Welcome to Gaia! ::


Shirtless Hellraiser

16,625 Points
  • Jack-pot 100
  • Battle: Rogue 100
  • Cheercrusher 50
Hey everyone!

I wanted to make this thread regarding the recent decision to open DMS to the public. We made this decision because it was always our intent to one day have this area open for all Gaians to enjoy. The Bloodstone Amulets and Gems were head-start items to allow their owners to have first access, but not exclusive access, to this area. For 11 months, and 2 weeks, you had just that - first access, and we hope you enjoyed it!

At this point, we felt that enough time had passed and that finally opening the area to the public would be a good thing for the Gaia community. We had previously stated the following in an announcement from Sept. 2011: "But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently." We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!

Now, all of this said, we do understand why, if you happened to buy the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem within the past week, you might be upset that you didn't get a larger amount of time to explore this area before it became public. If, within the past week, you purchased either the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem from the marketplace for gold, or used Gaia cash to purchase either of these items from the cash shop, we'll remove the item from your inventory and refund you the gold or cash you paid for it. You'll need to file billing ticket through our Help Center, however, to have the issue addressed.

Hope this helps, and we hope that you can make even more new friends as they come into the area.

Take care and have a great evening!
Sisky


UPDATE:

I just posted this in the thread, but wanted to re-post it here so everyone was aware of my post!
siskataya
Hey everyone!

As promised, I'm back in the thread today! It was probably a good thing I headed to bed when I did last night - I was beyond exhausted. If it is any consolation, I had weird dreams all night about my car breaking down and instead of being given a replacement vehicle to use in while the car was being fixed, I was given a giant scorpion the size of a car to ride around town. I have no idea WHAT motivated that dream... I digress.

Anyway, I have been reading through all the posts/threads and messages I've received about this issue. There a few things I want to say here:

* Regarding the complaints that not enough notice was given that DMS was being opened to the public, we agree that we could have done better on announcing this. We just got excited that it was now open, and thought since we has said before it would one day be made publicly available, that a fun surprise dev notice would be a good way to let everyone know. Sorry if this seemed random and out of the blue! From now on, we'll try our best to give at least 2 days notice that such changes are about to happen. This does not, of course, include any surprise features/changes that we want to be fun surprises for the community, in which case it makes no sense to make an advance notice! That would be silly!

* We've decided to revise our offer (made in the opening post) to refund anyone who purchased the Bloodstone Amulet or Gem from the marketplace/cash shop for gold/cash from one week to two weeks - yay! We feel that perhaps one week was too short a time period, so extending the refund period to two weeks will be better for the community. Also, if you had the amulet for more than two weeks, you probably had enough opportunity to use the item and try out the area!

* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky




===========================
UPDATED INFO: 9/10/2012

Hey everyone! Just want to clarify the amulet/gem refund policy, since some of you have filed tickets requesting refunds for the Bloodstone Amulets/Gems that you purchased in the marketplace/trades AFTER the dev notice and this thread were made. We're sorry, but the refunds are intended for those Gaians who purchased the amulet/gem for up to two weeks before the announcement was made/the refund was announced. We assumed this was pretty clear, but since some people are confused, we wanted to make sure to address this matter.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit! biggrin
Sisky

Time-traveling Marshmallow

32,700 Points
  • Senpai's Notice 100
  • NPCon Attendee 100
  • Beta Gaian 0
please sticky this thread. and thank you for the info sisky.

Friendly Shapeshifter

11,850 Points
  • Friendly 100
  • Forum Sophomore 300
  • First step to fame 200
Thank you! c: Are we allowed to post here? >3>

Magical Cat

13,600 Points
  • Grunny Harvester 150
  • Conventioneer 300
  • Magical Girl 50
Honestly I was never aware that the area would ever be made permanently public. I realize now that was my own fault for not researching this more. Yet I feel the staff failed to really make it more well known as well. I've barely been able to get much use out of my amulet and it's also been made soulbound so I never even had the opportunity to sell it back when it was worth something.

I feel that those of us stuck with them, should still be able to turn them in for SOMETHING. It wasn't as if the public never got the chance to play either.

Either way, seriously unhappy and pissed. If it wasn't for the B/C community I'd have left this site long ago. Every day Gaia never seems to fail to make me hate it a little bit more.

Loyal Wife

15,625 Points
  • Supreme Supporter 500
  • Perfect Attendance 400
  • Threadmaster 200
This is good and bad;
Good for those that can't afford a bloodstone.
Bad for the older DMSers, and the people that come from Papa Saw with no idea what a buff does, aka, noobs.
Oh well. It was bound to happen.
I think you should make it more like the past 3 months but other than that, I'm not sure what all the huff is about.

Perfect Pitcher

Now I feel bad for anyone who purchased them a week and a day ago... sweatdrop

Thanks for breakin' the curse.

Eloquent Lunatic

14,150 Points
  • Ultimate Player 200
  • Jolly Roger 50
  • Champion 300
thank you for clearing this up with people :>

Perfect Bloodsucker

17,050 Points
  • Tycoon 200
  • 50 Wins 150
  • Threadmaster 200
thanks for clarifying this. but i fear this will be of little use, for this shitstorm is already a category 9,001. gonk
If we're lucky, things will settle soon. People love their internet raeg, but everyone has to calm down eventually.

Thanks for the information, Sisky. c:

Cheery Bunny

15,150 Points
  • Timid 100
  • Elocutionist 200
  • Cheerbringer 100
I sincerely hope you guys intend to cycle servers more often then.

Doing it when you remember is sad considering you're expecting more people to play and bog the servers down even more than they already are.

User Image - Blocked by "Display Image" Settings. Click to show.

VSC_Heartz's Wife

Divine Defender

30,225 Points
  • Champion 300
  • Invisibility 100
  • Timid 100
Thank you :3 This is the only thing I was upset about. It was clearly unfair for new-buyers. Though personally I think the time frame should be two weeks rather than one.

Girl-Crazy Sex Symbol

11,150 Points
  • Ultimate Player 200
  • Gender Swap 100
  • Flatterer 200
siskataya

Sisky


You couldn't put this in your dev alert? I'm sorry, but the way this has all been handled seems like a total clusterfuq.

Perfect Saint

I hope this can put out some of the fires.

Shirtless Flatterer

10,300 Points
  • Flatterer 200
  • Nerd 50
  • Ultimate Player 200
"We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!"

ohh really this is all the good deeds could amount for?

Quick Reply

Submit
Manage Your Items
Other Stuff
Get GCash
Offers
Get Items
More Items
Where Everyone Hangs Out
Other Community Areas
Virtual Spaces
Fun Stuff
Gaia's Games
Mini-Games
Play with GCash
Play with Platinum