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Ugh, I last left off at the end of November. I kept telling myself I'd catch up... but haven't. Sooo... here goes a horrible, quick recap.

Events
The xmas event was fun. The Overseer and Sentinel were powerless bums. Santa went missing before the event kicked off. The Overseer gets the Peter Pan pixie idea, and thinks that by saving Christmas, he'd get the love of thousands and his powers would return. Sin comes along for the ride. He traded a pendant to Nicu in exchange for Santa's cheer engine that runs his sleigh. After a series of mishaps and the generous donations of Gaians to keep the engine running, the overall cheer meter fills up. Everyone who participated is rewarded a tinsel halo. The event ends, showing that most of our main holiday NPCs have been kidnapped and are huddled in fear. Wooo... now that's the Christmas spirit. : P
For the event, you'd donate items and gold in exchange for gingerbread men. There wasn't much of a scale for the worth of the item vs amount of gingerbread given. A 2g start item could give one gingerbread while some other more expensive item still only gave 1 GB. Donating 1k gold returned 1 GB. But you could spend that 1k on 500 starter items, and earn 500 GB. Overall, the event was time consuming and boring. At least it was easy. That's the part I like. It was time consuming, but at least that wasn't due to laggy forum posting. And the banter between the characters on the event home page kept me laughing. ...But actually donating? I had to wait for the inventory to load on the page, click to the page I needed and donate one item. To earn the final item, I needed a lot of gingerbread men... so I spent a long time waiting for invo pages to load, and then waiting for Gaia to load my donation. I put all the starter items at the top of my inventory so they'd be the first page I'd see when my invo loaded. I had 5 pages of inventory. Problem is, the inventory would load my items in order of when they were released on the site. For me, that meant my starter items were on page 3. u .u So for every one donation, I had to wait for a couple pages to load as I clicked through them.
Overall, the items from the event were okay. The bathtub is fun for themes and people loved the teal tarp cape.
Everyone loved the spirited items gained from caroling. They're green this year, not red. While the matching community grumbled about the odd shades in the items, overall people thought they were gorgeous.
There was no big zOMG event. It was the same as last year. A small tree in the center of Barton grew as Christmas neared, and shrank as it passed. As the tree grew, more presents appeared at the foot of the tree. You click the tree to get rewards like loot, xmas loot, recipes, xmas recipes, rings, orbs and gold. The same three recipes from last year were repeated.

There was no New Years Eve event. I enjoyed the lack of event. I was able to celebrate the New Years without thoughts in the back of my mind about what I'm missing on an online site.

The 2010 Valentine's Day event was very simple.
The cupid hovers in the header. You can click on the cupid and send mad-lib type messages to any user you choose. It's the same thing we've had before. You earn no items for doing do. The Cupid is still here, even as I type this on Feb. 15th.
I like the simplicity. I hope this means we get an event for the anniversary this year.

MCs
December 2009: Silver Laurels & Ice Prince
Two decent items. The Ice Prince is a good item, but, in my mind, totally overshadowed by the silver laurels. They add great texture. Are simple to add to avatars, being white. There's a white legwarmers pose that is much needed in the matching world. They lack shine, but are still beautiful.

January 2010: Layla and Manjun
I was disappointed in these items, but most people on the forums had praise for them. They're good items, they're just not my style. Most of the poses are bulky and take over the avatar. Layla is a perfect match for the Cherry Blossom MC, so that MC saw a price increase because of it. I like the pink and silver colors, that makes it relatively simple to use. We're getting more and more items in that shade of pink. Manjun has a shade of brown that's horribly difficult to match and the beige is not easy either. I actually can't wait until we get more items in those shades.

February 2010: Grim Reaper and Scarlet Rose
The scarlet rose is a remake of the winter rose. At first glance, the grim reaper looked like the counterpart of the dreamer's dust. Its poses don't quite match up though. I like the colors used in the grim reaper, but don't personally care for the theme. The red of the scarlet rose is gorgeous. We're slowly getting more red items that color. When I saw the remake, I thought it would just be another huge dress that I'd never wear... but the short dress is very wearable. Both items are popular. Their prices currently hover between 105 - 111k. The average price of MCs were hovering around 70k when they were good. I believe we have hit a period where all items are costing more (seen mostly in EIs), but this is also a sign that these are popular items.

