Cir and I were reminiscing about our years on Gaia the other day.
As far as the world map goes, we only had Barton Town. In addition to the forums, Art Arena, and Barton Boutique, we also had a section for personal ads (!) and a link directory, where people would post links to other sites and other gaians would review them.
Newbies didn't get any free clothes or items. We were sent into the world with our grey undies and 500 gold. The only outfit that could be purchased with that much gold was the flame shirt and pants, with no shoes. Other people just decided to purchase one item at a time until they had a full outfit... Pants were usually first, but some people went for a shirt as their first item. Shoes were nearly always the last thing to be acquired.
That's how I looked back then. I signed up just after the first Easter event, so I missed out on getting my chicky/bunny slippers. I ended up having to buy my bunny slippers from someone else for 1000 gold. It seemed like so much at the time, but it was worth it!
We had no games, so gold was earned primarily by posting and taking polls on the forums. I spent a lot of time bumping threads in the Chatterbox. ^_^;; Other than that, posting reviews in the link directory earned you a lot of gold the first time you did it, so I made sure to review something once a day. You also got one gold for every page you loaded, which was better than nothing.
The first major update I remember came that summer, and gave us the island of Gambino, with the hat shop and Gambino Outfitters. It also introduced the most expensive thing you could buy (25000 gold for that duck hat!) as well as the cheapest (peasant clothes). I remember seeing someone on the forums wearing that duck hat, and thinking that they must be freakin' rich! The introduction of Gambino Outfitters also sent me on my first big quest: Raising 10,100 gold for a red kimono. It seemed to take forever, but I did get my kimono.
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Part 2 of my Gaian biography here will be posted later this evening. :3
