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

[Starshine]

Catalyste

We stay because the community is simply awesome. It is really true that you learn a lot about others in an hour of play, past friendship bonds and possible future friendship bond keeps us going.

While it's true that companies can be sneaky and deceive their customers, false advertising leads to a severe drop in "goodwill". Which is something that is very hard for a company to keep, it's also why many companies sponsor charities and advertise their environmentally friendly credentials.

It's terrible business practice, I think I'm doing them a favor pointing it out wink

I do agree with some of your points. zOMG could have had so much more potential, I asked for a client based copy during zETA and was shot down, thanks again to management. You are of course free to feel whatever you wish about zOMG's demise, but a lot of would be sad. So we will keep raising the issue until we either get a confirmation of its death or when they starts to revive it.

[yuckabug]

Are you kidding me? I came back for this game just to find out it's being killed off?.. I'm disappointed.

[Amon Larethian]

I was a beta tester for zOMG, and enjoyed it despite the glitches. Then when it was released to the site I played the game nearly non-stop for a month even through the lag and the glitches because it was fun and I enjoyed the friends I met.

But with no new content my interest fell off and I stopped playing, though anytime there was an event that added content even for a limited time I would rush in and play again.

I was excited for the boardwalk and DMP areas, but to me they proved to be a disappointment. The boardwalk because there really wasn't much there, and DMP because I just do not like near impossible difficulty.

I wonder if that may be part of why the project has been officially shelved. They spent all that time on new content, possibly to only be disappointed because they didn't get the number of players flocking to it that they had hoped. Sure there is the dedicated community, but there are also those 'non-hardcore' and solo players who want to enjoy new content but find DMP far too frustrating to enjoy. For my part, I really wanted to play DMP, but when I die before I can even attack the first enemy, yeah I don't want to play that.

However I am very sad to hear that zOMG is shelved, I have a lot of good memories of that game.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

I think Gaia could have made ZoMG a money maker but chose not to.

That being said it is their site to sink or swim.

It could have been a nice game, oh well, life goes on.

[Rya Dracosin]

Im on my phone so posting sucks for me. But I really am angered they'd do this. Especially since they keep that joke of an alchemy feature running. All im gonna say til im able to get on my computer is... ******** Facebook.

[hibi-tea]

Starshine

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.

You may have talked about it in your post already, but I don't feel you have a real understanding on the situation.

To be quite frank, you don't need to be given any profit figures if they're pulling workers from the game and have slowly been diminishing the team. That there is an obvious sign that zOMG hasn't been pulling in the figures that they expected. Hell, as a whole Gaia hasn't been pulling in the figures they were expecting lately, and that's to be expected in a recession (we may be pulling out of it, but we are still very much in a recession).

Just recently I saw in passing one of the Devs comment in a thread that their current staffing is the lowest they've ever had. That's not a good sign of their revenues. They're trying to conserve the money they have, and as such they're going to put things on the back-burner that aren't profitable to them and instead assign their resources to what will help bolster sales.

You can't expand or continue on with big projects if you're not making a considerable amount of excess. That's how businesses in the real world expand in the first place. Gaia may be making large amounts (to you anyway, but in comparison to other business model websites they don't make nearly the same amounts), but that money clearly is going into storage because it's not up to what they want it to be or need it to be in order to expand.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy zOMG, because I did. But they have a limited amount of things you could do with their drops and a limited space to which you could advance to. They didn't push out fixes quickly enough, they didn't push out new content quickly enough, and as a result a great amount of people lost interest in it and the zOMG community just doesn't seem to be doing the trick to keep it afloat.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

Rya Dracosin

Im on my phone so posting sucks for me. But I really am angered they'd do this. Especially since they keep that joke of an alchemy feature running. All im gonna say til im able to get on my computer is... ******** Facebook.

Guess that means their Beta testing group will disband since all Gaia ever did with them is test ZoMG stuff rarely

@hibi-tea, Everyone thinks Gaia is huge but it really isn't. I wouldn't be surprised to find out if they had less than 50 employees.

[marshmallowcreampie]

Mitsumi-chan

The problem with comparing models to Maplestory is that with Maplestory items, all of that goes towards the game because that's all there is.

With Gaia, most of the avatar item sales go back into the main site itself. It's kind of self-explanatory that zOMG would need to pull it's own weight.

It was doing well in the beginning? I don't think so. zOMG had very little as far as merchandise to pull it. There was the recipe system which was supposed to carry it with the sales of Null Fragments, but it took an arrow to the knee. The recipe system (which I imagine a lot of development time went into) pretty much died right off the bat.

