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I keep meaning to make journal entries so that these things will be shorter. Finally getting to this about three weeks later~ And lots of updates. Gee gosh. x -x

EIRs
[EIR 5/14/10]
Only the compass evolved. It's boring when just one item evolves. This one was... disappointing but something I'd expect from ethe. I don't like crazy, colorful Gaia items. She does. At least it also included some bland poses.

[EIR 5/21/10]
Shadowlegend and Timmy
Both continued in their same style with no real surprises. I'm glad that the Shadowlegend sticks to its theme. EIs should do that. Timmy looks... just like he did in one of the old announcements. Next he should sprout grey hair and a horn. The 4th gen dropped to 75k after this announcement and I saw no 5th gens in the mp. Oh yeah, I looked just now. There are finally some for sale in the market. The 5th gen will be rarer than the older gens below it. Before I made up my mind, the item jumped to 95k and now about 100k with the first gen hovering 130k. That's a decent price for a 499c EI, I think. However, I know what timmy turns into. While I like some of the accessory items so far, I just don't have any use for these gross poses. Well, I do have use for some of the accessory items... but not for 100k. > <;

[EIR 5/28/10]
Three EIs. o: A big report this week.
Imaginary friend is on its green stage. Too bad it included beige. That dropped the versatility. The poses still look like fun to match though. And then the compass and pendant. When I looked at the image, I thought it was switched. I thought that the blue swirls belonged to compass and that the clothing belonged to the pendant. That's what those items would normally get, anyway. Compass got a gorgeous set of white/gold items. This just upped the versatility of the compass. The pendant got... a bunch of blue swirly stuff. XP What happened to the pendant? It usually gives structured clothing! D; Oh well, since the pendant already has lots of good clothing poses, this just adds to the versatility.


CS Updates
[Food Items]
Lots of controversy surrounding this one. You'd think it'd be surrounding the item that got a special preview in a newspletter the day before. Nope. It was over a Bento Bunny.
The user Queen of Dorks has a copy written Bento Bunny image that she uses on various items she sells. Examples can be found on DA. She was notified that the Gaia item looked a lot like her bunny. Not only that, but it was confirmed that the artist in question knew of QoD's items and made a look-alike bento bunny anyway.
The item was removed from the CS while things were sorted out. The item was only up in the CS for a day so the Bento Bunny surged to 3m in the market.
Soon the item was re-released, but now says that it's in cooperation with QoD.
The GCD was pretty mean to QoD. I don't know if they still are, but she was the butt of many jokes for the next week or so. They kept saying that she'd try to fight with sanrio next or lay claim to any new Gaia item that was released. No matter what side you're on (as to whether her item was copied or not), behavior like that is just unacceptable. She was harassed during that time and I hope people got warnings.
The only reason I cared about the situation is that a 999c bundle lost a 399c item. The bundle used to be 299c plus 399c plus 499c. You'd save 198c and gain a free scarf.
The new bundle only had a 299 item plus a 499c item and was sold for 749c. That's only a 49c (plus free item) savings. The new bundle should have been 625c to offer the same discount. The new bundle was a rip off. (Eventually, the Bento was returned and the old bundle was also placed back up for sale.)



CIs
[Luna's Incense]
[Item List]
Eh, sorry for the lackluster comment here but RIGs lost me long ago. The new updates never have anything affordable. The new items are always rare and expensive. Don't get me wrong, there are still lots of booby prizes that make the items not worth trying. However, any new item that's affordable is still pretty expensive or just not worth buying.
This update brought lots of good items. They're just all too expensive to care about.



MCs
[Bani the Bunny and Lunar Sash]
There were no MC hints this month, but people did find the link to the MC art on the 14th. This added to the hype. The items were a hit.
Why? Remakes and old themes, of course. Duh.
But they were also made well. Bani the bunny has many clothing options (though no slippers). It's relatively easy to wear being light blue and black. Also, many consider the shirt to be a knock off of the pale marionette shirt that everyone wants. It looks totally different to me, but people just like long sleeves.
The lunar scarf has the name "lunar" in it. It's a bad excuse for an item of the lunar set. They're supposed to be black with angelic blue hints. These items are mostly blue with light blue sparkles. XP It does have small accessory poses. Good. Good job this month.
And it's obvious from the market prices since the items were about 200k on the 15th. And since have only dropped to 150k. Good month.

Animated Items
[announcement]
On May 3rd, the images of our Premium Items began to sparkle. Each type of item gets its own color of sparkle. This is to help ward off scams. People can't pass a white corsage from the gold shops for a Winter Rose anymore. (That shouldn't have worked in the first place anyway. Hover for item names, people! XP)
So items now sparkle from the dress up screen, on equipped lists, in the marketplace... Anywhere you see the icon of the item.
Sparkles are highly annoying and they layer over other items on the dress up screen to make dressing up a pain. On May 19, the hide sparkles option appeared. I still see sparkles everywhere else besides my dress up screen. I'm happy. I understand that sparkles will help people avoid some scams. They just mess up my dress up screen too much.

