Your Opinions On The zOMG! Fiasco?

[azndreams]

Lady Primrose

They did release the real numbers though straight from an admin, but this was years ago and I honestly can't remember which ATA it was. I'm so not reading through all of them.

[Das Erlking]

azndreams

Lady Primrose

They did release the real numbers though straight from an admin, but this was years ago and I honestly can't remember which ATA it was. I'm so not reading through all of them.

its alright, take care, thanks for popping by

[azndreams]

Lady Primrose

You're welcome and I enjoyed reading your post. You take care too.

[Thee Stranger]

You'd think with all the damn money they've been milking their users for they'd be able to staff an adequate number of employees and maintain the game. I haven't really been active lately, and I haven't played zOMG since, like, 2010. Strangely enough, after another lame Halloween event, I decided I'd play it today. I remember enjoying it when it wasn't lagging to high hell. I don't check announcements anymore, so I had no clue. Of course, I couldn't find it. I figured it must have been taken down, but I thought it was probably a while ago. I was about to post in the GCD when I noticed the zOMG thread was still in the forum directory. Crazy its death was actually announced TODAY. Ain't life funny sometimes? Anyway, I think it sucks. I think if this place was actually being run proficiently, we wouldn't be finding ourselves in this position.

The MMO thing was Lanzer's dream for this place (are any of the original staff even still around anymore...?). Whoever they sold it to clearly doesn't give a s**t. This place is sinking fast, man. It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. They're just dumping hundreds of new items out of their a** on the daily now, for the asking price of stupid amounts of real-life money. Christ, I thought the economy was stupidly over-inflated back in 2006! LOL! Now it literally costs 4 million gold for a friggin' T-shirt.

What a joke.

[Kattion]

As I have said before it should have been obvious.But honestly with all these "gaia cash sales" and "limited quantity items" it cant help but make me wonder where ALL of the money goes.

[Ben Saladin]

Well now they've made their money. It no longer looks as impressive next to other free mmos. So, they are finally shutting it all down because they are unwilling to devote the time or resources to what they consider to be a broken game that has run it's course. And why shouldn't they. It isn't really gonna make money for them. We complain about it constantly. And they have no idea how to fix or maintain it.

To be honest, I don't mind so much. What I do mind is being lied to and being manipulated. Unfortunately, That is exactly what they have been doing. Over and over again we have been lied to about what would be done to support zOMG! We were used to generate revenue to, "prove," that zOMG! could make money, and then that money didn't go into zOMG! or even get acknowledged. zOMG! was milked for all the money they could get, then tossed aside like every other feature we've seen come and go.

When they finally took it down for good claiming it was for, "maintenance," I knew what was up. They probably thought that by drawing it out they could reduce the number of people impulse quitting as a result.

We get it, it's a business, you need to make money, but even businesses owe their customers honesty. At the very least they knew this was a possibility, but they were content to string us all along.

[Madman758]

That my good sir is what I'd like to call bullshit. I am currently making my own videogame and it doesn't cost more then a hundred grand to have people program an entire game for you - (and that's for programming a game with much higher standards then zOMG). What might cost money is the multiple servers, and their website "rights". Though, to be honest - even those things would never amount to 2 mill per month... not even 2 mill per year... personally I hate Gaia now and wish them only failure, devastation and ruin. Whoever is calling the shots up there needs to get their head out of their @$$... I am so mad about this they should of just left it alone >.>.

Furthermore, I believe it is well within the communities ability to find someone who would be willing to fix it for free... as in a member of gaia who would like to see zOMG return. The fact that they didn't even search for someone to do it for free makes me kinda sick...

[Madman758]

azndreams

Lady Primrose

Maybe I was off on my numbers, but I swear in an ATA that an admin themselves stated that it costs around 2million to run zOMG then again that could of been for a whole year and this could of been after 2011. Still I found this nifty thing: Cost Breakdown

As stated in cost breakdown:"zOMG! roughly costs around $249,711 year to run and to develop. Gaia is not greedy."

