Gaia Online Magazine - Issue 1 by Emil "Meji" Meijer

Introduction In the beginning, Lanzer said ‘Let there be Forums’, and so the creation of forums came to pass. And it was good. Then trolls popped up, Moderators were appointed and the matter was quickly dealt with according to the laws of the TOS. And it was good. Since that day, Gaia Online has grown from its humble origins of having been an anime link-list by leaps and bounds. With the introduction of the Custom Avatar Feature, the Gaian Economic Currency System & Marketplace, zOMG! & many other features, Gaia is now leading the way by breaking barriers that were at one time deemed impossible. Though in retrospect, a website is nothing without its contributors. If that is the truth, Gaia has nothing to worry about. There are currently over 21 million registered users, and that number only keeps growing day by day. Of these Gaians, there are those who go out of their way to help their community and even other Gaians in need. From users donating money to aid in relief efforts, to helping a close friend, Gaians are there to answer the call. There are also those who step outside of the box and do what they can to promote Gaia. From making banners and signs with catchy slogans, to spelling out the websites name on hillsides next to freeways, Gaians are going out of their way to spread the legendary message:“Gaia Online: We’re Here. We’re Nerds. Join Us, or Get Used To It.” Overall, Gaia has become something of an unmatchable behemoth in the world of forum based online gaming. So big in fact, that we even have our own panels at world renown conventions, hosted by our favorite spin master, DJHellsing. None can compare, nor even come close to the unstoppable power of Gaia Online. And to add to all of this, Gaia now even has its own magazine. Without further adieu, we present to you, for your reading pleasure, the first issue of Gaia Online Magazine. Enjoy. ~ Gaia Online Magazine Staff

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Written by: Admiral Lord Cochrane

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Contents of

Gaia Online Magazine

THE CREW

ASK THE COMMUNITY

Meet the masterminds behind the magazine.

Gaia Online Magazine have asked several questions to the users of Gaia. Here are their answers.

FEATURED PAGE

OLD GAIANS

Read about awesome Guilds, Avatars, Profiles, Threads and more.

Hear some oldbies talk about good memories of their past.

ADVERTISING PAGE These Gaians wants your attention! Two whole pages filled with links!

TUTORIAL

7 YEARS OF GAIA

SKILLED GAIANS

GAIA COMIC STRIPS

Earn millions in minutes. The marketplace-whores reveals their secrets.

8-page special filled with memories, old layouts, and sushi-database errors.

These Gaians show of their avi-art skills. Get engulfed & inspired by their artwork. Last, but not least, get yourself a good laugh from these user-made Gaia Comics!

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THE CREW

The CREW

of Gaia Online Magazine

theMeji

Blinkysauru

19, Male, Sweden.

14, Female, California

Creator & Designer of Gaia Online Magazine.

The mastermind behind the project. Joined Gaia Online back in November 2004 & used to go under the name “Meijerem”.

Joined in 2006, and has always wanted to find a way to give back to the Gaia community. You can almost always find her in the AF.

Keist

Lord i-dc

20, Female, Canada.

15, Female, Unknown

Co-owner

Writer

Joined Gaia in August 2003, went straight to the Chatterbox, and has been there ever since.

Started Gaia Online in late ‘05, went straight too towns. Learned how to script, while shifting accounts, until finally meeting the lovely CB in early 09.

II Matsuyo II

Magnet in the rocket

unknown

Guild Moderator & Writer

Lurker

UNKNOWN

Unknown

1b-u-n-n-y1

iiScene4Life

14, Female, USA.

17, Female, Florida

Writer

Tester

Joined in 2007, but my main account was hacked, so I my mule, 1b-u-n-n-y1, became my main account. Have been questing to get my inventory back ever since then.

Joined Gaia about 3 years ago. Has been addicted to it the day she started playing. Used to have the username ‘sakuragirl124’ which is now occupied by her hacked cousin thehotlovejoy.