Sooo... as of May 26th, we now have animated items thanks to the star people. There are three items. They'll be available for sale until June 3rd. They'll be animated for the month of June and then turn into regular items. They're an experiment.
Well, Gaia experiments a lot. EIs turned huge. RIGs turned huge. Enter the new realm of monthly money-making items: Animation.
Erm, well I don't see this idea being too hot because the items are more expensive than what they're worth. If the items were cheaper, i think this could catch on. Either way, people will always want to show off so people will always buy the animated items. This month's halo is a pretty big hit. If they sell enough animated items this week, I'm sure we'll get more in the future.
What worries me is the possibility that the admins will go back on their word and re-animate the items months from now. I don't like the non-animated halo so I'm not going to pay 999c just to have an item for a month. However, if I knew for sure that the item would be re-animated six months from now, I'd buy the halo.
"Sweet Charming Blush adds a concentrated dosage of cuteness to your face with adorable rosy-red cheeks.
Baron the Lively Owl will perch atop your head when he's not flying circles around you.
Bedazzle the area above your skull with the Spectacular Golden Halo, which shoots sparks, glows brightly and looks magnificent as heck."

I don't see many animated items in the forums. When I see one, 80% it's a halo and the other 10% blush and 10% owl. Though I think I've seen more owls than blush.


Sponsor Quests
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/featured-announcements/alice-in-wonderland-on-blu-ray-combo-pack-and-dvd-june-1st/t.60888519/
The AiW virtual world is back. This time you can choose to help the White Queen or help the Red Queen. Either way, you quickly look for three items on the ground and receive an item when you return to your queen. You can help out each queen twice for a total of four items. You get a mad matter's wig from the white queen and the red queen's wig from the red queen.
The wigs have funky shapes, but that's so awesome to get free wigs. :}

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/featured-announcements/toy-story-3-the-video-game-watch-the-trailer-get-gold/t.60616409/
Toy Story 3. Watch the video game trailer and vote in a poll to say who your fav. character is. I did both. I swear I didn't get any good gold reward or free items. Sadness. Lots of good free items could come from a Toy Story movie~


Gold Shop Updates
[Maid and Butler Sets]
Not too shabby. Seeing as we've only had the one maid set up until now and we have a lot of lolita fans on the site, you'd think this update would have come sooner. XD I like it. Interesting colors. The quality/shape is something I'd expect to see from the CS or an RIG. You know, like~ 499 for multiple colors of headbands and aprons.
And yet again I see a smirk on avatar number two that we just don't have available to us. They use that smirk a lot on the previews. I'd love to be able to smirk!

We got a sneaky gold shop update earlier this week. It was announced, but your get a permission error when you try to view it.
We got artist berets, jux jackets, spray paints, painting and easils, work in progress bust, michelangelo paintbrushes, student sketchbooks, hammer and chisel, painter's palette, and paint splatter. Nifty little update. Lots of handhelds. I'm in love with the colors of the berets.


Plot Updates
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/community-announcements/gaia-manga-a-new-man/t.61065515/
Gino got a haircut and the demigods got some new clothing. A very light and fun manga considering that a couple mercenary teams are after them.

And in a totally different plot, Saiph and Hatsya have been visited by their siblings. That's why our premium items sparkle. XP And the animated items have been created due to this plot. Annddd the two siblings have replaced Flynn from the CS without any news of where she is. It's all pretty weird. But~ sparkling items and animated items are pretty big changes. Annndd the star children are still around. Are there even more new types of shiny items in the works?

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/community-announcements/social-daily-chance-invite-friends-get-better-items/t.60733105/
Social Daily chance. Earn better DC rewards depending on how many people you've invited to the site. Stupid idea.
What angered me is that I actually made a reply in a site feedback thread that asked our opinion on the DC and whether it's worth it or not. Only to have all of our opinions flipped on us and used in this social DC idea. I felt mislead and used. I don't care for the idea, yeah... but.. I don't know, I thought I was doing something good by replying in site feedback and it was all used against me.
I just don't think that the DC should ever be tied to the amount of people you invite. Okay, maybe if that's how the DC was introduced in the first place. But no, it's been around for years and then they decide to flip it.
"0 invites: The standard stuff. 5-10 Gold, bugs, trash, starter items, etc.
3 invites Payouts of 20 Gold and up, wearable items worth up to 500 Gold, no starter items, no trash/bugs/flowers (you'll still get ink!).
10 invites: Payouts of 50 Gold and up, wearable items worth up to 2000 Gold, aquarium fish, exclusive Daily Chance items and better odds of getting the good stuff.
25 invites: Payouts of 100 Gold and up, high-end shops items, aquarium fish, the rarest Daily Chance items, new exclusives, better odds and a chance to win 1 million Gold."

