Gaia OnlineReviews 114

Gaia has made a lot of terrible decisions in the last few years, it's true. However, I also see them making an effort to turn things around in the more recent past. Lake Kindred has become a good way to earn gold and items without having to spend a lot of cash. They've recently done a series of surveys, asking for feedback about different features. There are still things to complain about, which is why I don't give it 5 stars. It's getting better, though.

They have lost complete track of running a website. People only use it now for the forums- and barely that because their community is trash. I have seen them actively ban people over grudges mods personally held while content that is illegal is allowed and outright ignored!

The staff is non-professional, the entire website itself is just a money grubbing scheme and they haven't released anything actually worth paying for that I have seen yet. DO NOT BUY INTO THE CASH PROGRAM! It has been voiced by users that Gaia staff will put a higher ban priority on those who buy cash because they figure that those people will be invested enough to return and continue filling their pockets.

Over the last few years Gaia has shown little to no concern of its users. Well, they evidently do care about their money though. They offer little to no content in exchange for ridiculous amount of IRL money. You'd think they're using the basically ripped-off money they get from their users to improve the site but no, I have not seen a significant change in the site over the past 5 years. Only a few not even worth mentioning buggy mini games and several recycled events with new art and a few tweaks here and there and more overpriced pixels. Furthermore they have closed the only acceptable game they had which was zOMG (although I had barely played it, it was significantly better than their other trash ones, which are not even on the level of browser games by the way). Their developers also seem to be very incompetent, seeing there are bugs still present that should have been fixed years ago. I'm not even going to discuss the ruined economy (prime example of gaia's greed and disregard of non-paying users) because this review would just get way too long.

Overall, gaia has become a very money-hungry, greedy site with incompetent developers and staff. Their closure is only a matter of time. Sad, because they had potential 5 years ago.

All they care about is money. Their economy has gone to the dumps because they don't care how the sites doing, so long as they get that sweet moolah, right?

I've been on gaia since middle school and now I'm in university so it's been a good 7-8 years. I remember when I was a "newbie" and discussing gaia with my best friends in middle school, after graduating everyone went their different ways, we would still contact each other but it's not the same. Until a few years back and zOMG was introduced, we would play zOMG together and it was so nostalgic.

Gaia was a big part of my teen life, it used to have awesome regular updates and had a great community. Until the gold generators came in and everything went downhills (you could argue it even happened before that) The arts forum was the reason I got introduced to digital arts, which by the way is my major in university now, so for me gaia wasn't just a "game", and I'm sure many many people feel the same. Which is why I'm heart broken loggin for the first time in half a year and seeing this dying and possibly dead community/game. I don't know what happened to it but the owners/makers of gaia clearly don't give a $#*! about their users anymore. The great site that accompanied me while growing up was gone and I wish I could say it will come back but it's probably not going to. So here goes my condolences to gaia online:

Rest in peace, the game we all loved and grew with. May there be another community that will rise and become as grand as gaia became. :)

So i start Gaia in 03 back when Gaiaonline was named Go-gaia, it was 17+. Some time passed for 03 to 06 i think that when the age drooped to 13+. Then Zomg came out i played it for like two years in 07 i stopped playing Gaia. In 2011 i came back to see that a hole lot have changed. Back in 03 to 07 the Mark place was better and when you head 1bill that was a lot of Gaia gold. Now the Mp sucks and if you got 1 bill your poor. Back in 03 They talk about how Gaia would never be about the money. Well that is Bull. If you go on your see that it is all about the money there is this thing called Gaia cash if you cant get it there is no point in getting on... The way they are going with the site it looks like to me that they are trying to make a lot of moeny and one day your try to log in and you cant the webpage says that Gaia is off line... So im am riding this train down hill with out the brakes..

I've been a member of Gaia since 2004. It was at the height of my teen years and I loved it to bits. I was able to express myself creatively and had loads of fun. I took a hiatus for a while - returning just as zomg was coming out. Needless to say, it was a fantastic game and I got into Gaia again for a while. Then I went to university, coming back after another few years, just to see what I'd missed.

