Follow up on zOMG from the admins

[Silent As Shadows]

Light Soprano

LabTech Kestin

Light Soprano

LabTech Kestin

Same. Exact. Story.

No offense, but you guys didn't convince us the first time, in AtA. I'm not seeing anything new in this post. All we want is to be treated like adults and given the whole truth. Not threads full of weasel words meant to placate and/or confuse us. >_<

Also, why was swarf's thread locked?

If you didn't read the little part at the end, swarf contributed to the OP. I don't know which part he helped write, but he did contribute to the contents of the OP.

I don't believe it. I believe he is being intimidated into backpedaling just enough so that he can't be said to be going against the administration. And I believe that he did not put his own name on that post, at least not of his own free will.

So do you believe that the other people mentioned in the OP are to blame? Narumi mentioned in his other thread that was stickied earlier (not sure if it's still stickied) that a lot of the decisions made were before he became what I assume is zOMG's manager, so I don't blame him for decisions that were made way before his time.

Or are you just aiming this at Gaia HQ as a collective whole and not on the individuals mentioned in the OP (although...since Lanzer was mentioned...)

LOL Oh no! I didn't mean for it to be taken like that! I don't blame any of the people who are claimed to have written this post (save for Lanzer... He's been rubbing me the wrong way for a while.) Nooo. No! I believe that their names were put on there at HQ's demand. I hold HQ completely at fault for this.

[DARKNRGY]

The Undead Suitor

I'm still wondering how you came to the conclusion to shelve zOMG last week, when you're just now going over the data and hashing things out.

We're not just now doing analysis of the product razz . I was speaking about the various communications we made. Staff is encouraged to post a lot and, because of that, sometimes people say things that are misinterpreted or just plain wrong. It doesn't help that some communications are not even in the form of a post/lost forever/hearsay.

[Starshine]

Opera Phantomess

Masquerade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade!

What I get from this post is this:

Expectations for the game's success, and therefore, the manpower and amount of resources used were based on numbers grossly out of touch with the amount of users really logging in. Remember, back then Re-Captcha was not even part of this site in any way, shape, or form, so you had countless amounts of bots running a muck at any given point in time. Even so, there are a lot of zOMG! players that came to Gaia for the first time or came back to Gaia after a long haitus just to play the game. When the game was released as well, there was a major issue with memory leak and issues with a lot of aspects being unbalanced and messed with to find that balance, pushing potential long-term players away and limiting those whose computers could not handle the leak without having their browsers crashing every ten to fifteen minutes (like mine).

Fast forward to when news about zOMG!'s decline was being fed to the community. Users stepped up and posted many threads in Site Feedback and suggestions in Ask the Admin about how to make zOMG! a profitable game based on what they would spend money on, yet all of those suggestions and ideas fell on deaf ears for years. Something cannot be labeled a failure unless there was a real attempt to make it a success. It seems to me the company only did things up to a certain point in time and then threw its arms up in the air without taking what the users had to suggest to heart.

Please note this is not an attack to any one person directly. This is to the company as a whole.

Hide your face so the world will never find you.

That's actually the part I liked about this thread, them admitting they stuffed up with expectations and the scope of the game. And with zOMG being their most intricate project, they didn't have the experience or resources to fix memory leakage or quest chain glitches.

Still would like to see a site wide announcement and apology, gaia.

[Lishee]

Light Soprano

Lishee

Light Soprano

(also, the only admins in the list of staff members DARKNRGY put at the end of the OP are Lanzer and Siskataya, so...I don't know why the thread title says "from the admins". I'm guessing "admin" used here is a collective term or something that has nothing to do with their actual job titles)

Panagrammic is definitely an Admin. I think he is VP of Engineering or something like that.

Isn't the title under Pan's username still developer, though?

Yeah, but I don't think they ever put their actual titles in the company next to their usernames. The CEO, for instance, is just listed as "Gaia staff," which could mean anything, even a secretary.