What this would do to me is give me even worse rewards than what I get with the current system. Woohoo. Way to go Gaia. I actually like the current system. Well, not so much lately. It used to give me clothing items a lot. Now I just get pancakes or the same starter shirt over and over. The DC wasn't like that until a couple weeks before they started asking for opinions on the DC. D<

Here's the feedback thread and first post. It was posted 04/21/10
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/site-feedback/rethinking-daily-chance/t.60570075/
[edit 5/13/2010]

So, based on the continued feedback we've received, we are going back to the drawing board with the social daily chance idea. Some of the main themes I've heard seem to be:

* social rewards should at least try to take into account the people you invited through word-of-mouth back in the day, and/or take into account other types of socializing like making friends, hanging out in flash spaces together, etc.
* some people just don't like to be social, so there should be rewards for being an individual loyal user too
* daily chance might not be the right feature to tie in social types of rewards. its purpose has always been to encourage people to return every day, and putting in social rewards changes the purpose too much.
* you'd rather just have Gaia be fun and interesting and functional. then you'd actually be more likely to talk about it IRL and maybe invite people you know. you don't need or want to be pressured or bribed.

The invite/tiers feature was never released by the way (with the new DC, the cart and the pop-up look totally different and you would know that it was updated.) It'll be a couple months probably before we have time to revisit this and decide what to do. There is some bigger better stuff happening in the meantime.


[edit 5/11/2010]

I want to provide a few clarifications & responses to some of the post-announcement comments on the new Social Daily Chance.

For those of you that hate admin and want to flame a real person, you can flame me xp I made the decision to build this and I do think its a good idea (though not perfect). I am most interested in feedback on how to make this system more fair, especially to loyal users, and also make it not be a mule factory.

background: we hear you that you're sick of everything being about cash. we are coming out with a few new features that are geared towards rewarding you for other things like inviting people, making friends, being active on the site, etc. This is (obviously) the feature about "inviting people"; other features are in the works to reward post count and being active for a long time.

why daily chance: we do want to make sure that new users see the "inviting people" feature, since they are the ones who are most likely to know people they want to invite. There are only a few features that can reach almost all new users, and by definition those features reach EVERYBODY. I do want to make as fair as possible for everybody, including both new users & long-time gaians (keep in mind new users don't speak up as much in site feedback).


All the people you've already invited will count to your daily chance tier, so many of you will already be in the mid tiers to start with. The only catch is that we can only count invites we have a record of, and since we don't record 'word of mouth' invitations we have no way of counting those (if you can think of a fair way to get this info, I'm all ears). Also, the person does not have to be active for 20 years to count as an 'active user', they just need to do enough on the site that we think they are a real person and they have given gaia a chance. You never fall back down a tier if people you invited eventually become inactive.

We will very likely be making some tweaks based not only on your feedback but on how people actually use the new daily chance, how many of the daily chance users are in each tier, and how much value of gold & items are given out. Tiers will be adjusted to make sure we are giving out the right value, with tier 0 being equivalent overall to the current daily chance (although with more equippables replacing housing items, more gold & sellback items replacing slim chance of high-end rares, and more randomness overall). We can still keep a slim chance of more valuable stuff, but the higher tiers will have way better chances, higher minimum rewards and higher average rewards.

Some things we could possibly do to make the tiers more fair and less spammy: (just ideas at this point for your feedback, some are possibly bad ideas, no threats or promises on doing any of these)

- count friends too, although a friend would not be 'worth' as much as a new invite
- count as a 'recruit' if you are the first friend of any new user (this might encourage older users to reach out and be nice to new people)
- let existing users import your address book, and any emails of gaians would count as a 'recruit' (this would be a one-time thing, might be too prone to abuse)
- count as a 'recruit' if you get a friend who has become inactive on gaia to become active again (each person can only be counted once)


[orig post below]
----------------------------------
We are thinking of making some changes to Daily Chance (that red prize cart in the header) and want to know what you think of the prizes it gives out right now.

1. are the current prizes worth it?
2. what do you usually get?
3. what is the best prize you ever got, or heard of someone getting?
4. what types of items would you like to see more of or less of (trash, flowers, bugs, ink, clothes, aquarium, house, game items, etc.)

The idea is to let you do something to "earn" a better set of prizes so that we could give out more gold & items in daily chance without ruining the economy. It would probably mean there is less trash and flowers (but you can still get those in towns) and more 100+ gold rewards or even higher for those who work their way up.