RIGs
Animal Quackers, Super Prize 2009, Snow Apple, Love Charm

I don't want to get into a big review of the RIGs, but those are the ones that have come out since my last entry. Animal Quackers was right up my alley with lots of cute items. The Super Prize 2009 was an RIG that contained other RIGs from the end of 2008 and all of 2009. When you opened that RIG, you either got an old RIG or the SDPlus #1 Gold Ivan doll guy or a North Star Kitten. The Ivan doll and the north star kitten had the same drop rate, yet ivan was worth 30k while the north star kitten was worth 3 mill. The devs/staff did so as a test. They say that drop rate doesn't matter, all prices are run by Gaians. Uhhh no, that was a poor excuse for a test. Only the extremely rich would be into collecting every single SDPlus doll. There are only two reasons that people want dolls. One, the doll may be of their favorite staff member or NPC. Ivan is sort of popular with a small group of people, but doesn't have a large following. Another reason is for the accessories. Some dolls come with killer awesome eyes or a wig. The Ivan doll comes with a gold tie with gold wigs. Nice try, but the wings aren't very.. POW. On the other hand, the north kitten star is a remake of one of the most coveted cat items on Gaia, the Kitten Star. The kitten star was worth 30m last i saw, and I see the current low price is 21m. ...Being adorably cute and a remake of an outrageously expensive item, the North Kitten Star was doomed for inflated prices from the start. You can't compare a mediocre item or an adorably cute cat, Gaia. Come on! You should know better.
From what I heard, the Snow Apple had a nice storyline and people loved to play through it. And the Love Charm let you answer some questions in hopes of scoring a date with one of the Love Charm NPCs. There are right and wrong answers. Answering them all right guarantees you a win. However, the luck lies in which bachelor you're paired up with at the very beginning. Some people gave expensive items while others gave fail prizes even if you got the date.

Oh, also the Love Charm released some gentleman's items (just like the cash shop gentleman's items) in new colors. Some examples: pink and purple vests and accessories. Brown and green suits. And some jewelry.. blue and yellow, I think.

EIs
Ohhhh boy. Way too much to recap here so I won't go weekly.

Overall, I believe the last 499 EI we saw was the Kottan Bell. Every new EI either costs 749 or 999c. Rip off. Yes, 499 EIs were gambles, either good or bad. And 749 EIs were more popular because they were usually good. It all depends on what the artist does with the item, not its price. 749 EIs will still fail if the artist treats it the same as they do the crappy 499 EIs. It's just a more expensive crappy EI. I think they don't realize that 499 EIs would also work if they put the same attention towards them that they do the 749 EIs. :/ But nope, we've been doomed to all 749 EIs, and crappy 749 EIs with that. I say crappy because some artists get too lost into the item. While the poses could be well made and usable in some cases... They're usually highly tied to the theme and are not versatile. A good EI is one that is versatile and can apply to many avatar styles, not just one.

With the popularity of RIGs, we've seen a cut back in the number of active EIs running at one time. I like that. It means I'm not bombarded with "Buy this EI!" every two weeks. On the downside, artists are overworked and EIs are placed on the back burner. It was the event busy season and we're still in the event busy season. Events come first... and then RIGs. :B Sooo EIs are constantly being delayed. So whereas we used to see 3-4-5 EIs evolve each week, now we only see one or two EIs evolve. Sometimes an EI is delayed from evolving one week, just so that there will be an EI to evolve the next week (instead of none).
I know artists are busy, but more time should be allotted to work on these items and deadlines should be placed in high priority. People have paid for these items. There is no set schedule, but there is an implied schedule set in good business practices. Users should not have to wait four months before seeing their item evolve. Gaia has priority and time management issues. :/ I love Gaia. I know deadlines aren't always their thing and I don't want the artists being overworked. The fact that it takes an item four months to evolve shows that their current system just isn't working and they need to rethink some things. /end rant.

Ummm and on to the relevant EIs:

Catastrophe: Cheap little guy. He's been thoroughly ignored since his last evo. I don't believe he's evolved since my last journal entry.

Compass of Seidh: Our newest 999c item. Artist is ethe. Poor ethe. She's having too good of a run. Coming off the high of the 999c Gogh Reed (all gens worth around 1 mil), The Noel (300 - 400k), and the Faustine Bottle (Fausto's Bottle remake first released in the Love Charm RIG and worth 1.5m), people are expecting a lot from her. For that reason, the 1st gen Compass has been sitting in the market for 530-590k for the past couple weeks. I believe this item will be worth 1 million when done evolving, no matter what poses it has. ...Because that seems to be the general feeling on the forums.

Dappy Dandy: 749c EI by Buki. It's a nice little thing. Lots of clothing items.. and beards. xD The accessories are awesome. The only weakness I see in it is its red, blue and tan theme. A hard to match item doesn't usually fare well in the market.

Hidden Ace: The current 999c item. Artist is currently unknown, with most of the guesses circling Superphi and Jenzee. Personally, some of the work reminds me of Superphi, and none of it reminds me of Jenzee. However, other parts of the work are so plain (my type of item) that I don't see Superphi in it. To me, it looks like a collab between Superphi and another artist of whom I don't know. Anyway, it was an okay item with its red and black color scheme being the sole reason for any of its popularity. ....And then wigs and contacts appeared. Whoa doggy. It's much more popular now. It's had evolutions for three of the suits, Club is next. Since club was the forgotten child throughout the EI, people are expecting a grand finale. It's set to evolve this week, but perhaps it'll be delayed since a finale is near.