There was also pretty much no incentive to play the game until users figured out they could abuse certain runs to make way more gold then they were supposed to. Loot was worthless. Playing normally gave very little gold. Leveling up in that game doesn't feel rewarding at all (bad design IMO).

If anything, you'd think Alchemy could save it. After all... look at the price of the Village Greens loot. Imagine if they did that with all of the zOMG loot. Then there'd be an incentive to play.

Pretty much this, maybe if they incorporate more zOMG! components into Alchemy more people would play. Shoot, I've been playing for the first time in months because I needed those Village Green items. cat_ninja

[hibi-tea]

Jayce Reinhardt

@hibi-tea, Everyone thinks Gaia is huge but it really isn't. I wouldn't be surprised to find out if they had less than 50 employees.

Yeah. I'm not quite sure what Gaia's current staffing is, but wasn't it over 100 employees during the peak years? And they really aren't that big, I agree.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

hibi-tea

Yeah. I'm not quite sure what Gaia's current staffing is, but wasn't it over 100 employees during the peak years? And they really aren't that big, I agree.

Its nice to see someone have a more level headed opinion of all of this.

While it is sad to see it abandoned, noone can say we didn't see this coming.
They just don't want to make it a money maker and even if we meet another goal of 500 bloodstones sold or however many summons, it isn't making Gaia enough money to have them see it as worth it.

It is less effort to fart out a Facebook game and have that make more money. The updates there are not nearly as complex as it would be with ZoMG so that is the path of least resistance so to speak.

I just wish gaia would stop having such lofty goals and then finding out they can't handle it.

Like building a house and having to stop halfway into it because the money ran out. It IS a result of poor planning, something I hope Gaia stops doing, though we do have Alchemy most recently and that doesn't say much.

[OtakuJeannie]

Jayce Reinhardt

While it is sad to see it abandoned, noone can say we didn't see this coming.
They just don't want to make it a money maker and even if we meet another goal of 500 bloodstones sold or however many summons, it isn't making Gaia enough money to have them see it as worth it.

The thing is as it stands as a game and with the community, it would never have been a money maker, hell the revenue only became more than negligible only when the game reached crisis levels and that leveled off as far as I can see. In short revenue only went up when a crisis was announced, and didn't show signs of ever remaining steady.

I know it has a dedicated cult classic base, but in order to get rescources it needed to show summer blockbuster results, something it's not going to get no matter how many desperate gimmicks you tack on to a game the majorty of the base has said "meh," upon.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

OtakuJeannie

Jayce Reinhardt

While it is sad to see it abandoned, noone can say we didn't see this coming.
They just don't want to make it a money maker and even if we meet another goal of 500 bloodstones sold or however many summons, it isn't making Gaia enough money to have them see it as worth it.

The thing is as it stands as a game and with the community, it would never have been a money maker, hell the revenue only became more than negligible only when the game reached crisis levels and that leveled off as far as I can see. In short revenue only went up when a crisis was announced, and didn't show signs of ever remaining steady.

I know it has a dedicated cult classic base, but in order to get rescources it needed to show summer blockbuster results, something it's not going to get no matter how many desperate gimmicks you tack on to a game the majorty of the base has said "meh," upon.

This is true since Gaia can't seem to be consistent in much of anything.

If they had created items for ZoMG, Tied Alchemy into it, or even ZoMG related clothing for ones avi they could have gotten enough money, they chose not to and walk the path of least effort.

[Rya Dracosin]

Here are some ideas....
Tie in that busted joke of a feature alchemy. Turn zomg formulas into alchemy formulas. Every Cl level area gets a formula and component drop of that alchemy level (Cl 1 gets level one formulas, cl2 gets lvl2) and make more expirience needed for each level. Save two features at once. Rather than push out another game that's for Facebook fans only IR that'll just die in the end, like zomg. I don't play Facebook games, because they are but a fleeting expirience. Playing a game on a site I visit more than my email? To me, that's where it's at.

[Jayce Reinhardt]

Rya Dracosin

Here are some ideas....
Tie in that busted joke of a feature alchemy. Turn zomg formulas into alchemy formulas. Every Cl level area gets a formula and component drop of that alchemy level (Cl 1 gets level one formulas, cl2 gets lvl2) and make more expirience needed for each level. Save two features at once. Rather than push out another game that's for Facebook fans only IR that'll just die in the end, like zomg. I don't play Facebook games, because they are but a fleeting expirience. Playing a game on a site I visit more than my email? To me, that's where it's at.

Gaia put one recipe and two components in it, that was their attempt at tying it with Alchemy.

[Tenko72]

Needs more <3's. I agree with you so much. This sucks. zOMG! is my favorite game here and the only one I spend GC on.