Gaia Ecards
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/community-announcements/spread-some-feelings-with-gaia-ecards/t.61084467/
You have the option to send an ecard to your friends whenever you save your avatar. I don't like this because I heard that it gives people your email address along with the message. Hopefully your friends won't hack you, but knowing an email address is one step closer to getting someone's password. ...Bad idea.



Fashion Insider
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/community-announcements/fashion-insider-catch-a-glimpse-of-upcoming-items/t.61090091/
[Second Volume Announcement]

It's taken me so long to write this that we've gotten two issues so far. This is a very thinly veiled attempt at advertising items. I know Gaia has funny humor and pushes things in our face all the time. This one just doesn't have the same humor attached. It's like they're actually trying to do sneaky subliminal messaging... and are very bad at it. XP

[Volume 1]
We got a sneak peak at the Sushi Set CS item about a day before it was released. And we got tips on stretching a low budget.
Uhhh... okay, the first one is an obvious CS item ad. The examples wear many expensive items and, I'm sorry, could look better at a cheaper cost. And the item suggestions to pair with are mostly expensive and/or don't pair well with it.
There was a lot of truth to what the second post said. To be taken seriously on Gaia, you usually do need to have one or two expensive items on. So it's good that it wasn't sugarcoated. The post was supposed to be about working on a budget but we kept getting tips on how to earn gold and to how premium items with multiple poses are useful. Yes, they are. But no, we're supposed to be on a budget here! At least she had pretty good tips for the examples and used cheap multi-pose premium items. Those items aren't very versatile though so it goes against the whole reason for buying multi-pose items in the first place.

[Volume 2]
The first post talks about the new animated owl. Sorry, I haven't read it. Just skimmed the first couple paragraphs then looked at the pics. Another advertisement for a CS item. You can see the same thing by previewing the item in the CS yourself. The only new news is seeing the bird from behind.
The second post talks about how multi-pose items are useful. ...But no, not about how all of the poses are useful. Just about how one of the poses might be useful. And they chose the lusty scoundrel shine. This item is already popular among the Rally crowd. I have no idea why it was highlighted here. The item is currently ~400k. I don't know if this will change the market price any. Most people already know about the item....
And, again, the examples used in both poses aren't... fashionable. Not to those who are into Gaia fashion. Maybe it looks good to newer people who go doe-eyed at every expensive item they see no matter what the outfit looks like.


Random News

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/community-announcements/ei-report-compass-of-seidh/t.61160049/
An elemental halo was listed in the EIR 5/14. It's the Ivy Halo. Last year, around June, there was an elemental halo leak. Someone found pics of elemental halos. After that, the only elemental halo that appeared was the free wind halo. So, from that, I assumed that we'd get a new, free elemental halo this June. ... Since the Ivy halo appeared in that announcement, perhaps that'll be our free elemental halo?

Old news, but ever since the Gaia CI announcements started to include item names, Vivian stopped making Item Lists. I'm happy. She made good lists, but people attributed the idea to her and her only and she had a monopoly over all item lists. If anyone else tried to make a list, they'd be yelled at by random users and told to wait for Viv to make one. Now things are back to the way they should be in the GCD. Random users are taking turns making item lists. And people accept it.

Okay, you know the trick where people use a lowercase L or uppercase i to get the username they want? (According to what's needed.) You know how this trick has been around for ages? I don't know what clicked, but there's a large influx of usernames that use that trick. I'm just noting it. Gone are the days of "iLion." Now enter the days of "Iion. " (The first one being the trick where people wanted simple, one-word usernames so they added an i in front of simple words. This replaced the preciously popular x. Now there are many people with simple usernames running about, but you can't always trust the spelling. That second username is really "iion."

[reapersun's journal entry about the case and CI responsibilities]
Also, reapersun recently made a journal entry. She apologized for not writing before, but her absence did not mean apathy. She had no time to write an explanation and figured it'd be futile anyway because an explanation doesn't make the items appear. .... I still lover her but an explanation would have been nice. At least a "Sorry I have no time to write to explain everything. Will write when I can. I'm not ignoring the case. I've been assigned higher priorities."
There. Done. That would have cut down on complaints on the case. The biggest rule for Gaia? Just don't ignore the users. The users loved how the site used to have that small site feel where everyone gets a say and is heard. That's harder to pull off with a larger user base and now that the site gets so many updates per month. ...However, one or two sentences of explanation can fend off a hundred complaint threads before they even happen. With that said, I'm very glad she wrote that entry. Better late than never.

According to the Secret Retreat fanthread, they confirmed on 5/28/10 that Mishiri is the artist of the Secret Retreat. She's also the artist of the kottan bell and of the seracilla pendant. Expect lots of clothing. @ 3@

A blue heartstring can be seen in the preview image of the Animated items. We don't have a blue heartstring yet~~