When I left, Gaia cash had just started becoming a thing. The item announcements were a little annoying, but they weren't every day and most of the stuff was pretty neat and creative. I saw it as a way of bringing funds in - which at the time seemed fair. Now, it is literally insane. The user base is squeezed dry because nobody cares about how we feel. Zomg is gone, gold is practically worthless and the forums and games are poorly moderated.

However, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was when, for really no good reason at all, they brought down TekTek. So nobody can create their own avatars anymore, or be creative with all the shoddy cash-cow items being rolled out every five seconds.

It makes me sad, when I look back at how the site once was. I truly hope that one day, it might come back again. For now, I'm done.

The higher-up's don't care for the people using the site or the site's economy, as seen with the gold generators they just oh so love to release constantly.

They make the site admins the bearers of bad news and a lot of hate gets mistakenly targeted towards them. A coward move, Schofield.

I don't predict the site will live for another two years.

Constantly lying and being greedy. All they care about is money. Their economy has gone to the dumps because they don't care how the sites doing, so long as they get that sweet moolah, right?

I have been a member since '05. Used to be the best game I have ever played, until their new CEO began to suck the money from all it's users. They shut down the best mini games, destroyed the economy, and completely lie to each member about their future plans. They don't care about their users. They don't care about anything but money. DON'T PLAY UNLESS YOU'RE WILLING TO PAY.

I used to spend a lot of cash to help make the site better... back when they released new content that could be enjoyed by all users. I supported Gaia Online. But now Gaia has become incredibly greedy. The internet just isn't fun anymore. You really can't go anywhere and feel the kind of love you did back when Gaia was new.

Right now they're not doing anything for new user's bad idea to join it.
Been on there for several years thinking of just going to whirled at least there it's not to bad.
If anything they should stop with selling gold generators change their curency on that site and start fresh in some form where gold isn't to expensive... something needs to be done they aren't even bothering making games to let anyone get more gold they are allowing people to make prices so high when they could put something in to keep it at minumal like millions reasonable prices... seriously put a limiter on market place items to be in the millions not billions...

You've heard from dozens of different reviewers up to this point so I'll just put in my two cents to really drive the point home hard.

I joined gaiaonline in 2006. It was a novel experience, they really cared about us back then. Sure there were a lot of "richer" people who made their gold out of buying and selling the monthly collectibles but we understood that these items were to keep gaiaonline afloat. I didn't mind paying for a game that constantly gave us new content and kept our user experience awesome.

For the past 2 years though (after zomg! Had died down a bit) gaiaonline started implementing changes that affected the site as a whole and it became steadily worse until the recent management change. This just ruined everything. Yes we like your recent avatar items. But having these items used to mean something.

When I got my first million on gaiaonline I was absolutely ecstatic. I had worked incredibly hard, from a time where I was selling tickets just to make up cash in order to buy a more expensive item, to a time where I could afford to complete my dream avi.

This sense of achievement is no longer present in the new gaiaonline. Ads are thrown at you left, right and center until you either submit or quit. Buy! Buy! Buy! Is all you see and this kind of attitude is permeating all games and things that could be cool if only there wasn't a paywall.

Freemium is becoming a problem. Let all us gamers and webies alike stand and fight this gross perversion.

Looking for an anti-religion site with no moderation and cyber sex? Here's the place if you can find it under all the ads.

No, really. The first page you get after the tutorial that tells you how to sign up, use the site, and buy stuff is nothing but ads. All surveys for users are rated in priority depending on how much money you give them (give them none and your survey is invalid)

I have been on the site for 9 years and I have been stalked, sexually harassed, trolled, told to leave threads, and now banned from the Nanowrimo thread for disagreeing with 'all religions are cults, violent, and money-grubbing' (and one user said), and one user has been posting 'This person is a liar' on several threads after I reply. Only half my complaints were ever solved, the rest were blamed on me, especially the last two.

I've reported spam, trolling of others, and misplaced threads all over the forums. Either the report button goes to a dead e-mail, or to dead staff, as nothing has been moved or deleted in a year.

