I highly doubt Menewsha will become the same way Gaia has. We have our own path. Several of the staff members have been members on Gaia since 2003 and 2004. We have seen alot of what gaia has done as far as mistakes have gone. We try hard to keep this from happening here. I really do we try hard. We have had pages and pages of discussions about how to come forth with new updates to avoid these same mistakes gaia made.

We will never put money before members. Because the members are the contributors to the site. Without the members we do not have a contributors, or even a community. While the money is needed to run the site and pay the people who need to be paid. The community is also an important standpoint for us. We strive hard to have a spamless community. We work endlessly to keep the community a place for people to want to be. Both in the staff forums to make things wanted and perfect, and in the forums to keep that maintained status we have had.

Bartuc's right, Gaia's done a lot of things right, but has made some core mistakes over the years and we have no intention of doing the same. We're already well on the way towards not doing the same actually, from my own personal viewpoint anyway.

And these are my own views, not those of the staff as a whole, but this is the way I see things:

• Gaia has never had enough mods, not from day 1.
• Consequently, rules have never been properly enforced.
• Because of this spam becomes rife.
• Because of this HUGE amounts of younger people start signing up.
• Because of this Gaia needs to buy more and more servers.
• Because of this they need a crapload more money coming in each month.
• But oh...all these 10 year olds that they've let sign up have no money...
• And lets not forget that they ban people at the drop of a hat. Two of my friends were banned for receiving botted gold in donations from people they didn't know. Both of these friends were married women who donated every month...
• So, let a load of kids with no cash to spend sign up and put huge strain on your system, and in the mean time ban the donating members, ok...

So that's my potted and extremely generalised theory as to the reason Gaia is in the state that it's in now; these are my arguements as to why we'll never end up like that.

• Our rules: First and foremost these are what protect us. We do not allow spam and bumping so that's an instant deterent to the underage kids who lie about their age to sign up here. They want to spam, they can't, they go back to Gaia.
• We take on new mods all the time so as to keep the mod:user ratio at a decent number, consequently our forums are not cess-pools because problems and problem users are dealt with fast. (sometimes so fast that an illegal post is deleted before a user has got a chance to report it ;))
• We investigate bannings painstakingly; we don't ban at random and ignore the person afterwards.

But basically it's our rules. Gaia allows spam, we don't, ergo we will not end up like them. That is obviously a hugely simplified synopsis, but it's accurate.

If Gaia didn't let people bump mindlessly and so on it would undoubtedly be a lot smaller than it is today, but its user base as a whole would contain far less children as they wouldn't be making 50 accounts each just to spam with. So Gaia would have a smaller user base but a larger amount of them would be older (not tweenage) people, consequently they would have been making more revenue but not having to pay out so much in server costs. So they wouldn't have had to whore themselves out to every sponsor going or sold their soul to TimeWarner, nor would they have had to try every means possible to get money out of people's pockets like they do now.

We don't allow people to make endless extra accounts, because we don't want 1000's of empty accounts cluttering up the database, slowing the site down and eating up our bandwidth. But also because on here there's no need.
See that's another thing that Gaia did wrong, forcing people to delete their account and lose the hair they'd had to BUY to change their look. Gold sinks are great and a necessary thing on sites like this, but in this instance it wasn't such a hot idea because people don't want to pay to change how their character looks so they just make another account, and another, and another...I have 10 Gaia accounts myself.
On here there's no need for all that because all bodily changes are free so people don't need to make endless accounts and bog down the system with them.

I seriously do not think we'll ever end up like Gaia because the two sites are too fundamentally different at a grass roots level.

I like zOMG, but I don't play it all the time.
I think it's pretty good! But they waited so LONG to come out with it.

They both have great points and I agree with every one of them.

Menewsha is a lot better.

I did Gaia a loooooong time ago. I still go on from time to time and see what's all changed. Not sure I like it as much anymore.

I still like Gaia more~

And you're more than welcome to like Gaia better. :)

But I prefer Menewsha. I've only logged into Gaia once since June - and that was because someone linked me to something you needed to be logged in to do.

Wow....just wow.....
I just checked out that new shop.
When they said "spendy" in the announcement, I wasn't thinking over a million gold.
You can't even preview the items the set has!
Bah......
Wait a second!
Are the new items only one thing!? Or are they a set? D:

They're one-pose items Heruuna. I was pretty shocked by that actually...

They are a single item unless I'm mistaken. I have already said my fill about the recent updates on Gaia to a friend of mine. I can see what they are trying to do, but it doesn't seem to be well thought out. (In my opinion.)

