[Areishia]

Besides Trisphee there are two other avatar sites I regularly visit each day, one of which being one most of you have possibly heard of before, namely, gaiaonline.

Gaia is the oldest and most populous avatar site there is and, as such, they have often made a few mistakes, some worse than others. Recently I think gaia has done, what I consider, the worst possible mistake an avatar site could possibly do. What is this mistake? They have released a pure gold (the equivalent of aurum here) generator... that's right, not something which would grant random items that if a person doesn't like could sell back, but an item that when bought (with real money) would give up to even 10 million gold, and as if this were not enough they then made another such item which could grant up to 25 million gold...

Now, and this must be mentioned, these gold generating items were not sold only for a week or less to "test the waters" and then taken out and never seen again due to it's horrible impact on an already suffering from inflation economy, nope, not at all. After the first time the item was taken out of gaia's cash shop it was re-released only a few weeks later, again and again and again. The item(s) were first released in August and since then they have been re-released around 7 or more times.

As a result of the first release items in the marketplace at least doubled in price within a very short time (hours) and the subsequent re-releases have made some items cost up to ten times more than initially (before the introduction of the first gold generator).

Before the appearance of these site currency only generators, 100k was seen as nothing too much while 1 million could get a few nice cash items off the market, right now one million gold is peanuts...

The most "curious" thing however is the complete denial of the site's staff regarding the effects of the gold generators, as far as they're concerned the hyperinflation of gaia's site only currency is not a result of the billions (if not trillions) of gold which have been artificially inserted into the site's virtual economy, and items doubling, tripling or more in price is perfectly normal despite this never having happened for several years...

To this, I must add, is the fact that gaia's games are still nerfed and capped. This in itself may not seem like something bad (and it isn't) but, the releasing of two site currency generators for cash (and their continued re-release) is not the only worrying event. Shortly after re-releasing the gold generators for, I believe, the fifth time, gaia came out with a massive "sale" of cash items, many of them being sold for more than they had previously been worth. At least two items were sold for double the amount that they have been sold originally while a bundle which contained 3 items (one which had been initially sold for 5 dollars [499 GC] and 2 of it's recolors [one of which also having been sold initially for 499 GC]) went up for sale at the incredible price of 50 american dollars...

When users asked why some (not all) items were being sold for up to double their initial price the staff replied that they had adjusted the GC prices according to the item's price in gold in the marketplace.

Before the introduction of the gold generating (bought for real life money) items it was considered (due to marketplace prices) that 100,000 gold = 100 GC (Gaia Cash), and most of the items were indeed between 500k-700k before the hyperinflation causing gold generators were released and re-released... of course as a result of the aforementioned hyperinflation the prices doubled if not more on many items...

There are a lot of mistakes avatars sites can do; from changing the layout, neglecting features, pushing out features which still are a bit buggy or not managing to respond to questions and reports fast enough, but frankly, I think any and all of these pale in comparison to the mistake of releasing a site only currency generator which is capable of giving more site only currency in one second then one can earn in all of the site's free to play games in one (or more) whole day(s)... The staff refusing to acknowledge the users' dislike of the item and ignoring the problems caused by the item being only the icing on the cake.

However, this is only my opinion. So, what do the rest of you think? Is this the worst possible mistake an avatar site (and other sites for that matter) could possibly do or is there something worse?

NB!

I do not intend to bash Gaia in this post/thread, I just want to hear the community's opinion(s) regarding the decision of an avatar site to sell the site only currency in exchange for real life money and then continuing to do so despite the effects such an act brings with it.

EDIT:

I'm sorry if this isn't the proper forum for this thread.