Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm here, but no one else seems to be... XD

I remember you Wyndi!
Yeah, I've been busy with college and stuff.
I've been looking through my guilds. Half of them are dead. sweatdrop
Glad to see people are still here though.

Yeah, I returned from hiatus and half my guilds were dead...it's so depressing to see a dead guild. It's like a ghost town.
Gaia hasn't really done much with guilds ether.
They still look like they did when I last came, while the forums have received a lot of improvements.
Maybe people just moved on to the forums?

Good luck with college! Do you know what you want to major in yet? (I didn't when I started...)

Seems like it. Along with house item updates and fixing Jigsaw and other mini-game's glitches. When I came back it seemed like Gaia had become a lot more commercial, pouring most of it's money into sponsor related things, cash shop items and zOMG while ignoring everything else, as much as I hate to say it, this is just like the beginning of the decline of another site I used to go on when I was younger (Neopets).
I find myself spending more time in the forums than guilds, when it used to be the opposite, because even with the guilds that are still active, they seem to have had their average activity cut in half.

Awesome! Creative writing should be fun, and "green" majors are really popular right now.
I don't think I'd be able to do a double major.
All the pre-recs and everything...

Neocash? I must have left before then. I think I left when they added so many ads it made my browser crash... I visited recently just for the heck of it, and apparently it was bought by MTV or something, they cut back on the ads though.
I the only real nice thing about Neopets when I left was that they had a Japanese language option, which I used to use a lot (this was before I switched every site I use besides Gaia and my college's site to Japanese, and I had no idea what most of the Japanese menu said. It was still fun using it though. xd )

I miss the old Gaia too, even though I only joined in 06, I feel as if it's almost a completely different site now. zOMG is kind of fun, but I only really play it because my favorite mini-game (Jigsaw) is so glitched it doesn't give out gold half the time and doesn't save what you've done, the admins seem to have no intention of fixing it, and they still have the guts of make it "Game of the Week". It's just too ironic.
I think you're completely right. Gaia only wants shiny new high maintenance members, and I don't think there are as many new sign-ups as there once was, with all the "Social Daily Chance"
based on friend invites and ecards to show off your outfit changes so you can annoy your friends more, Gaia's getting desperate.
And then even with the gold I get from zOMG, there are no new items I like. I finished questing for even the commons on my list,
and now I just feel, I don't know, like I have no goals here anymore.
I think I'll save up a bit and then divide any other gold I earn between my friends who are questing.
I'm happy with the items I have, and I'll still log in to Gaia as long as my friends are still here.
I just won't quest anymore.
I probably would've left Gaia for Japanese Gaia clones a while ago (at least they get decent site updates) if it weren't for my friends in the YYH thread and guilds, and the Japanese chat thread.
Besides being with friends, what else is there to do on Gaia these days...
Most of the newbies seem so rude (ok, maybe it was always that way, but it seems like there are more of them around lately).

Triple major? eek Wow, those people must have no free time.
Good luck with your double major!
I'm sure you'll do well!

Yeah, it was fun talking to Japanese Neopets users, even when I had to use the dictionary a lot.
Gaia will probably never have anything like that though...

I think Gaia's just getting greedy with cash shop items. MCs used to be cool and I used to look forward to when they would open.
Now Gaia updates are all about EIs and other cash shop items.
It's sad really. I understand that Gaia needs money to run the site servers and add features but have they really improved the site much since the cash shop opened?

Booty Grab, huh?
I only figured out about that game recently, now that the whole Gaia economy seems to run off of the aquariums and Booty Grab
(and when aquariums started I thought it would just be another fun gold sink like homes and cars, little did I know...) I figured I should learn how it worked. It's pretty much mindless. No wonder it's popular.
You're not missing a lot when it comes to zOMG. I like it but for the wrong reasons. It's one of the easiest ways to make gold in Gaia. I admit the Zen Garden is pretty, some parts look like they're taken out of Japanese paintings, but if I felt like looking at Japanese paintings, I'd just go here. Most of the paintings they copied are there anyway.

Gaia has run out of ideas and isn't listening to it's users anymore. It's gotten too big for it's own good, and the new users aren't helping.
I've had people ask me for my katana more times than I care to remember. My response is usually "I bought my katana on the market for 40k using gold I saved up myself and donations, if you'd like a katana please quest for one yourself" and that usually makes them go away. If not I block them.

The reason many people don't leave (including me) is likely because of what I call the "Facebook dilemma" for lack of a better title.
Some of my friends IRL joined Facebook early on and enjoyed it,
but after a while for various reasons (addiction to it, privacy, Facebook getting too big, etc) some of them wanted to quit, the problem is that they couldn't, because they had most of their friends on it, and while they could just contact them by email, they were used to Facebook and having a place where they could talk with many friends at once. So, while some of them did quit and contacted people through email, most didn't.
I feel the same way right now...

Good luck getting a Fallen Wish!
I'll get 100K or so and then donate to you.

Yeah, I hate what Booty Grab did...

Lol, I love Japanese paintings too. 3nodding I used to have a print of a Japanese painting of cherry blossoms and Mt. Fuji that went in my bedroom but it got lost in the moving. sweatdrop

Well I'm glad you find it useful to keep in touch, I just don't like how it's almost like a cult at my college and anyone who doesn't have one is out of the social loop on things. sweatdrop
People can be really persistent in trying to get me to join, and usually my main reason of there not being enough Japanese people isn't enough to dissuade them, so I go for the more common reasons (Privacy, I like talking to my IRL friends face-to-face, etc) and that still doesn't work.

I think Gaia's been trying to copy Facebook lately.
I know that people have said the annoying "suggested friends" feature is copied from there.
Are the updates like Gaia "notices"?

Aww, it's fun analyzing what people say.^-^
Ever since Myspace (and now Facebook) it seems like some of my friends have been so obsessed with what's going on in other people's lives that they don't like having in-depth conversations with people anymore.
You know, some people say that online friends aren't "real" friends, but when I move and some friends end-up becoming online friends anyway, I don't think there's much of a difference.
If anything, my online friends tend to have more "deep" conversations with me than my offline friends.
It's kind of weird to just notice that but it's true...

(As for the Fallen Wish, no really, I finished my quest and think my avatar is "finished" for now. I have enough items to change it's look every once in a while when I get bored with it, so I'd really like to donate to your quest if you're still questing for it. heart )