There's always the games, but if there's a glitch, it can take at least 19 months to address the problem.

Even though I am a user that joined in 2012, I have not tried all that GaiaOnline has to offer. With this, my viewpoint is biased, but nevertheless, the average user wouldn't be able to recite all the features either.
2012 was a fun year for me. GaiaOnline's mmo, zOMG!, gave me the opportunity to make friends and with those friends we dived into other games. I credited GaiaOnline for bringing us and connecting us together; It had done it's job as a social networking site.
In 2013 and under new management, GaiaOnline had released gold generators and sold them for real life money which created gold out of nowhere and lowered the value of gold. Instead of solving the hyperinflation, GaiaOnline instead opt to capitalize on the gold gens, despite all the demands to remove said items. In response, GaiaOnline held many gold sinks disguised as "kickstarters" with promises to those who donate but still sold gold gens in the meantime, rendering the events useless and counterproductive.
This was only the beginning. After leaving the Marketplace in shambles, GaiaOnline had bombarded users with adds and announcements of new cash shop items, most being recolors of already existing items. The quality of said items dropped with the quantity increased.
Though the avatars are just a part of GaiaOnline, the other features continued to get neglected and the emphasis on Gaia Cash has sent many people leaving. Now in 2014, GaiaOnline isn't changing its ways. The direction this site is heading is not to be taken.

It's like a dying puppy. You see it there on the side of the road taking its last breaths. And then you kick it.

That's what Gaia's new management is doing. Since i last logged on towards the end of last year til now, prices of items have increased hundredfold. The market has inflated impossibly due to gold generators bought using real money that dole out billions to trillions of gold.

Yet, starter funds for new players? Still pretty much the same. Unless you buy in-game cash, it's impossible to buy items you want to create an avi you want; keep in mind Gaia is heavily focused on avatars and stuff. Advertisements for in-game cash abound; you're hounded by it wherever you go on the site. Until recently they've even been sending private messages advertising in-game cash. Users are treated like money pigs.

People are leaving. Old forums being abandoned. It's a ghost of what it once was. Folks, do not come to this site. Mark my words sooner or later it'll be closed.

I've been a member of Gaia Online for almost 10 years.

Pros:
It's the best avatar forum out there.
There are several others that are decent, but this one has the most creative opportunity with the avatar system. The forum community is fairly decent as well, and more populated than some of the other avatar based forums.

Cons:
There has been a somewhat recent change in senior management that. To be blunt, ruined the site.
Members are treated little better than cash cows. They are constantly spammed with announcements and advertisements to purchase a form of currency within the site that costs actual money. Since the staffing change, little to no attention is given to the free parts of the site. The parts of the site that cost actual money to enjoy continue to increase almost monthly.
But even the users who partake in the real-money currency, Gaia Cash, are treated poorly. Items will be sold for a "limited" time. And be released again within a week, thus severely decreasing the value of the item.
There has also been a recent trend of selling "gold generators", items that produce large quantities of the non-cash based currency--gold, for Gaia Cash.
This has caused an in-site economic inflation and devalued the average Gaian gold's worth.
New users to the site feel pressured, overwhelmed, and that they must spend money in order to progress on the site.
Almost all forms of customer complaint services have either been shut down for good (a thread titled Ask the Admin, self explanatory) or completely ignored (the designated Site Feedback forum goes completely ignored).

This site used to be purely community based, and was never meant to be a "pay-to-play" site.

Summary:
You would get a better bang for your buck if you bought a years subscription to World of Warcraft.

What can I say that hasn't already been said.
Gaia used to be fun, and the staff and developers and artists used to really care about what went onto the site, events were well crafted and the plot was driven and inventive.

Now it's just a bit of a wasteland, nothing it updated apart from constant reminders to buy buy buy! I feel like the new CEO is just trying to make as much money as possible before he closes the site up and runs.

Gold sinks that would help inflation are just a joke as gold generators are released straight afterwards with even higher payouts so you can buy back that fake money you just dumped back into the site, worse is that people actually fall for it.

If I could give it zero stars I would, I don't think it can be fixed at this point.