Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alchemy has, basically, been out for two months now. Yes, Gaia has done some nice things to try to help it out. I'm sure you've noticed that the word "try" is underlined, which is a technique used to grab the reader's attention to assert that word's value as the key word in that sentence. In other words yes, Gaia, you have tired to help Alchemy but it hasn't really done much of anything to further the ability to progress in Alchemy.

Yes, we KNOW it's not supposed to be easy as many people constantly point out. However, there is a big different between hard and impossible. Why do I say that? The highest Alchemists right now are only level 9. That's right, two months in and the people who own things like Angelic Halos, yeah you know those people, haven't managed to reach level 10. Wow.

Now look at me. I've got a nice account worth to my name. 21 mil. Though I am proud of the hard work I've put into Gaia to make that number, even a 'rich user' (though I have a hard time believing that, due to single items being worth way more then my entire account worth) like me is almost completely unable to progress in Alchemy.

Now look at some other people. There are users that, while dedicated to Gaia, only have accounts worth 2 mil. Or 5 mil. Or 10 mil. Now I'll go out on a limb here and say that under 15 mil account worth would be the bulk of Gaia users. In other words, people who don't use cash regularly, people who don't heavily Booty Grab, hoard, or otherwise obtain gold at a staggering rate, but have been dedicated for a few years and post often. This also includes accounts that aren't used that often, but none-the-less are still a part of the community. I'm comfortable saying that accounts under 15 mil would probably make up over half of users. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if that made up 80% or 90% of users. Still I'm only guessing (for I am no expert @_@). The idea is, not many people have massive amounts of gold just laying around.

Why, oh why, would you make a feature that is basically impossible for most of your base to even progress to level 2?

What honestly irritates me the most is your reaction to the complaints by users. Yes, we know, you've done quite a bit to the Golden Giftbox, but you still insist that Alchemy...

1) isn't supposed to be easy (already covered this)
2) Will 'level out' in time (let me again point out that it's been two months. This, unless I'm mistaken, counts as time. Quite a bit of time actually and I've seen little improvement)
3) would crumble underneath itself if you released more components more quickly (in a system that, hell, 100% of your base can NOT use to get to level ten after 2 entire months)
4) is getting special attention and you're doing all you can. (Yes, it has gotten attention, but no, you're obviously and quite painfully not doing all you can because you keep giving these same excuses to people over and over. If you were doing all you could do, then Alchemy would be a challenging but USABLE system.)

This piled on top of mods who support item extinction, treat all users like young children (on a PG-13 site >w<), complain about how hard their jobs are, and are generally rude and dismissive to members.

To further the insult, Gaia is not the first site to initiate a crafting feature. Oh no, they are FAR from the first. I'm sure just about every MMORPG/RPG video game has a crafting system implemented, with choice examples that were launched in a far better and more sophisticated manner. No, I don't think copying is the way to go, but is taking notes on the matter that difficult to accomplish?

I do believe that Gaia's Item Alchemy has become the poster child of how not to do things in a website.

/rant.