@ Ferra - in my opinion Gaia rarely thinks their plans out properly. Almost everything they do is raw, like it could have been great if they actually sat down and thought about it and planned it out, but they don't so.... ya

I go just to tap tanks and chat with friends since I don't have a lot of time for much else. I've been on since late 2004 and was initially pleased with the evolving items - until the cash prices skyrocketed and the monthly items started getting increasingly lame. I'm not thrilled with the new shop, but understand that they needed another gold sink. When they switched from the old MP format to the new one, there was a huge furor over it. They started charging us with selling fees to combat the gold sink. As soon as I saw the new store and the crazy prices for a single-pose item, I thought that maybe that economic student they had as an intern didn't know what he was talking about. The fees were supposed to work so that the site didn't have to resort to stuff like that new shop.

I was a past 2003 user on Gaia, I remember when it was several months in the creating. It was some what like Menewsha. Honestly, I don't think Menewsha will ever turn into that wreck called "Gaia". I'm actually glad this site has stricter rules, puts some order into the site. Maybe there won't be as many users as there are on Gaia, but that's excellent. You don't want so many members, it'll become chaotic just like Gaia and then Menewsha will have to open up more shops to buy with real life money to keep the site running.

Still, Menewsha I doubt will be anything like Gaia. Gaia is money hungry and stupid, Menewsha is a small site that isn't money hungry and every moderator and Administrators are smart.

I'm confused.
Everyone is talking about how items in the new shops are worth over 1 million.
Are you talking about you pay 1 mill in the shop, or the marketplace? What item?

@ IwIshIwasafIsh- just the other day Gaia made a new shop that has four or five items in there all priced at one million gold or more. So, no, it's not the marketplace, it's shop based

Judging by the fact that Menewsha has been around for a few years and still is in very good shape, I'd have to say it's probably safe from the disrepair Gaia has fallen into. The admins/devs and mods of this site seem far more on top things than Gaia's one are.

Gaia is soo upsetting right now. first the lotto(being able to buy winning numbers) and the Million+ shop. its really like they don't care about their users anymore it all about lining their pockets. Its so upsetting for the older users that have been there for many years and have stayed loyal to them but instead they are treat the new users to winning contest like the Halo. I have been on gaia for over 4 yrs now and they gave it to a noob who was on for 6 months They've really crossed that line of greediness.

I totally feel you. I've been on there for 6 years and look at all of it in the same way. Damn greedy companies of the world >__<

I like Gaia, but people are getting so irritating and I can't deal with it. All my friends are leaving the site so i thought I'd find somewhere new. :]

I'm still on gaia and have used my same avatar name. I have been on gaia since 2004 and gaia is definitely not the same as it used to be. I like the MMO on gaia but realize that it draws a lot of noobs. Here on this site the noob culture is very low which is a great thing. They constantly have ads on the site and all of these worthless items clogging up my inventory on there. I got so sick of the Michael Jackson items just recently they were giving out in daily chance that I had almost 50 of them! I graciously gave them to new people joining the site. This site has parameters which make you get involved, and is what gaia should have been. I just hope this site keeps making the cool avatar items and maybe will make some new poses for them.

I think sponsorship is ok, but not to the extent of corporate buy out. Sagger and all of the other staff at gaia who weren't part of the original team, have really ruined the social fabric of the site.

@CK ~ Were you a member of gaia once?

yea i remeber it!!! well gaia is more umm..... better than menewsha cause its mush harder to get gold thats what i think? am i right or wrong?

the gold may be harder to get, but the items you buy with it aren't really that expensive (some are, but most aren't). The gold flows nicely into what you can buy with it.

I mean, I'm only a week old on this site now and I've made a almost 6k. Granted, like all of it is gone now because I bought the CI's for September and October (4k in total) and these boots and skirt (800 gold in total). Now I almost have 800 gold again. And I'll also add that I only use one account. I don't have any mules on here.

Admittingly I don't have school to worry about and I'm jobless so I tend to sit on here (but I'm doing other things as well. Yey for multi tasking)). But I honestly don't think gold is that much of an issue. Just post around and think out your posts so they can be longer and you can get more money from them. Play the games too. You can get 500 gold from them a day

You've got to be kidding me.....wow.....
They don't even look that good....maybe the Monarch Dress, but the rest look like crap to me.

You're right!! Gaia bans all of those who donate a large sum of money. My friend who has contributed alot of money and got banned for being 10. Someone snitched. She has also been hacked more than one can count. I have been on since the begining of 2007 and haven't been hacked. Thank God!! I have spent alot of money on Evolving Items and Monthly Collectables. I am sick of it!! You can only look cool if you have money. Also, I didn't know how to work the "trade" and got jacked of my Hermes Moon when if first came out. They did nothing about it. I will never quit Gaia, but I would have to say this place is better.