Welcome to Gaia! ::

GaiaOnline is a business. The goal of a business is to make profit.

Now you may be thinking, "Hawk, if you're just going to stand up for Gaia, why are you in this guild? mad "

I'm not standing up for Gaia, I just want to make a valid point ...

Let me make it clear: I am OUTRAGED by the "Free GC" Offers and what has been happening to the people who partake in them. I can't stand the constant pressure put on Gaians to buy and obtain GC

HOWEVER ...

Gaia is a business trying to make money.

The bandwidth required to run a site like Gaia is HUGE. Aside from the amount of Flash coding needed in the games, zOMG, towns, and so on, every single image on the site is hosted on the site itself. Every thumbnail, item picture, smiley, all that stuff to make the site look pretty costs money.
Not to mention paying employees. Coders, artists, and moderators all need to make a living somehow.

Now, am I saying that Gaia is perfectly justified in it's constant pushing of the purchase of GC? Of course not. In fact, I think that Gaia should be able to make enough money simply through it's ads, product placements, and various movie plugs.

What I'm here to do is convey a message to the people I see (both in the guild and out) who bellyache over every small change on the site.

Gaia is a business. A business must turn a profit.
No profit=No Gaia.
While it may be a little unfair to the general populace to release a rare, new item only available in the Cash shop, it stimulates the site in more ways than you know. The release of a new GC item can turn a profit of as much as $10,000 in the first month if it's popular enough; I've seen it happen on sites much smaller than Gaia. Not to mention that new item will be released for gold into the marketplace, stimulating the Gaia economy by keeping the gold circulating.
Even something like reorganizing a page so that it's shorter can save a fair amount of bandwidth.

While there is good reason to protest many of the site changes, please keep in mind that some of them DO benefit you, the user.

Well, I'll just duck now and keep my fingers tensed for the flamers who are bound to come. Thanks for reading.

We understand this. We just don't like what they're doing to fuel it.

I don't mind Gaia making money. Heck I don't mind Gaia Cash. The thing that bothers me though is when they make so many awesome items and things you can only get with GC. It's like they've forgotten that some people aren't spoiled rich kids. Plus, they only even give gold users very sucky items compared to cash items, and they don't seem to care much about MC's anymore, which used to be amazing.

agreed, i loved gaia when i first joined, i understand gaia needs to make money and everything. But the GC items are way better then the regular items that we can get.... I don't have enough money to get GC, so I'm left saving up little by little for the items in the marketplace. The MC's did use to be amazing, now lately they just aren't very good. I hope this months will be better.

Ah, but there's a certain beauty to that.
Now, I don't like using this comparison, but it holds some value to it ...
Last I checked, Neopets sold NeoCash items, but the items, once purchased, were bound to the account. They were unable to be sold, traded, or given away. (Like I said, this was last I checked, I haven't been on in a while)
Gaia, however, allows GC-purchased items to be sold for Gold in the marketplace. This is very good for the Gaia economy. It allows Gold to continuously circulate, which reduces inflation and increases the value of various items so that the items become an investment as well as something cool to own.
I agree that Gaia should make more of the "cool" items available in the Gold shops, though.
Personally, I think GC should be able to be sold for Gold on the Marketplace. I've seen this done on other sites as well, and it was fairly successful (not to mention, it made everyone happy).

lol @ Wings-of-Ash's post. And thank you, GigaForte ^^

Heh, I'm in micro on mondays and wednesdays. An okay class.

I am personally stickying this topic.
This here is exactly what I want our members to understand prior to joining the guild and to elaborate with their own experiences on once they DO join.

The idea here, ladies and germs, isn't to remove the GaiaCash system. No, no, no, no! Without this, there can be no Gaia at all.

The jist of what we need to do lies in simply making the offers safer for all and possibly to get them to stop neglecting some of their more antiquated features such as slots, blackjack, ect.

A++ to the author of this thread.

No, thank YOU.