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I do believe we have had ample time to gather whatever arguements that will be made for or against the lake fish strike! So it's up to you our guild members to decide who had the most convincing arguement! 50k gold prize (or item of equal value.) shall be awarded.

(My Side is similar to Patrick's but with different arguments and a slightly different conclusion)

As far as I know Gaia has never professed any exact numbers to the glow times or amounts of particular fish. One of the few official statements has been that mini monsters glow more frequently to off-set shorter lifespans- to my knowledge that holds true.

Many of the figures for amounts given BG are computed by Gaia users and not officially by the administrative forces at Gaia. Likewise to my knowledge many of the ways to track your glow times, fish lifespan, and when you are actually glowing are via scripts and mules- not produced by Gaia itself.

Therefore Gaia, to my knowledge, has never made a commitment onto particulars of how many times a fish will glow in a day or how much it will dispense per glow. The best analogy I can think of is batteries (I make up numbers here to explain, they do not reflect actual differences)- Duracel claims it outlasts Energizer- so consumers start tracking the battery life. Originally Energizer lasts 3 hours and Duracel lasts 12 hours. However months later consumers find Duracel batteries are now only lasting 6 hours- and therefore send angry letters to the company. Duracel, though, has fulfilled the promise that the batteries outlast Energizer, and also since Duracel never claimed to last 12 hours- the product was actually temporarily excelling in leaps and bounds but now is performing only slightly above average... you get the point.

That being said the possible NERF still stinks- that is one point that most can agreed on. However the economic reasons are very valid for the reasons Fox pointed out. Earlier on there were no drastic differences in rewards from playing one Gaia game versus another- Word Bump did not outperform Fishing 100 fold in a matter of fifteen seconds. The rewards for spending HOURS on Gaia doing nothing but catching gold in a shell are vast- you can consider how much gold you lose every time you are not on Gaia- or even say chatting in forums instead of playing Booty Grab. The good news is you can finally get a lot of neat items from the gold shops without much effort- the bad news is the temptation is high to spend precious time mindlessly catching fictitious currency to spend on fictitious awesome.

Gaia's liability towards the decision to NERF, if a NERF, did occur, is low. Essentially this has been a very high gold paying system which has outperformed all other gold gaining activities (except maybe selling E.I.s and M.C.s on the market). While it does stink that the tanks aren't doing as well--- as a fish owner myself I dislike it--- you cannot blame a company whose product still goes above and beyond- just not as far as it used to.

However if Gaia did alter the system Gaia's form was poor. The random element is part of the booty grab game- but it also leaves Gaia open to serious member paranoia. Because Gaia doesn't show users when their own tanks are glowing you have to rely on a mule or a script to get a good idea of when your tank is glowing. The moment Users turn to a script not generated by Gaia itself you encounter problems. People are relying on information about their Gaia tanks from a source other than Gaia- meaning Gaia gets blamed for discrepancies in the information provided by a third source. Also, you encounter the paranoia of "my tank seems lower today". In corporate America this was the problem of the stock market before the Securities and Exchange commission gained greater clout to require Companies to open their books to investors.

Gaians are investing money into the aquarium system- even those who are not sinking money into Gaia cash are investing time- our most valuable resource- into getting the Gaia gold to purchase fish. On one hand Gaia's liability to the issue at hand is low because Gaia has not made formal announcements of quantifiable glow data. On the other Gaia's aura of mystery about Booty Grab has made it vulnerable to paranoia about glows. The cost of fish has also always been high- too high- as they are a cash shop (or random prize) only item (yes you can buy them in the market place but there will be user mark-up).

That being said I have some final thoughts on the subject:

-I have speculated in my mind which apparently works like a conspiracy theorist, that the actual reworking of glows has been very minimal and that the gravity of the situation has been blown out of proportion. I have noticed some patterns in which someone wishing to start a decreased glow rumor would stand to make a lot, a LOT of gold:

1. The initial onset of the rumor drastically lowered market prices on fish. As a result starting this rumor would allow someone to purchase fish at an abnormally low market rate. Because initially people did not want to spend money on fish that would not earn back their worth- demand decreased and prices dropped.

2. The strike would allow anyone who does not normally get the full potential of grabbers to receive higher rates of grabbers. Simply put with so many tanks empty and many of the strikers being high-profile tanks, someone who may only get 5 bumps and grabs to a thread could boost their rate closer to the maximum. Making the most out of every grab. And when grabbers are hard up to find any glow they would even grab from an undesirable tank if the difference is between 800 gold or no gold (versus automatically grabbing a lawnshark tank).

3. People are already quitting the strike en masse. Gaia notoriously does not openly address major user complaints- Most of us have seen it at least a few times in which something crappy happened, people complained, Gaia did nothing. As people quit the strike buying will go back up- and anyone who purchased a fish for say 10,000 gold three or so days ago may sell said fish for 30,000 today- that's a good turn around profit.

Anyway. Two very good arguements so far.

I agree with your reasoning here. As I've said, I have my own reasoning for supporting the nerf, but gaia should have explained why they did it. It's kind of odd that they called it an error after people started striking and didn't make an announcent on it when it first started...

Poll up for voting.