Welcome to Gaia! ::

I find the very first answer in the very first post alarming. They just gave us the avatar builder and they may not keep it around? It was the one thing a majority of gaians wanted now that tektek is closed.

The rest of the questions felt like repeats.

That' could be based on something like, "Oh, we are having a harder time getting this coded correctly than we anticipated and it doesn't directly generate cash for us so we might bail on it."

I can't think of a reason for Gaia to not want such a feature unless it just boils down to $$$ - like either programmer time or server / bandwidth issues.

I apologize for the really really late response. I don't get quote notifications from guilds and work's been keeping me busy.

I guess I sorta don't understand how it related to the tagging system? To me personally it sounded like the question was directly about the avatar builder. I may be just confused by it but I hope the system doesn't go anywhere. Also haven't they been saying that they have been wanting to redo the tagging system for a while?



Although this week I will admit that the GC push has been...annoying I don't think everything on the site is geared to be totally GC related. We were doing well up until this week. Things were starting to look up however for some reason it all came crashing down.

Over all Views: This week was really short and the fact that only one staff member as really on the ball tonight worried me. I hope next week is better.

Well, I didn't say everything.
But certainly most of Gaia's efforts in past months have been towards items / features that generate cash.

As far as the limited ATS -
Might just be a combination of the July 4th weekend approaching and rather hot weather. It's unusually hot up here in WA. In fact, for the first time in my memory my county has issued a complete burn ban due to the unusual dryness and such. Usually in the summer there is a ban on open burns for burning debris (like cut branches) but this is the first time I've ever seen them burn recreational fires - like just having a fire in my fire pit.

Down in San Jose, CA were Gaia is at it is also pretty warm. According to weather.com currently 88 F and high of 90F.
So maybe Gaia staff just want to get home and take off their work clothes and sit in the AC. (Never been to their offices so not sure how hot / cold they are)

Frankly as the weeks / months pass I care less and less.
I am still grateful for these summaries that Platonix makes but the actual questions / comments being summarized are of less interest to me. ATA used to contain lots of conversation about new site features, updates to zOMG and other games, updates to fish and booty grab, events that were not just giant gold sinks ... and so on.

Now ATS is almost entirely about items for sale and things related to items such as tickets and alchemy. Gaia's actions over the past couple of years have really jaded me and I frankly don't give a crap about items any more. If (insert equippable item) is not quite the color or style I want - no problem - just wait a couple weeks and ten more variations will be for sale. Not always literally of course but so many cash shop items are being cranked out that none of them seem special any more. At least not to me.

been asking the same question for over two months, haven't even gotten the respect of a response. hating the staff, as usual.

I've thought the same / similar many times.
I sometimes feel like the weekly event should be renamed to
ATSAI = Ask The Staff About Items or
ATSACS = Ask The Staff About Cash Shop

If you want my personal opinion the shift is due (at least indirectly) to the financial troubles Gaia has been having.

ATA used to be about new areas and additions to zOMG, new fish for booty grab / tanks, additions and changes to arenas, things happening with sponsors, guilds, new Facebook games and partnership games, conventions etc etc and yes, items.

Then Gaia got a new CEO, had two or more rounds of layoffs, got rid of most of their artists and developers, started trying to outsource art, closed zOMG, stopped attending almost all conventions, largely abandoned fish tanks and booty grab, introduced hyper-inflation with gold generators, lost most of their sponsors and apparently are not getting many these days, had their FB games largely fail, lost their partnership games, abandoned arenas (or at least I think that's what I heard), started (continued, actually) ignoring almost all of the older in house games and generally started evolving the site into a pay to win model via manufactured inflation and a heavy, heavy emphasis on cash items. Not to mention driving away many members with their constant carpet bombing of "Buy This!" type of announcements.

I think the majority of the questions are about items because most of the users who are interested in other parts of Gaia got tired of asking questions that were either ignored or answered with phrases like "We can consider that" or "Not at this time" or "No current plans for that" etc.

TBH I am pleasantly surprised that the summer event is something I can significantly participate in without spending cash. It is still sort of mindless clicking but sort of fun / relaxing in a way. I'm up about 80 billion gold plus a ton of things in my inventory I have not sold. Usually Gaia wants me to dump 80 billion gold into a sink hole to get the "gullible idiot" achievement or something like that.