Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ok, so Im fed up with the errors and crap yet again. There a quite a few people in Q&F and EF that think that Gaia should just go down for a week so they can fix their freaking problems. Avatars, guilds, new user signups, trades, marketplace, etc etc etc.

Lanzer is hard at work on the Housing he says. What? What the eff for? We got problems here already, and theyre still adding more crapola? Fishing isnt even straight yet, and theyre on something else? They completely gave up on the Hello Project, something I had high hopes for since it was to include a tutorial. PMs, Friendslists, the Archiver. Is there anything that isnt broken on here? Im just waiting on the WWW server to go down again, and I hope it crashes big-effing-time, just to spite 'em.

Anyway, the point. Do you guys think Gaia should shut down for a week or so, and postpone adding new stuffs till they fix their current problems, and add enough hardware to handle the influx of users? Vote or die!

What Gaia needs to do is focus on existing problems, eliminate them, and THEN move on to the new stuff. There are still tons of folks who don't have items they lost in SEPTEMBER back, and among those who do, many items are still missing because they did not appear on the feedback form. Inventory has been broken or semi-broken for weeks, and I'm still scared to sell stuff back to a store for fear I'll lose something I didn't sell back.

If it takes shutting down for a week, fine, but I think that it could largely be done without a major shutdown if the folks working on the site devoted their time to fixing the errors rather than working on new features.

Another one of the forums I frequent had problems with features and downtime... so after much flak from the members, they decided to actually let some of the more experienced members (tech-wise) take a stroll down the site's code and troubleshoot problems that they found. Not that the admin team was inadequate to fix the problems, but they thought that a fresh set of eyes would do them some good.


My solution would be similar to that, but only people that the admins trust, not just any old "OMGInuFreak251" that asks to look. Honestly, I'm surprised they didn't take the servers offline during the holidays for a bit citing "yearly maintenance" or whatnot.

They need to fix what's going wrong now. Yes, they would probably lose a few possible new members, but if that's what it takes to keep the 22k-plus that are already on here up and running well, then it swould only benefit them in the long run. Plus, if the site is more likely to be up for longer periods of time, then people like myself would be more inclined to donate money to get them new servers, etc.

Plus, I think they should go through the membership and clear out the accounts that have never posted, and send a "warning" PM/E-mail to those who haven't posted in over six months, about their account inactivity. They may not NEED to clear out the room on their databases, but hey, it never hurts to clean every once in a while.

edit: I thought fishing was down because it was winter, and they just decided that the water was "iced over" in the lake and such.

The way Gaia is set up they need it to be online to test. If they take the entire site offline, they'll be able to fix a number of them, I'm sure, but there are others they haven't been able to pinpoint yet and a few that have yet to be identified. I'd hold off on the integration of new features for a little while, run the site as-is and take lots of notes on the problems. Shut the site down for periodic maintenance to address them when the solution is found.

Gaia growth is limited as it is. People are having problems signing up, and the Hello Project was scrapped, as I pointed out earlier. Ive referred three of my friends to this site, and my brother, and all four have quit within a week. And I cant say I blame them. They couldnt get the name they wanted, their avis were gray, they got errors when trying to post, etc etc etc.

Alpha stage means you have problems, and you fix them. Ive been beta testers for games before, and when you /bug a problem, you can bet itll be fixed within an update or two. Gaia has problems that have been around for months.

Id like to ramble on a bit about this also.

One would think that as the Gaian population swelled, Gaia's monetary income (donations) would increase, and the site would improve. However, that is not true. What is true is the fact that the site has steadily gotten worse as more people joined.

One problem is the fact that Gaia does not have the hardware to support the amount of simulataneous users anymore. Which suggests the question, "What are they doing with our money?"

Another hypothetical problem, is that maybe we have more users, but less people are donating.

How?

Gaia is catering to a younger and younger crowd. Theyve changed the look of the site, adding Neopet-like games, and advertise in a very young market. Most of the users cannot, or are not allowed by parents, to donate to the site.

Then, you have the oldbies. We're so sick of this place that we refuse to donate until things get better, because our money is apparently going down the drain. With all these noobs here, theyll never miss our $20 a month (see above paragraph).

So, hypothetically speaking, Gaia's income has fallen rapidly since before September. Leaving Gaia with a lot of problems, and no equity to fix em.

For the record, I didnt donate in December, and Im not in January. Ill buy the letter if its a Nightmare Rod, but with Gaia gold.

And she's a complete moron. Look at her post history, or worse, her journal. xd

The words Terminal Velocity spring to mind.