Deyrux

Cuidame

unknown

24, Female, USA

Guild Moderator & Lurker

Super Awesome & Designer

UNKNOWN

Graphic Designer by day, Internet Lurker by night.

ll son zack ll

Hopey

unknown

Sweden

Guild Moderator & Sponsor

UNKNOWN

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Writer & Assistant

Meji’s Little Assistant

Unknown

THE CREW

Allerisse

Admiral Lord Cochrane

23, Female, Philippines

24, Male, Seattle

Editor & Columnist

Writer

Joined Gaia in 2004. Owner of the City of the Damned. Enjoys zombie apocalypse-themed movies and anime. An extreme advocate of animal rights and recycling.

Has been a Gaian since December 2003 & is notorious for smuggling gaians into closed door DJHellsing panels at SakuraCon. He also just lost the Game..

Blaire-chan

Evil Kitty of DOOOM

16, Female, USA

22, M ale, East Coast

Assistant

Guild Moderator & Tester

Joined when zOMG was released. He was the first to beat the end-boss and get the Victory Badge. He mostly exchanges and vends in the Gaia Economy now.

Joined Gaia October of 2008 & can always be found role playing in her free time.

Sir Shay Chief Editor

21, Female, USA.

Real life Mommy. Joined in 2004. Became a moderator in December 2009.

YOUR

AVATAR COULD BE

IN HERE dustpebbles Lurker

15, Female, UK

Has been on Gaia since 2007, an Art and Request lurker/artist.

YOUR

AVATAR COULD BE

IN HERE

Gaia Online Magazine

All workers are given gifts and other cute things as a token of gratitude.

is currently

RECUTITING

Like to help out? Feeling up to the challenge? Go to this thread to read more.

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ASK THE COMMUNITY

Ask The COMMUNITY

We’ve asked several people among Gaia Online 3 different questions for this issue. These questions are: # 1. What’s the best thing you know about Gaia Online? # 2. When you hang around on Gaia Online, what do you usually do? # 3. If you had a chance to change Gaia Online in one way, what would it be? Here are the answers

Bionic Mutation

iikissiies

XxCupcakerxX

Flovi

I would say just the fact that Gaiaonline is a website for teens and young adults to hang out and make new friends.

I met my sister Tayla. Thats the best thing.

Gaia is a place to get away from the world around you and just take a day off.

I play zOMG alot... xD

I normally go on the forums, while talking to some friends through PM’s and comments.

Make more colored tam berets!

The community and avatars. The community is so interesting, and the avatars... Well, it’s gaia. What would gaia be without avatars?

I make new friends and try to help others.

Nothing I love Gaia the way it is.

I earn gold, talk with my friends, and lurk the marketplace. When I’m questing, I booty grab. c:

The cash shop. Sadly, it’s what keeps gaia running. In my opinion, it ruined gaia in the first place.

Kevun

BlackKittyCat134

x-iCreamyTwinkies

Rissachu

Gaia has one of the most diverse communities I’ve encountered -- that’s what keeps me logged in for so long every day.

The best thing I know about Gaia Online would have to be The Rally, zOMG and Marketplace of Course.

I’m always posting in the General Discussion forum, or in guilds. Booty Grab and Word Bump are pretty fun now and again, too.

When I hang around on Gaia Online I usually hang with Friends in Rally, or im in Forums or Marketplace.

The best thing I know about Gaia is its users. Everytime I meet someone on here I learn something from them that makes me a better being. If it wasn’t for the Gaia users, I’d be a different person today... and not a good type of different either.

I exchange on Gaia mostly. Do the typical contacting with friends, occassionally watch movies in VJ. My Gaia life seems pretty boring, to be quite blunt.

I love Gaia, but probably the thing I’d change would be the fact Gaia is becoming more of a business rather than a site that strives for its users. I’ve been seeing innocent people, the people who actually keep this site alive by spending gobs of money on gaia cash, being permanently banned because of “hacking” or “botting”. I find it unfair.

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I honestly don’t know. There is nothing that really bothers me enough.

I honestly don’t think I’d want to see Gaia changed too much -- maybe the ‘Attach Signature’ option brought back for replying to a thread. A banking system would be pretty handy, too.