[DARKNRGY]

Silent As Shadows

LOL Oh no! I didn't mean for it to be taken like that! I don't blame any of the people who are claimed to have written this post (save for Lanzer... He's been rubbing me the wrong way for a while.) Nooo. No! I believe that their names were put on there at HQ's demand. I hold HQ completely at fault for this.

You are wrong. The people listed were the people who physically sat in the room and wrote that and no one else gave us any direction.

[Starshine]

DARKNRGY

The Undead Suitor

I'm still wondering how you came to the conclusion to shelve zOMG last week, when you're just now going over the data and hashing things out.

We're not just now doing analysis of the product razz . I was speaking about the various communications we made. Staff is encouraged to post a lot and, because of that, sometimes people say things that are misinterpreted or just plain wrong. It doesn't help that some communications are not even in the form of a post/lost forever/hearsay.

I've said it already, and I'll say it again, good job on the wording of the post. It's very hard to misinterpret this one.

However since it took you guys all afternoon, we were all hoping to see something new. Concerns about zOMG's profitability, why certain glitches like quest chain breakage isn't fixed since zETA, etc.

It's a good and clear post, but why did it take so long to compose when there is no new information there?

[DARKNRGY]

Light Soprano

Now I'm curious as to what the patent troll lawsuit was about.

I don't know too much about it. Some company thought they owned pre-paid game cards, as a system. They don't.

[Mademoiselle Kit]

DARKNRGY

Mademoiselle Kit

We were promised figures. Is there a chance these figures will come to light?

You did not address whether or not zomg was making profit or not, the big issue about this. If Zomg was failing, give us the numbers. Otherwise, we are going to look at anything posted by a staff member in a skeptical light.

Since this concerns the game WE LOVE and its future, I'm afraid we will need cold, hard facts before we are satisfied. Was it in the black? Was it in the red? These conflicting statements are making it hard to trust anyone right now. I hope you can see the dilemma we are in.

We are going to need facts before we back down. If it was in the red, then why hide it? Show us, and while we will be sad, we will back down. But all this secrecy about the numbers is making me suspect the latter, and the idea that Gaia might be hiding this fact makes me very upset and angry.

I never wanted to believe Gaia would lie to me, but after this...well, I hope you can understand my dilemma. Only will facts before my eyes convince me otherwise.

In conclusion: Your post did not give us the answers we were seeking. Please try again.

My first draft I did an experiment where I actually did do a full disclosure on a BUNCH of numbers. Some of those numbers came from a report we built for a patent troll lawsuit against gaia and a bunch of other companies (they thought they owned pre paid game cards lol) so they're reputable figures. It would certainly put the issue to bed once and for all. We all talked about it and decided against it. I suppose it's possible we would release but there are some pretty serious implications in doing so (try asking any other company about this). We would need to disclose salaries, marketing strategies/cost, etc and we are not going to get into yet another debate about how much the employees are paid and stuff like that. This is completely reasonable for us to be sensitive about.

I can understand from a legal standpoint why you wouldn't want to release full figures.

But would it be so hard to say something like: "In 2011, it cost roughly X to run zomg. Powerups/Buddy/Amulet sales were something like X".

We want to know how much we contributed, and how much we fell short (if we did). After being told time and time again "buy X to save zomg!" "only you can save zomg through your money!" "sorry, you didn't spend enough, we're pulling support for zomg" and after all that time of making it seem like OUR FAULT that zomg failed, I hope you understand WHY we need these figures.

Our beloved game is getting the ax. We need this, to clear up the confusion, and also to get a bit of closure.

Also, I would like this issue addressed: We were told that ALL SALES of powerup/amulets/buddies/etc went SOLELY to zomg. Now we are told this is not the case. A few of us who spent good paycheck money trying to save zomg feel pretty upset about this.

[Aileeya]

Light Soprano

.......... Definitely not Narumi, since he mentioned in the other thread that a lot of the decisions made were made before he became "the evil manager", and even then, he's a developer, not an admin......... Narumi, is among the only two devs who actually communicates with users on mainsite Gaia (yes, swarf and JK also communicate with us, but that's for the zOMG aspect).