No gaia is greedy.Thing is the programmer and artist can work by hour or by project. They are not constantly producing new updates for zOMG and the like, therefore that is the cost for a month of GAME DEVELOPMENT - NOT MAINTENANCE!!! Therefore, Gaia is greedy- for they aren't paying all that much to keep the servers going (in comparison to how much they are making anyways >.> wink
Ps they only had 6 or 8 servers when they shut it down so they weren't even paying a grand a month for the servers (considering their revenue they were just lazy and shitty about the whole thing).

[Rouage Lapin]

The thing I'm most sore about is how the situation of the maintenance was handled. Don't say upfront that the game will be up and running again. Don't make anything even remotely like a guarantee. If they didn't know the extent of the damage, they should have said that zOMG! was receiving maintenance, that we would be updated, and left it at that.

I do have to wonder where all the Gaia Cash goes, though. It's certainly not into investing in worthwhile programming. After that trainwreck of a Halloween event, I'm left questioning if there's even someone left on the staff that can properly code. I've seen students with better skills and better work than what we receive here. The talent's out there, so why is nobody getting hired? Perhaps I just have a hard time believing that there isn't enough money to upgrade their equipment and invest in fixing the game. Just put it on ice; don't can it completely. I know games take a lot of money to maintain, but it looks far more like lazy management than anything else. Old Gaia I could buy having the argument of having insufficient funds... New Gaia, which pushes GC and Cash Shop items with almost every single announcement... Yeah, I don't really buy it. Maybe I'm just really jaded given my history with this site and the new 'features' we get lately.

Was I the only one who thought the shutdown announcement looked more like a statement of, 'We know where the problems are, but we just don't have the knowledge and/or skills necessary to fix them" rather than one of genuinely insufficient hardware and funds? Considering how 'well' the coding went for the Halloween event, anyway.

[Yumeno Yukari]

Its because the golden lord could not milk money out of it as easily.

[vampiroz]

zomg was the only thing I did on here. except for forum battling...

[Formidable Dusk]

I knew that when they took it down, that it was never coming back.
I still held onto the tiny hope that perhaps I was wrong. Sadly, I was not.

[Lord Barric Darragh]

Man has figured out how to leave the Earth's atmosphere and return safely. We have calculated equations and invented things only possible in our imaginations, mapped out most every inch of visible land on the planet, viewed distant stars and planets from the comforts of our own homes..

And yet somehow these people can't figure out what's wrong with their own program? Congratulations, now not only is Gaia saving money by hiring coder hobbyists, but now they're saving money by not having to pay to keep servers up for a rather simple flash-based game.

I wonder how long before Fishing requires "maintenance."

[serpent bluesky]

I hadn't played zOMG! for a while due to being busy with studying and stuff and I was very much looking forward to playing once again. When I discovered they had taken it down for maintenance I got really excited and I couldn't wait for it to be back online.Then they announced they weren't bringing it back and I'm really upset that I won't ever get to play again...I was really really looking forward to playing again, you don't even understand :c

[Vxnea]

♥

See, I'm angry about two things regarding this.
1) Yes, that they took down zOMG, despite there still being loyal players, despite the dwindling numbers.
2) The fact they had to, AGAIN, lie and manipulate us into believing anything else.

I've said it many times before, but this is really the nail in the coffin that's driving me to convince myself to never trust and/or support gaia again. They were the ones who chose to fire the only people who knew how the code worked. It was full of glitches, yes, but people still played zOMG regardless. It's a shame I saw this game from the start to end, worked hard all this time, and now they're going to close it down.

They don't care, either. They really, truly don't, and that much is obvious.

"Maintenance" my a**. I wanted to believe they'd be decent for once, but if the decent staff left on gaia have no power against the big guy's decision, then the users certainly won't, either. I'm upset, but there's really nothing left to do. Unless half of the entire site signs a petition, they won't even spare us a glance.

tl;dr - I'm upset and surprised that I'm even surprised.