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Dedicated to documenting and archiving the history of Gaia 

Tags: Gaia, history, antique, ancient, vintage 

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DraccyDragon

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2025 4:02 am


'By-the-year' threads

We're creating a thread for every year in Gaia's history from 2003 to present. Our goal is to gather up anything we can find from that year.

  • external references (other websites talking about Gaia)
  • big forum events
  • website changes (content, layout, etc)
  • staff notices (quotes)
  • notable users joined
  • recalled events

    Doesn't matter if you just dump a link on the fly or type out several paragraphs of observational study. Got a personal story you want to retell? Anything and everything applies to these by-the-year threads.


    Area-specific Threads

    We're creating threads for specific parts of Gaia that have developed over the years. These will mostly be about the games, shops, and special event pages.
    Gaia's website contains many abandoned URLs that are still functional in 2025, but are not linked from any other part of the site. Sometimes we can find preserved pages from the old days lurking in strange corners of the server.  
  • PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2025 4:17 am


    Ironically, Gaia's guild system is itself an old outdated version, seemingly a funky hack of the base forum system from years ago, and so it has a lot of clunky old interface components.

    Most notably, I am unable to edit post style after posting. Watch out for that!

    I keep having to delete these new threads when I slip up - especially after I'm posting too frequently and have to hit the back button... the Post Style dropdown resets when you do that.


    DraccyDragon

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    DraccyDragon

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    PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2025 5:16 am


    Gaia's chronological history can be broken up into "eras".

    For example, we could say that 2021-2023 was the "FLASH DEATH ERA" since that's after Adobe killed flash and Gaia's games all broke for most users.


    What other eras can we think of? Surely something surrounding the economy changes, Platinum, etc.


    Changing of staff/ownership, other such big events.


    2003-2004 could be called the "GO-GAIA ERA" or some such. Then again, those were the early days, so we could just say it was "the beginning" or some such.


    Need feedback on these measurable spans of time. What was Gaia between [year] and [year]? What defined it?
    PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2025 5:46 am


    DraccyDragon

    Oh I did not read your post. I classified the eras according to the change of admins and changes in the user base I would reclassify them as:

    • Go Gaia 2003~4
    • Golden Age 2004~2008 (when the site had its maximum growth, higher userbase)
    • Silver Age 2008~2012 (with decline in its user base but still innovation and popular games like zOmg)
    • Downfall or Goldemort Era (2013~2016) (accelerated shrikage of users and staff)
    • Restructure of the old Staff and diversification (2017~2018 ) (Creating external projects like Lake Kindred Origins. Introduction of platinum to curve the inflation giving free users more chances)
    • Reforms and Stagnation (2019~present) (User feedback driven decisions, userbase slowly declining and slow staff downsizing, less innovation but small projects still turning on the engines)


    Miasmal Lake Dweller

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    DraccyDragon

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    PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2025 7:41 am


    Miasmal Lake Dweller
    following up in #scratchpad
    Reply
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