But evidently what Narumi communicates simply can not be trusted....evidently his decisions, or his perspective on the decisions being made by upper management have been overstated (to put it lightly) as evidenced by his reassurance just a couple of months ago that gaiaonline would not be left behind by the parent company--and in fact things important to gaians would be in development as opposed to new-fangled stuff for folks who aren't even using the site:

"The theme for 2012 from the new higher ups is the Gaia community. ...this next year will be about working on projects that we feel are right for Gaian's and far less about crazy new features created mostly for new users that do little to nothing for those of you still here." link to post

What we have here in the OP is pretty much the exact opposite of those reassurances.

[Silent As Shadows]

Nymph of Spring

DARKNRGY

Mademoiselle Kit

We were promised figures. Is there a chance these figures will come to light?

You did not address whether or not zomg was making profit or not, the big issue about this. If Zomg was failing, give us the numbers. Otherwise, we are going to look at anything posted by a staff member in a skeptical light.

Since this concerns the game WE LOVE and its future, I'm afraid we will need cold, hard facts before we are satisfied. Was it in the black? Was it in the red? These conflicting statements are making it hard to trust anyone right now. I hope you can see the dilemma we are in.

We are going to need facts before we back down. If it was in the red, then why hide it? Show us, and while we will be sad, we will back down. But all this secrecy about the numbers is making me suspect the latter, and the idea that Gaia might be hiding this fact makes me very upset and angry.

I never wanted to believe Gaia would lie to me, but after this...well, I hope you can understand my dilemma. Only will facts before my eyes convince me otherwise.

In conclusion: Your post did not give us the answers we were seeking. Please try again.

My first draft I did an experiment where I actually did do a full disclosure on a BUNCH of numbers. Some of those numbers came from a report we built for a patent troll lawsuit against gaia and a bunch of other companies (they thought they owned pre paid game cards lol) so they're reputable figures. It would certainly put the issue to bed once and for all. We all talked about it and decided against it. I suppose it's possible we would release but there are some pretty serious implications in doing so (try asking any other company about this). We would need to disclose salaries, marketing strategies/cost, etc and we are not going to get into yet another debate about how much the employees are paid and stuff like that. This is completely reasonable for us to be sensitive about.

Yeah, but I'm not okay with my "Donations" potentially going towards your salary. :
If I donate to Gaia.. I'm donating to the well-being of the website.. Like a server cost.
Not to have someone sit behind a desk and pencil push..

But that's just my opinion. Not like that really matters, eh?

This! TOTALLY THIS!

[stargaze_69]

more disappointment -sighs- Sometimes I feel like I am beating my head against a brick wall...I know we are for sure talking to one. I don't even care about the money at this point I really want to know how a site can care so little for the site's functions, the things that set the site apart from others, the dedicated users you have that others don't.... BUT WORRY ABOUT YOUR SITE NOT ANYONE ELSE >.< LISTEN TO YOUR USERS GIVE US WHAT WE WANT!!! FIX THE STUFF YOU HAVE HERE, FOCUS YOUR TIME HERE, OR YOU WILL BECOME ANOTHER MYSPACE AND WE WILL ALL JUST JOIN FACEBOOK AND FORGET YOU EXIST!!! PLAIN ENOUGH FOR YOU!! YOU GAVE ME AN ABUSE RING FOR EXPLOITING A GLITCH I WISHED I COULD GIVE YOU ONE NOW!!!!

[Nymph of Spring]

Mademoiselle Kit

DARKNRGY

Mademoiselle Kit

We were promised figures. Is there a chance these figures will come to light?

You did not address whether or not zomg was making profit or not, the big issue about this. If Zomg was failing, give us the numbers. Otherwise, we are going to look at anything posted by a staff member in a skeptical light.