I think the best thing about Gaia Online for me is meeting new artists and making connections. I’ve met a lot of the artists I look up to here. I’ve also met a lot of friends that I’ve known for years now. When I’m online I typically check up on the art auctions and talk with friends I’ve met. I also like looking at the new items that come out; they’re good inspiration for character design. I’m not sure. I’ve been here for a good amount of years and I think Gaia has changed for the better.

If I had a chance to change Gaia Online I would Change the Lock on the Items after you buy them the First time with Gaia Cash.

ASK THE COMMUNITY

nekopau

Morino Komori

iiScene4Life

Until Now

The best thing about Gaia would be the forums and zOMG.

That I can earn gold easier than on the Chinese Gaia Online.

I’m usually in forums all the time. CB, or GD (mostly CB ;D)

I usually do random things in Rally, Towns, etc.

I would have to say the best thing I know about Gaia is at the end of the day despite the different forum clicks we’re all still just happy members.

I can’t really think of anything I would change a.t.m.

Tough question..Add more demonic items, make more place people can go to (Ex. A city people can go into like Zomg!), etc.

What I usually do when I’m on Gaia is bounce between the GCD posting and making threads, and the Food Forum. When there aren’t any new posts I go to my faithful guilds and love them until there aren’t any new posts there either.

I would love to be able to take Gaia back to it’s original glory, back to the days when people were grateful and had fun with what they had.

Well, to me, Gaia is a great place to hangout and make some new international friends. You see, since I joined here I here improved my english a lot! I’m really proud to be a member of this huge community that has too much to offer. ^^

I spend most of my time in the Chatterbox. I also enjoy zOMG and grabbing some Booty! That’s the best way to have fun!

Someway...The way people can but Cash-Shop items. Sometimes not-americans user are not able to get them.

Mookyul Eun

Paulbag

Harajuku Blossom

Love Camel

That the people are nice and CB rocks. c:

Hang out in CB and go in PYP`s

I would have to say the best thing I know about Gaia is at the end of the day despite the different forum clicks we’re all still just happy members.

To kill off all inflation. xD

If I could change Gaia in some way... that’s a tough question! I’d add more moderators and make communication between users and staff more important in the way new features and sponsors are brought about.

The staff and moderators are, for the majority, are competent in their work. I see the sincerity and passion in their efforts. For someone like me who’s been to many community sites, it’s a refreshing change of pace.

I chat and discuss things in the forum.

I have many, but I would like to see more work on the site’s quest system which held so much promise during it’s introduction but has since been reduced to a sponsor wagon.

Gaia Online has been one of my scape goats of life for about years now and I have loved it every single day. I love how the site changes and new things come, I also love the new items and frankly I wish they would update more often with new items. Well, I wake up every morning and I hit Chatterbox. I’m usually on Chatterbox, Art Post, and the Exchange all day trying to find new things to donate to everyone. I also run giveaway’s all day as well. Oh I wouldn’t change it for the world! In fact if I’d do anything I would make more items like clothing, and animals, and more games!

ADVERTISE IN GAIA ONLINE MAGAZINE Holding a contest? Looking for attention? Need a bigger audience?

If you’re interested in advertising in the Gaia Online Magazine, go see THIS THREAD for more information. All the gold received from advertisers goes to the workers of GOM

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ASK THE COMMUNITY

koolknight

Panda_Nitemares

QuiteAmazing

Saburoo

I like the community!

I check the zOMG! forums or play zOMG! ^_^

I’d give the zOMG! forums a community sub forum! Yeah, I’m a zOMG! fan. xD

The best thing i know about Gaia is that it is a GREAT community. The people of Gaia are so much fun and a lot of them are awesome people to have around!

I normally rally, and i post in a lot of forums, mostly SF, GCD, and the exchange.

Maybe to bring back some of the older log-in pages or bring back some of the older art... Idk, it’s something about the older stuff that makes people love this site sometimes.

