Scythe01
As for gaia, I think its in its death spiral.
Every thing is changing and every one is getting upset with it while the staff dont seem to care at all, they just want to move on and make something else. Its like they are bored out of their minds so they just make up things to do.
I think they're taking the AOL approach to web business. Lanzer claims gaia doesn't make a profit (which i just don't believe unless they're spending all net gains on servers.) Anyone running a business would want that to change. The first step would be to lure new users. Who cares if you alienate older users as long as new ones out pace the rate in which old ones leave. Once you get user rates to increase dramatically (since mid 06 Gaia went from about 3.5 million users to around 9.4 million today.) Since inactive accounts aren't deleted your user number base is inflated dramatically. You take these numbers to an ad agency and sell ad space. New members also mean more new donations each month. But wait, what about people leaving? Even new members won't stay here all the time nor donate regularly. That's where advertising your own website and creating new account incentives comes in. More numbers means more profit...as long as you can deliver the goods.
Here's where Gaia messed up though - Monthly Collectibles. How? It's simple, new members join and realize they can't gt older MCs due to high cost so they either complain or leave. This can't be allowed to happen. So Gaia imposes a 2% fee with promises that it will decrease MCs prices over time. Obviously this won't happen given the amount of gold generated daily but it doesn't need to happen, they just need to make Gaians believe it will happen to placate them into staying. An added benefit is that now a class system is promoted based on date joined coupled with time spent earning gold. Without the marketplace users can't gain gold faster than rare items appreciate. Gaia just created a need for people to donate. The problem with all of this is that the average Gaian isn't going to spend $1000 or more to get a Devil's tail unless they're wealthy or obsessed. This greatly reduces how many people will buy their way out of their caste by using real world money. The next problem is that even if the fee did what they claim it will (which it can't) it would take years to drop the price of MCs. At best it will drop the price of new MCs in a few months. People aren't patient and won't stick around in hopes prices eventually fall. Those that do stick around will soon realize the fee isn't helping them, in fact it's now making it harder to sell common items at a decent price.
In the end this fee will be moot in one way or another. I don't expect them to take it away unless people stop donating though. They just don't have any incentive to do so otherwise.
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