I know that a lot of people on avatar websites don't like Gaia, and extreme inflation is one of the most commonly used reasons.
I really don't understand the hate, but I think that the developers and mods are really making an effort.
Two new features have come out on Gaia recently - Alchemy and Bid Blast.
Alchemy is basically taking several (sometimes many) cheaper items and crafting them into a more expensive one. I don't do it personally because it seems like a waste of my gold, but a lot of people do. The crafting also comes with a gold fee, so it really seems to be taking a lot out of the system.
Now, Bid Blast is a MASSIVE gold sink. The devs and mods take very rare items (they've even done mini wings), and auction them off. Each bid requires a "bid ticket" which are essentially 50 gold each. Aside from that, each bid raises the price of the item by one gold, and whoever has the last bid must pay the final price for it. The final prices are obviously much lower than the LMP price, but taking the bid tickets into account, an item that sells for 700,000 gold, will take about 35 million out of the system, and that's just for one item. I think that's insane.
I have heard a lot of people say that the devs and mods don't care about the website, and I think things like this prove them wrong. They're obviously trying hard, and I think it's working. If they can just do something about artificial inflation, we'll be golden. :P

Be that as it may, shutting the barn door after the horses have gotten out is going to be a wasted effort.

Problem with Gaia is they let things go out of control way too fast - to the point where they care more about money than the users. They'd rather make money with new users than to try to figure out ways to keep the old users.

They cannot keep up with reports that are given and at some forums, their reports have been backed up for a year.

And don't confuse mods with devs. They are two different types of staff members. =P Moderators have little to nothting to do with things developed on Gaia.

Also that alchemy thing sounds a lot like something that kinsaki's had for a very long time.... >.>

Haters are gonna hate, regardless of what Gaia does. Others just don't care. Personally, I never understood the hate either. I think some people just like to hate on stuff. xD

Hm, but Kinsaki's not the only place with an Alchemy feature. TinierMe is one I can think of off the top of my head.

People are gonna hate just because it's seen as cool to do that. But it can't be denied that Gaia has never had enough mods/always had too many people breaking the rules/never been able to properly enforce its rules.

Sizzla mentioned ages ago about a guy who was a new mod I think, in the GD, and he was getting hated on from all sides because he was actually enforcing the rules.

Because there's so many people that I can only call brats on Gaia, there's really no hope of a lot of it ever being a nice place to hang out. But that's why places like Mene are around :)

Vela, there's a lot of justified reasons for the hate; I personally left when Gaia's cash shop went out of control and screwed over the economy. But before that even, a lot of old users wouldn't talk to you if you didn't look 'rich' and the new users would just beg for whatever items you were wearing >.>

Of course, instead of hating though, I just came over to mene XD

And there's nothing wrong with multiple sites having an Alchemy type thing, I'm just saying it's not very original, as the original poster was making it sound to be.

Originally Posted by jellysundae

Sizzla mentioned ages ago about a guy who was a new mod I think, in the GD, and he was getting hated on from all sides because he was actually enforcing the rules.

Sad to say, this happened to me quite often. People do what they want in the GD and there will never be any hope for it. It is the plague of Gaia and if it was to be rid of, it wouldn't surprise me if the users there migrated to somewhere else.

There are no words to describe the GD there, other than it is beyond control.



Vela, I wouldn't call it hate. It's more-so common knowledge of older users who've been with them for so long. You can be disappointed a community, you can be disappointed in the staff, you can be disappointed how the cash shop is handled; and that's what a majority of the users here or on other avatar sites are. Some do very well hate Gaia, but most are just tired and disappointed in what Gaia has changed into. Do not confuse hate with disappointment.

A few people mention that Gaia is more concerned with money than with its users. I don't think that's true. It's a huge website, with a limited number of paid staff. The bigger they get, the more help they need, the more income they need to make.

An example of a site that DID let money get the best of them? Neopets. I grew up with that site. I was fine when they started selling plushies. The next thing you know, every second feature on the site is p2p... and their users left in droves.

Anaxilea, I disagree. With Neopets, you can still do the things that you could five years ago without cash shop items. Maybe that's just me, but I hardly see a difference besides getting vanity stuff for your Neopet. I can still collect my dailies and play games, which, really - was how Neopets started. With Gaia - it started out as you needing to donate in order to get an edge or post more. Now, posting does nothing and you can hardly breath without cash shop items being shoved in your face. You pretty much need to donate in order to even hope to keep up, unless you constantly spend your time hoarding or exchanging.

But, to each their own. c:

I actually disagree that you have to donate or exchange/hoard to get gold on Gaia.
Ten minutes of Booty Grabbing can get you 15-20k, and zOMG gives out a lot as well. And they bumped up the posting rewards too. Your first post gives 125 now, and slowly goes down with every one. I usually get at least 10k for about 50-75 posts, which I just do by posting every now and again throughout the day when I get a chance.

However, it's rather difficult to get the 10+ mil worth items on Gaia that are released each month, if not more often. In order to get that much gold, you'd need to consistently earn 20k of gold for 500 days every single day.

