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

[Starshine]

Opera Phantomess

Masquerade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade!

It is a shame when a company could care less about its employees and customers and more about the bottom line. When that happens, especially when you are a small private business like Gaia, you are essentially ******** unless you turn things around for the better.

Zynga at least has the decency to update and perform maintenance on a very regular basis. Gaia cannot look at Zynga's business strategy and follow it; Zynga dominates the Facebook game world, so unless you are already situated largely elsewhere with games, you are not going to be successful whatsoever. Neglecting games for new ones just to neglect those for new ones is not only stupid, once users on Facebook know your company name and associate you with a ******** up business strategy, you will actually not get back old customers or casual game players, or new ones, because you have been black listed by groups of people and then they go off to tell others not to bother with your new games and features.

Gaia has already laid down into its grave and covered itself in mud, dirt, rock, stones, branches, and whatever else was in that mud/dirt. It is still attempting to breathe despite there being no oxygen or area to breathe in with several tons of things on top of it.

Hide your face so the world will never find you.

Turning things around for the better is the only thing we can hopeful at the moment. In one of swarf's other posts he mentioned that pan updated gaia fishing because a small but vocal minority kept pushing for updates. Here's hoping that all this zOMG compaigning will be heard and our efforts won't be in vain.

[laughter7]

Starshine

Yeah, I don't know how it's even possible to break towns. sweatdrop When it first opened and users swamped it there were no such problems.

people change the color of their name, clone themselves, make the zurg stuff come back, lag others out of towns (basically pack edit), make it to where all of the trash items on a page are granted to them at once and a hell of a lot more (i know i did towns reports as a mod)

it isn't that the devs don't push out fixes. they do more often than users realize. however sometimes as soon as the fix is pushed there's a segment of people out there that work on getting around that so they can go back to all of the stuff above. the same type of stuff happens in all of the games on the site because everything uses flash. it's a shame because it makes users think that the devs don't do anything or that the fix never worked to start with when that isn't the case.

[Starshine]

Para

Starshine

Yeah, I don't know how it's even possible to break towns. sweatdrop When it first opened and users swamped it there were no such problems.

people change the color of their name, clone themselves, make the zurg stuff come back, lag others out of towns (basically pack edit), make it to where all of the trash items on a page are granted to them at once and a hell of a lot more (i know i did towns reports as a mod)

it isn't that the devs don't push out fixes. they do more often than users realize. however sometimes as soon as the fix is pushed there's a segment of people out there that work on getting around that so they can go back to all of the stuff above. the same type of stuff happens in all of the games on the site because everything uses flash. it's a shame because it makes users think that the devs don't do anything or that the fix never worked to start with when that isn't the case.

Thank you for that post. I had no idea people can do things like that in towns. Then again I stopped socializing on it when most conversations began with "asl?".

I have seen users bot on zOMG, and a girl in my crew reported them, however the next day they were still botting. Since you used to be a mod, what actions, if any are usually taken for botters? It bothers me when others achieve more with no effort xd

[The Conflicted Angel]

If Gaia owners want to get rid of anything I believe getting rid of Towns and/or Ralley would prove usefull. To me, and most of my friends, Ralley and Towns are useless things that take up space. If Gaia hadn't wasted money upon Monster Galaxy and put it towards something useful like new levels and monsters or quests for ZOMG I think it would've been better off.

[Sleepy MWC]

from what i can tell from other threads around gaia ZOMG has alredy died, they are just waiting for so many bugs that the game cannot be played anymore
some people are trying to make zomg profitable, HA like that is really gonna happen on a dying game. but if you wanna respond to try to help the link is here
click here
however there are already so many bugs in zomg i think most players have figured it out. that the game has already died if you dont believe me just check the ZOMG BUGS FORUM
gaia just has not removed it from site yet for some unknown reason
but if it is EVER gonna come back they need to fix all the bugs now OR ELSE! and judging from responses from devs and admins i doubt this is gonna happen
IT TRULY IS SAD BUT I THINK IT IS TIME FOR ZOMG TO DIE

[Starshine]

My letter is no longer relevant, everyone who has participated in this discussion needs to read this thread.

The truth behind zOMG that admins don't want you to know.

[sodium]

Starshine

My letter is no longer relevant, everyone who has participated in this discussion needs to read this thread.

The truth behind zOMG that admins don't want you to know.

Thank you for sharing that link. 3nodding

[Starshine]

sodium

Starshine

My letter is no longer relevant, everyone who has participated in this discussion needs to read this thread.

The truth behind zOMG that admins don't want you to know.

Thank you for sharing that link. 3nodding

You are welcome ^^
I think it's important for us to reflect where exactly Gaia is going with their business practices and demand more transparency in our communications with admins as well as our contributions and funds to Gaia.

[Flux]

About that new link its been suggested that everyone gets a screenshot of those posts just in case the topic gets removed/deleted, after all, is a defiance to the Gaian authorities. ninja Plus, people are dressing like pirates to support Swarf. pirate

Don't let them shut us up.

[MistressMinako]

Quote:

- zOMG never received a proper marketing campaign due to high costs associated with marketing an MMORPG, which is understandable. However, users have been constantly blamed for the failure of zOMG by not making the game a success solely by word-of-mouth.
- The first real revenue push in 2010 "resulted in a quarter of a million dollars of revenue in 2011". This is far more than enough, by Gaia's own numbers, to support zOMG's development. The game is in fact paying for itself and more due to the efforts of the community.
- The zOMG development team has been spread out across multiple projects, and manged to add several features and open a completely new area in four months.
- zOMG development has not been constant for at least two years. If it had a dedicated team, the game would be in far better shape.
- zOMG has always made more money than it costs to run the game, even on months when there were no buddies, amulets or headstart tickets.
- Over a year, Gaia has only lost out to Rally in terms of actual users. This means that zOMG is more widely used than Fishing and Towns, both of which are never in danger of being shut down.
- DMS was developed in four months with a four-man team.
- The costs associated with the development of DMS is STILL less than the previously-mentioned quarter-million brought in at the start of 2011.
- "DMS has raised the typical monthly revenue amount and that will continue to bring in extra revenue without additional development." This means extra money for the ENTIRE SITE. As money raised though zOMG goes into a collective fund which the staff uses to fund the entire site's development.

Made bullet points of swarf's post. Anyone care to add/edit before this goes into the GCD?

[Spiffy Pumpkin]

I figured as much....still hopefully they'll see how many people care about this because of the number of people posting here and <3'ing this thread. Then decided to actually take a step in the right direction.

[Pilfer von Durem]

MistressMinako

Edit it on the fly. Gaians are still confused about what happened.

[The Valkyrie Ryu]

though I was never particularly fond of zOMG (the chunkiness and bugs made it unappealing to me), I have a lot of friends who play and it would be sad to see it die off. I would say it is definitely one of the redeeming qualities of gaia.. let's admit it, Gaia is going farther and farther down the drain.. this site is already getting less and less popular when it comes to # of players online. If zomg is killed, that number will only get less.

[Starshine]

Thread has once again been updated as new info arrives.

[Aileeya]

Starshine

I loved some of the points you made. I remember when I first finally hit Gold Beach, I bought several things for my avi to better compliment the environment. Actually, I've done that many many many times throughout game play--especially earlier on...I'd change my avi to match whichever level I was currently working in as I was leveling up several accounts. My cash shop purchases definitely reflect how I want my avis to look in-game.