Lyndexer's Journal. A 749c EI by Gem2niki. She wanted to remain hidden, though a person posted a PM that confirmed that she was the artist... She wasn't happy and it created a small controversy for a couple weeks. Users who knew that she was the artist, agreed to her wishes and went hush hush. A few users here and there still spoke freely of her being the artist. Anyway, Gem is known for picking strange color schemes. XD And her brown/green/teal/+ random colors scheme was interesting. I saw many GCD posts where the person said that they loved the clothing, but did not buy the EI because of the teal. Overall, I thought it gave a nice variety of clothing. It had a companion and an "i am" pose for people who like that. It had a background. It gives some sort of small accessories. What it lacks are skin, eyes and wigs. Those items are high in my books so I'm sad to see them lacking, but I think it's a good solid item overall.

Mizuchi's Jewel: New 749 EI by the great DrinkyTengu. Seriously, she really cranks out the EIs. Odd color scheme plus odd colors plus only two evos makes this an under the radar EI right now. I still don't know how to feel about it, though I hope I won't like it. XD I'll have to buy one in that case. Right now I like it, but my reluctance of spending money is greater. Drinky's work is great. Her themes just don't usually pair well with my desire to match.

Noel's Gift: The 749c winter holiday EI done by ethe. I believe there were five Fridays in December for a total of five evos. Of all of ethe's EIs, I think it's the easiest to match. Her work is pretty, but so detailed and colorful that i find it hard to include in my outfits. The item didn't quite end and the height of excellence people thought it would have when it was first released. It followed the theme of the 12 days of Christmas. Ethe worked very well within the theme, but I think the theme held it back from greatness.

Reve Rouille: Its final evo was fairly recent. It's an ollld 749c EI done by Pepper-tea. She was very punctual at first, but her Gaia work schedule and other deadlines forced this item to be delayed for months. I believe i have the info in some other journals, but it was released around march 2009 ish... so that EI was with us for nearly a year. It felt like a year, anyway. (For that much, I'm surprised that the case of Pietro hasn't been with us for a year yet.) Anyway, it's a good pepper-tea item. It has companion poses, human and non-human. It has "i am" poses. Backgrounds. Wigs. Contacts. A skin. Clothing with lots of accessories. An easy-to-use red/black/gold color scheme. It's a darn near perfect EI. The only drawback is the actual detail she puts into her items. Most poses are too detailed and look odd next to my less-detailed items. It's nothing I should be complaining about. ...It's just that I end up pairing this item in outfits that consist mainly of CS items. I feel like a hypocrite when I wear all CS item outfits since I still believe that avatars can look good in gold shop items only.

Seracila's Pendant: a 749c surprise. It's following the signs of the zodiac. Last sign we got was virgo, I believe... with Libra next, if I'm remembering correctly what i read a couple weeks ago. Each evo gives us interesting poses. Some poses are simple enough to work with lots of outfits, some are so complex you have to make an outfit around it. Overall, I like the simple poses so much that this EI is high in my books. Well, that and the fact that it's all clothing. <33 I don't care for companion or "i am" poses, so I'm not missing their absence. The artist is unknown, though some of the work reminds me of Mishiri's Kottan Bell.

Shadowlegend: A relatively new-on-the-scene 749c EI by L0cke. So far it's pretty groundbreaking. It has mostly "i am" and body morphing poses. I guess it's not groundbreaking, but it defies normal trends. It has mostly scenery poses that are dreams for cosplayers and people who dress in themes. It's only had three evos so far.

The Case of Pietro: A 749c EI that's causing Reapersun to be the butt of much grumbling, griping and complaining. Reapersun is a busy artist who's in charge of the RIGs. Due to the event season of RIGs and EIs, the Case goes months without evolving. x .x Tektek's first market activity for the case appears on July 31. So lets just say it appeared August 09. It's almost five months old and has only evolved three times. And it last evolved on February 5th. It's an interesting EI... pretty experimental by the looks of it. Most poses change the shape of your avatar, allowing you to wear pants with crossed legs and a shirt with arms raised high in the air. It has downsides though. All poses appear in one color only. Having at least two color options would make the item more workable. It's especially hard to use due to the odd colors chosen. And next, lots of the poses take over both the torso and legs. Items that don't leave room for customization don't stay popular in the long run.

According to tektek, five EIs are up for evolution this Friday: Seracila Pendant, Catastrophe, Hidden Ace, Mizuchi's Jewel, and Compass of Seidh.
The compass was announced on Friday 05, 2010. That means it's now been out for about a week and a half ish. Uhhh if it evolves this Friday, that'll be fast, even for a 999c EI.
The Hidden Ace may be delayed. While it's supposed to evolve every two weeks, it's last two evos were on a three week schedule. If it's an its finale, I'll be surprised if it evolves. The catatrophe never evolves. Annnd, I don't know, the jewel and the pendant look like good candidates to evolve.

yeeeeesh. I'm going to submit this and make any other comments in another entry. I've been sitting here long enough.

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