Since this concerns the game WE LOVE and its future, I'm afraid we will need cold, hard facts before we are satisfied. Was it in the black? Was it in the red? These conflicting statements are making it hard to trust anyone right now. I hope you can see the dilemma we are in.

We are going to need facts before we back down. If it was in the red, then why hide it? Show us, and while we will be sad, we will back down. But all this secrecy about the numbers is making me suspect the latter, and the idea that Gaia might be hiding this fact makes me very upset and angry.

I never wanted to believe Gaia would lie to me, but after this...well, I hope you can understand my dilemma. Only will facts before my eyes convince me otherwise.

In conclusion: Your post did not give us the answers we were seeking. Please try again.

My first draft I did an experiment where I actually did do a full disclosure on a BUNCH of numbers. Some of those numbers came from a report we built for a patent troll lawsuit against gaia and a bunch of other companies (they thought they owned pre paid game cards lol) so they're reputable figures. It would certainly put the issue to bed once and for all. We all talked about it and decided against it. I suppose it's possible we would release but there are some pretty serious implications in doing so (try asking any other company about this). We would need to disclose salaries, marketing strategies/cost, etc and we are not going to get into yet another debate about how much the employees are paid and stuff like that. This is completely reasonable for us to be sensitive about.

I can understand from a legal standpoint why you wouldn't want to release full figures.

But would it be so hard to say something like: "In 2011, it cost roughly X to run zomg. Powerups/Buddy/Amulet sales were something like X".

We want to know how much we contributed, and how much we fell short (if we did). After being told time and time again "buy X to save zomg!" "only you can save zomg through your money!" "sorry, you didn't spend enough, we're pulling support for zomg" and after all that time of making it seem like OUR FAULT that zomg failed, I hope you understand WHY we need these figures.

Our beloved game is getting the ax. We need this, to clear up the confusion, and also to get a bit of closure.

If I could tip you, you'd be like the moo cows in Bills Ranch right now.. emotion_donotwant

[The Undead Suitor]

DARKNRGY

The Undead Suitor

I'm still wondering how you came to the conclusion to shelve zOMG last week, when you're just now going over the data and hashing things out.

We're not just now doing analysis of the product razz . I was speaking about the various communications we made. Staff is encouraged to post a lot and, because of that, sometimes people say things that are misinterpreted or just plain wrong. It doesn't help that some communications are not even in the form of a post/lost forever/hearsay.

But when the "people" are the high ranking developers and admins

somethings wrong.



It doesn't change the fact that last week everyone was all "yep, there's no way zomg will ever do anything so were freezing it for realz"

and now, you're hashing out facts and finishing meetings about it.


Did you really think discontinuing the largest game on Gaia would blow over well enough to not have to explain your actions?


Anyways, what's done is done.

I'll be awaiting my BB refund money any day now. emotion_c8

[boisterously_silent]

It's good to see that our concerns are being recognized, though I'm not getting my hopes up for any satisfactory resolutions.

We've been repeatedly told, "The game is dying. You give us money, we give you content!" Time and time again, we've given money, and received incomplete (BB), useless (buddies), and glitchy (DMS), content with promises for future completion, uses, and fixes. These are things we have paid real money for, thinking that Gaia would have the sense to put people to work on content users already paid for. We bought BB passes thinking that the area would get finished. We bought buddies because they were supposed to have abilities in the future.

You must understand our frustration when we're told that none of those things will come to fruition because facebook is more lucrative for you. I do appreciate that we're finally being heard, but the responses we're getting are so dodgy, and it's really hard to know who we can trust.

[Silent As Shadows]

DARKNRGY

Silent As Shadows

LOL Oh no! I didn't mean for it to be taken like that! I don't blame any of the people who are claimed to have written this post (save for Lanzer... He's been rubbing me the wrong way for a while.) Nooo. No! I believe that their names were put on there at HQ's demand. I hold HQ completely at fault for this.

You are wrong. The people listed were the people who physically sat in the room and wrote that and no one else gave us any direction.

Wish I could believe you, buddy. You have no idea. You understand why I can't though.