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Quote: Here is a Chaos Key. See you in battle! Lol - I don't play it, for a very specific reason. Game notices from portal'd games, HoC, and Moga swamp my Friends' Feeds, destroying my ability to see Friends' birthdays and interesting threads or guilds. Game notices can be dialed down, but for some odd and disgusting reason, glow notices for aquariums are tied to that. Yes, it's a game, but - the notices don't even go in that section, they go in the regular feeds list, because they are critical to those who use them. It's a real problem for the Booty Grab game, which depends on participation - like zOMG - rather than individual 1-to-1 pvp (person-to-person) combat games.
Pan presided over a consistent, coordinated management goal to deflate both Booty Grab and zOMG, which he announced in May 2011, just after Gaia killed off the 'ghost fish' which Pan blamed on Booty Grabbers. Yes, there were exploiters, but Gaia ignored the known glitch for months, responsibility for the continuing exploits is Gaia's. Pan's program to deflate BG &zOMG never changed from May 2011, nor the reasoning, only delays and false hope created a varied schedule. He shifted assignments to head of systems analysis for Gaia in 1/12. I am not sure when Siskataya took Admin Lead, somewhere in 2012. She is the best person for it, but it's unclear what her level of power is, and she inherited a broken system.
The proposed purpose was to deflate unreasonable prices for items, when the real goal was to channel purchases through the cash shop. Even economists don't always understand economics. zOMG'ers and Booty Grabbers contributed much GC to purchasing elaborate attire, most I Am's are purchased by zOMG'ers, as they greatly reduce lag when equipped nakey. Booty Grabbers tend to be older in age and were often parents who deliberately made cash purchases to support a healthy environment to support their kids, who they brought along. They were supportive of newer players generally, and Gaia has lost a huge layer of support for newbie players in squeezing BG, as well as a large amount of cash.
Many zOMG'ers rage-quit over the reduction of gold in the economy - easy gold led to a natural shift to GC, when success encouraged cash investment and players got older, gained paying jobs. Many saw their friends squeezed out and followed in sympathy. Now, you see fewer giveaways when Gaians leave, many older Gaians (Gaian age, not calendar) now cash out everything to gold and leave it in their accounts, in case Gaia ever revamps and becomes attractive again. The Exchange now sees more items purchased in the cash shop for resale, primarily Ci's (prev. called RIG's) - gambling items.
Both gambling and cybering have grown through the changes in the economy of Gaia. The flagship games which encouraged the cooperative atmosphere of Gaia have been systematically reduced to promote pvp games, which divide people into individual competition. The rate of loss of users trend has even accelerated - of the users 3 years ago, we've lost 2/3 - and lag on Gaia would be unbearable if those users were here.
Knowledgeable Gaians have new equipment or ccleaner.com free download for lag (Cache Cleaner from Piriform), to erase temp files that take minutes to expire (clearing cache in your browser only gets some of them). Newer sites write routines in temp files that expire in seconds (or require downloads or both). Compare seconds to minutes - that equals LAAAAG.
Gaia needs to rewrite base code to shift into the modern age of the internet. That is one huge expense.
So the cost of zOMG initial dev went on the table for management - when they had zOMG as it stands, and did not count purchases other than zOMG- labeled items (potions and the 3 cash shop rings which are no longer on offer) as an offset to dev costs. Looks like a bad investment. For Booty Grab, the ghost fish glitch was blamed for cash lost, when neglect of the glitch was responsible. Looks like two bad investments. But the ghost fish, while not entirely gone, were after long delay corrected. Returning Memphis to her old full capabilities with a new, higher-but-reasonable cost (see purplewiz' journal for stats and detail) will go a long way towards restoring BG, zOMG still needs glitch repair. New dev is on long-term hold - base code must come first. Otherwise - even should Gaia attract new money and new players, she cannot accommodate them and the resultant lag.
jellykans · Tue Feb 19, 2013 @ 04:29pm · 0 Comments |
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