Gaia? Does word bump? No they don't, nor does anyone expect them to, they are components of Gaia designed to make us stay on the site longer. zOMG is another component, trying to see it as an independent MMO is ridiculous, we don't expect Gaia to update it like Maple Story, but we do expect updates period.

Sure there are people who don't find it appealing, but there are also user who stays on this site only because of zOMG.

[fire monkey95]

i still dont understand towns and houses ... that brings in very little money, and they are redoing houses up, redoing towns 2.0 (due for release in a couple of months) ect ect ... why are things that make less than zomg still getting backing .. even thoe you can pretty much do the same as towns in the likes of zomg

[Lord Burandon]

The other thread on this seems to have been locked. :/

BUt I don't play zOMG as much as some others, but it is a nice to play as a break from everything else with the cute graphics, which at times are so scary.

This is a shame, especially when they're turning around to develop something similar. zOMG isn't even broken.

Gaia does have a scary pattern of this with shevling awesome ideas to quickly move ontot he next because when it appears people are losing interest, instead of investing time and resources to make what's there better they seem to go, "Uuuuuh, well... This is losing interest, best do the next new thing to get them re-interested!"
NO! Gaia, you don't need to do that, but alas...

Also from other posts it seems that zOMG isn't losing interest, even if 'a small' number of people still play it a lot, and money sure doesn't look like an issue, the way someone posted how much they spent. If even a small amount of people are putting that much money towards something it should be good, shouldn't it? I bet Gaia takes those profits and feeds it around to other things, and zOMG is actually left with a small portion of that.

Well it is a shame, and I think Gaia is truly going to miss out with this decision with shelving such an awesome thing to something new which is a clone. Which in itself is ridiuclous.

Oh Gaia.

[Starshine]

Yilanti Midnight

There are users who play only for zOMG, this is a fact, not just my personal experience. I buy items to look cool/ridiculous while I'm playing zOMG, especially the ones with "I am" poses. Without zOMG I have no real use for being on Gaia, my home forum is the zOMG forum.

I don't know if you've been to the z! Forum recently, there are plenty of user based events being run, you have to jump ingame and find yourself a crew to have some fun. I have never had any problems finding a random crew, keep in mind you can also start one yourself.

The forums are so ridiculously helpful that every single "how can I unsoulbind my rings" thread gets answered. You get about at least 5 of them a day. I have never asked for help on the forums and not received it.

As for promoting zOMG, that's what we've been doing for the past year. Did that change things? Not at all.

Also by your logic if Gaia is vey profitable, then they should never have to sack staff right? Read the quote I posted in my previous post. It doesn't work that way.

Complaining is a major part of communication, complaining about complaining is just hilarious. The zOMG community needs to let's management know about our feelings, and that's what we are doing, providing valuable site feedback.

[Lady Kayura]

Could someone direct me to where the dev said that zOMG will no longer have any devs working on it please? I'd really appreciate it.

[Kilarra]

Profitability is important for any feature that requires dedicated devs (most features don't, I would posit, but Gaia is simply terribad at maintaining what it builds in the long or even short term sometimes). If zOMG is really doing that badly, from a commercial perspective I guess it makes sense to stop developing it if resources can be better spent elsewhere.

That said, the one thing I wish is that Gaia would just be straight with the zOMG fanbase and make it plain they have no interest in elevating this feature beyond the niche, supportive fanbase it has. Instead, they put stuff in Spring Cleaning to get a full time dev on zOMG without any intention of holding up their end of the bargain; they say "buy X amount of items and then we'll support zOMG!", and yet targets are met and nothing improves. There are repeated instances of them goading the player base into thinking the game stands a chance.

If it clearly doesn't, then stop leading them on, Gaia. Be honest, and admit zOMG doesn't stand a hope in hell of getting any further support. Then they can either come to terms with the fact that zOMG is not about to change any time soon, or move on with their lives.

[Starshine]

Lady Kayura

Could someone direct me to where the dev said that zOMG will no longer have any devs working on it please? I'd really appreciate it.

JK is leaving to work on that new fantasy based game with same game mechanics as zOMG, Swarf is being assigned to another game, there is no one left.

[Catalyste]

Yilanti Midnight

There are some parts in your OP and in the replied posts of others that really bother me. I think it's weird that you're using your own personal experience to prove that zOMG is a huge moneymaker. Saying that because of zOMG people buy more avatar items? I see a lot of people buy avatar items because it looks good on their avatar, be they in the forums, towns, rally or zOMG. But I highly doubt zOMG is the driving factor here.

Also if zOMG is so profitable I highly doubt it would be abandoned. From the moment zOMG was released I've seen nothing but criticism and people going: Nah, I'd rather play WoW/Allods/Rift/etc. Only when zOMG started to decline a bit, the true zOMG fans came out to fight. I've seen some great suggestions to help zOMG and the staff have used some of those ideas - but apparantly it wasn't enough. We can't see the sales figures but the idea that Gaia would abandon something that makes them proper money is absurd.

And now a bit for all zOMG fans: Currently work on zOMG has been stopped but that doesn't mean it won't continue. Be active, convince people to play zOMG, build up fun communities so others will join, make plenty of good suggestions to the staff so that they can earn a nice profit off of it and thus be inspired to constantly update it. A lot of people from zOMG seem so passive, unless I venture into their forum I hardly see them. Make banners, buy zOMG merchandise, be proud and show it off! Do user-run zOMG events! I've stopped playing zOMG because I felt so lonely, but I'd surely jump back in if there were people to help me out and have fun chatting with me while fighting monsters.

But if you just sit there and hope it will be alright, or think that simply complaining will fix it all, zOMG will just be doomed as a failed feature.