I liked Gaia, originally when I joined in 2004 but then after a few years down the track after I had accumulated a few million gold worth of items and a fair amount of gold my account for some reason literally stuffed up. I don't know what happened, at first I couldn't log in and used a mule to ask about getting access to the account. Then when I was told a new password which was a user number that was different to my original user number but I could get access, thing was majority of the gold and items I had were gone and what was in my inventory wasn't even stuff I originally had. So of course I sought help from the staff, but they never fixed the problem. So I just lost interest and left for good.

I never really hung out in the forums. I found it full of retarded 14-year-olds with an ego because they have EPICK AVATARZZZZZ!!!!
GD needs to GTFO. Everytime I've lurked there, there were always flamers, trolls, vanity posts... too much shit. The music forum is shit, too. This sums it up: EVERY BAND YOU LIKE SUCKS. EVERY MUSIC GENRE YOU LIKE SUCKS.

Reporting for mod status has become a big thing. And they let people get away with it. I was banned for "trolling" after I posted a pic. Of a pear. Laughing. Oh yes, I was SO trolling!!! The dick who reported me? Became a mod who was quickly banned for swinging the banhammer a little too freely. >3
Anyway, Gaia is a busy website. Too many rules. Too many obnoxious users. The infamous "I'M 12 AND WHAT IS THIS?!" Ban is a good example of why I never really go on Gaia anymore.

I've been really into Gaia recently, and I have to say, both Alchemy and BidBlast suck. I get that they're both supposed to be gold sinks, but there's a difference between a good gold sink and things that just aren't worth it. (Of course, I don't have as much gold compared to most Gaians anyway, so maybe I'm just bitter...)

Alchemy is a cool concept. However, the ingredients for the items are, from what I can tell, rare, and the users have caught onto this. They sell them for completely ridiculous prices. A lot of items aren't even worth the amount you'd spend crafting them. And most of the ingredients aren't sold in stores, so you'd have to buy them on the Marketplace. Aside from the tax they pull, most of that gold will go to another user, so it's not much of a gold sink.

BidBlast does better at the gold sink effort, but they did so in such an infuriating way, I will never attempt it again. In a normal online bid, people tend to wait until the last few seconds to make sure that they get the highest bid. In BidBlast, when you bid during the last 30 seconds, they reset the clock back to 30 seconds. This gives someone else the chance to outbid you, but as soon as they do, the clock is reset again. And it just keeps going on forever. What's the point of bidding on something that is stuck at 30 seconds and never ends?

I used to like Gaia, then the porn trolls got on my nerves.
I googled avatar communities and found Menewsha. No porn trolls here! YAY!

And the avatars are so much cooler looking here. You can also chat with the mods, too.

Alchemy on Gaia is kind of cool but I agree the things you need to get are just so damn expensive :XP

Though I can't ever really give up on Gaia I do love Mene a lot more :XD

I only didn't like it because everyone pointed out everything I said and started contradicting it or saying the obvious and critiquing it. Which is fine if I ask. But, other wise not. I like Gaia a bit but I prefer this site. Though it is really creative.

The inflation is just one thing. I'm more annoyed over the fact that they keep hiring corrupt mods and admins who swing around the banhammer like a kid with a new toy. :| That, or believing in false accusations and banning the people that were accused without checking over the facts first. And refusing the believe that they might've made a wrong decision in banning the person. And sending out automated mails to the people who attempt to appeal their case. And when that fails to deter the person from appealing, tell them that it's going to be taken care of when it's not. And when that still fails to deter the person from appealing, tell them to stop it or they'll IP-ban you for 'harassing' them, despite there being at least a whole fucking year of waiting in-between said appeals.

My problem with Gaia is their ban hammer.

All I did on Gaia was buy items form shops and role play and out of no where someone smacks down with a ban hammer and I'm out of there for 2 and a half YEARS!

Then I get an email saying all my items have been removed but I'm allowed to play again. UHHH NO THANK YOU.

Lol. I didn't say that everyone who's dissented is hating on gaia. If I say haters, I'm talking about haters. Not meh people, or disappointed people. And that wasn't the only kind of people I mentioned anyway. I'm not confusing anything.

Wingless; I didn't say there was. I think, we meant the same thing but said them different ways, lol.

I don't hate Gaia, just the things they do sometimes.

It's love the sinner, hate the sin.

I think Gaia is trying hard to listen to it's users. If you want a company that only cares about money and not about the users it's Zynga. The games are buggy , the quests too short and everything nice is cash .At least with Gaia you have a chance to buy cash items with gold and the common items are just as good as the cash ones. I know comparing Zynga with Gaia probably isn't accurate, but I've played Zynga games for only a year and am fed up. I've been on Gaia 4 years and am not fed up yet.

Gaia all the way.

I was finished with Gaia a while back, when they started taking on all the random sponsors and letting the cash shop go out of control. I never really went into the forums, specifically because I could see the problems everyone else has mentioned, but I was really done when I noticed that an entire set of decent-quality cash items would come out alongside a set of trash gold items. It seemed to me that they cared far, far more about making money than they did about making the members happy, and so I left. I stop back in occasionally, but I haven't seen much improvement. I'm disappointed in what Gaia became, since I was an older member from before the cash shop was implemented, but I don't necessarily hate it.