The best thing I know about Gaia is easily knowing anytime I want to get away from real life, there are literally a million people on Gaia that I can hang around and play around with ^_^ When I hang around Gaia I am always jumping from one quest thread to another, one auction thread to another, oh and of course, posting in between at the Official MPT.

I like how it’s a pretty expanded website with lots of features. It helps when you’re bored. I make new friends and try to help others.

I usually go to Virtual Hollywood or the Towns. Which ever one is less crowded.

I would change the limited amount of products. Gaia Online needs a few things to perform to different styles of people.

Change one thing about Gaia? All these silly item releases. Things were so much simpler when there was just the donation letter (not collectables!), event items, and random shop updates. xD

praise de cupcakes

japanese whales

sillyHippy

sk8ting_cat

1. It’s a really great place to hang out with friends and an even better place to meet some really cool people.

I’d say that its fun and a lot of people come here?

The thing i do most is roleplaying.

I usually talk to my friends and even some of my family. I also enjoy roleplaying in the Barton Town forum.

Hang in the GD. :)

The Gaia Cash System. I wish we could just use gold and no Gaia Cash. Then us poor people could get EI’s too!

Hm, i would make it so that you are able to subscribe to guild threads.

Nothing really, Gaia is already perfect. Although, i might change the forums back to the way they used to be.

The best thing I know about Gaia? I really don’t know. It’s fun, but I still wonder what keeps me coming.

Make sure to visit out sponsors

The best thing about Gaia is that I get to chat and meet really awesome strangers from around the world. It’s pretty cool having good friends around the world.

Normally when I’m on Gaia I just hang around in the Chatterbox and make goofy topics about nothing and chat about nonsense.

The events. The last couple of years the events haven’t been real awesome.

The Dreams To Come True Charity™. A perfect place for those in need of a little extra gold. The Dreams To Come True Charity™ is our top sponsor, and donates a handsome sum of gold to Gaia Online Magazine, which enables us to throw contests and other awesome things. Make sure to pay it a visit!

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ASK THE COMMUNITY Gaia Online Magazine Guild What would you like to read about in the next issue? Leave feedback, give us ideas & help out in GOM’s official Guild!

The Infamous Manny-kun

Lowpass

BanniLuck

The best thing I know about Gaia Online? Some of the people in the Chatterbox.

The interesting roleplays and amazing artists!

Hang around the CB.

If I could change one thing about Gaia, I’d make it have competent developers.

I usually look around the mini shops, art requests, and art freebies looking for art bargains or drawing for other people, and sometimes I go on the Gaia gaming discussions about my favorite video games!

I would love for there to be more things to do in Towns.

I pretty much dabble in Gaia Aquariums, I have created my own guide, The Potential of Aquarium Fish, which lets Gaians know if they can make a profit with almost every type of fish available through the Booty Grab Game on Gaia. I’m usually in the Gaia Aquarium Forums, answering questions and trying to be helpful. I also run my own small simple 5 page Booty Grab thread for people to play monster tanks if they wish to.

The Gaia Online NPC’s

Pretty much, fix all the glitches and problems with Gaia Aquariums. There are way too many right now that plague the game, and it needs to be worked on.

Seyokume

Severus x James

Heroween

Making friends!

Everything. o:

I usually got to towns and meet new people, play black jack, or post in forums .

Chatterbox , Marketplace, just chill really.

If I could change Gaia I’d want to make a button while in towns if you press it there will be an a.f.k. speech bubble held over your head.

Just to change it back to the way it was.

Definitely the users, the community, the avatars, everything. I love being able to go pretty much anywhere on Gaia and meet new people, make new friends, and share common interests with the people around me.

I usually check to see if I have new mail or such, feed my fish, then hit the forums. I like to roam around the GCD to catch up on the latest thing going on in the world of Gaia, or chat with my friends in our thread.