See, one of my main questions was going to be "for how long are the devs being pulled?"

My impression is that the pull is temporary since there are other projects on Gaia Online that also need attention. I do recall devs telling people that if they focus on X first, then they would have to put other things on hold. And if zOMG happened to be one of those things, then it should be said that eventually they'll get back to it when the others are done.

Whether we see it or not, zOMG is headed by a team. However even those team members are part of other development teams on this site. So in my mind it shouldn't come as a surprise that they might be pulled to focus on something else.

[Catalyste]

Starshine

Lady Kayura

Could someone direct me to where the dev said that zOMG will no longer have any devs working on it please? I'd really appreciate it.

JK is leaving to work on that new fantasy based game with same game mechanics as zOMG, Swarf is being assigned to another game, there is no one left.

I thought so.


You exaggerated. stare


I understand the passion, but [ JK ] clearly said "is on hold atm."

On hold at the moment (atm) =/= Killed.

It means it's temporary.

[-ScourgeTheHedghog-]

ZOMG:>inb4 we needed another "recipe" and "ingredients" to "Craft" items. But the new feature is just more ridiculous when its using "luck" to get everything.

Thanks for throwing down something that was being HYPED about alot for its startup only to get rid of it for a more luckier feature with no motivation whatsoever.

[Starshine]

Catalyste

There is no timeline for when the game will no longer be "on hold", that might as well be permanent.

This on hold period will only drive players away as zOMG dies slowly piece by piece.

As another poster has said, why not give the news to us up front in announcements or even a thread in the z!forum? Why all these sneaky buy more powerups and you can keep your devs business? We've been stringed along enough to recognize when the kill switch is being pulled.

[AKB0048]

Starshine

Mortok

Sure, profitability is important, but profit isn't all there is to a company, and Gaia is plenty profitable right now.

There's a moral issue here, where Gaia has lost it's community direction. It also goes further than just zOMG. It has laid off staff after large profitable years.

A business needs it's community to survive, it needs to balance things, and right now the scales are skewed. There is no reason it can't run zOMG as well as FB apps.

Mitsumi-chan

Then you have to ask yourself, does fishing bring in lots of profit to Gaia? Does word bump? No they don't, nor does anyone expect them to, they are components of Gaia designed to make us stay on the site longer. zOMG is another component, trying to see it as an independent MMO is ridiculous, we don't expect Gaia to update it like Maple Story, but we do expect updates period.

Sure there are people who don't find it appealing, but there are also user who stays on this site only because of zOMG.

But those features didn't cost a lot to develop and were probably developed by one person, unlike zOMG which needed a staff of over 30 people (1/3rd the size of the company). Those features are also very rarely updated for that reason (they don't bring in money so they're not a huge priority).

To put that much money into it, not expect it to pull in profit, and then wonder why it's never updated... the reason for zOMG's failure is pretty much right there. You can't put in that much time and resources into something and not expect it to carry it's own weight. That's why you ended up with JK by himself for a while.

I'm sure if the developers were aliens that could live off of the light from a baby's smile then we wouldn't have this kind of issue. Unfortunately, they're people working a 9-5 with bills to pay... just like you.

Speaking of Maplestory... Nexon of America rarely gets updates for its games, and that's with a whole bunch of money chugged at it and without Nexon of America really having to do much because they just port in code from the Korean branch. So imagine trying to do something similar to that with little to no budget.

If you want big updates, if you want new content, then money is needed. That's common sense. There's nothing greedy about it. Telling an MMO to run with no money is like telling someone with amputated legs, no prosthetic, and no wheelchair to run a race.

[Catalyste]

Starshine

Catalyste

There is no timeline for when the game will no longer be "on hold", that might as well be permanent.

This on hold period will only drive players away as zOMG dies slowly piece by piece.

As another poster has said, why not give the news to us up front in announcements or even a thread in the z!forum? Why all these sneaky buy more powerups and you can keep your devs business? We've been stringed along enough to recognize when the kill switch is being pulled.

If you've been strung along for so long, then why do you keep going back?

On hold means on hold. It only ends when they officially take the zOMG servers down since it takes money to keep them up.

Businesses will not tell every business plan they have towards their projects to their users or readers. It may involve you, but you do not have the last word. Regardless of feeling as though they should be upfront with you guys, you'll still react the same to the news. So what's the point? The people who break the news to you are professional enough to wait till certain things are confirmed before throwing the news out there.


To be the outlier here, I'd be more than thankful if this new fantasy game means the end of zOMG. zOMG was poorly executed upon launch. It was not made to have additional new sections added with no connecting storyline. Right now what we currently have there are patch jobs. People demanded new sections be added to keep interest going. Thing is the whole thing needs to be restructured. zOMG is a mess and the current staff has to fix it. And if by fixing it they mean "work on a better game that's just like it" then Godspeed, let them do that. Hopefully it'll attract not only a better crowd, but new users to the site when they decide to advertise it.

zOMG is broken. They're just keeping it up to ease you guys.

[Starshine]

Mitsumi-chan

We are never given any reliable figures on how much money zomg makes, all we can do is estimate from set figures (5000 amulets were sold, so that nets them 20k) or from MP sales figures. And gameplay requirements, we know that to tank bloodlust most crews use this much power-ups, and so on.

Therefore we can say that zOMG is indeed making money when there are updates.

As for Gaia needing profit, I've talked about it in my post already. Thy are getting huge profits, and still sacking staff. Gaia is in no danger o being broke by any means, there is a serious moral issue here too. Thus my windup part in the letter about the spirit of community.

I simply do not enjoy playing something and knowing that it was solely made to make as much money off me as possible. Oh and let's not forget that it was never really completed since 08 glitches still awaiting fixes.