Really, I wouldn’t change anything. I love everything Gaia has done so far, and eagerly await for new features or updates that they throw at us~

The Gaia Online Artists

The Gaia Online MMO

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ASK THE COMMUNITY

Mod of the Month

Ever wanted to ask the moderators something, but been too afraid they’d bite you? We here on GOM took the courage to privately PM a moderator here on Gaia Online, asking for an interview. The lucky mod receiving our PM was none other than... IflanaNifi

Speaking of avatars, which is your favorite Gaia Online item? Well I’d say Stage 5 grombie skin from Halloween 2005 as I am one of the few remaining Stage 5’s (just using a human potion for a bit, I bounce between human/ grombie a lot). But actual item would be Asimov/Putin-the smoking bears.

Omni Moderator Join date: 11/09/2004

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself. I’m a 19 year old female college student who lives somewhere in America. When I’m not at school or at my seasonal job I spend most of my time in front of my computer or on video game systems. On Gaia, I spend most of my time in the Gaia Community Discussion where I have been visiting/modding forever. I am also a huge Lady Gaga fan right now, she’s all I’ve been listening to lately. Oh, Lady Gaga you say? Which one of her songs is your current favorite? Rock Show. It’s a demo from The Fame album that didn’t make the album and later leaked onto the internet. That’s what I’ve had on repeat, but probably all time would be Speechless. How did you find Gaia Online? Back in 2003/2004 I used to roleplay a lot with friends. It was in November when I was talking with an old friend about how much I missed roleplaying with our old group and she linked me to Gaia saying it was a great place to roleplay. Ever since then I’ve been addicted. I haven’t roleplayed since early 2005 on this site though. What type of roleplays did you usually attend to back then? What genre? Fantasy types. I spent a lot of time in a Final Fantasy VII roleplay as Yuffie. They were all really in depth roleplays, so I only did a few. I just didn’t have the attention span to keep up after awhile. Do you remember what your avatar looked like as a newbie here on Gaia Online? Yes. I had one of the old purple eye colors with the grey river hair since it looked close to blonde. Other than that my first purchases were the jade peasant boots and gloves to go along with the peasant dress we got. The first item I quested for was one of the vintage white coats, I think it was 5K or something. But yeah, I had a pretty basic avatar like everyone else. xP 13 12

How come you wanted to become a moderator? I actually never had the goal of becoming a moderator. Back when I was a regular in the GCD I was one of the original cast members of a popular podcast at the time, PTAG. We had a regular on the show, Airez, who was a Moderator at the time. Near the end of June 06, he invited me to become a helper in the GCD. I thought he was joking and so I accepted the invitation in a joking manner. Joke was on me when I got the PM informing me of my status change. When my friend Merumiharu was helpered as well (shortly after our title was changed to Moderator Assistant) I got a few more forums. Meru and I had a running joke that we would be Mod Assistants forever due to circumstances that seemed to prevent us both from ever becoming Mods, so it’s kind of a joke that either of us are even mods today. But we are because we were pressured into it! xP Which one of the admins is you favorite? Not Jay Tronic. Final Answer. Barton, Durem or Isle de Gambino? Durem. Why Durem? I loved the Von Helson Sisters prior to the Vampire plot and Durem was their town. I choose to pretend like the vampire plot never happened because of what they became. Thank you so much for the interview. Any final words for the public? I didn’t know what to say, so I asked Meru and she told me to say, “Chocolate Gravy Boat.” So those are my final words I suppose.

Gaia Online Magazine Guild Leave feedback and read about the latest news in GOM’s official Guild!

ASK THE COMMUNITY

User of the Month

Gaia Online Magazine interviewed yet another randomly picked user of Gaia Online. This Gaian was none other than... Allerisse

Out of all the Evolving Items here on Gaia, which one is your favorite and why? So far I like the Kottan Bell best, because I use it as an accessory for most of my outfits. Plus, unlike most people, I actually really like the color yellow.

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself. I’ll keep my real name a secret. C: I am 23 years old, and from Manila, Philippines. I’m a second-year law student right now. I recently got a degree in legal management in college. I hope to specialize in Criminal Law and Environmental Law, as those subjects are my favorites.

Any other specific Gaia Online items you’re devoted to? My favorite items are the Doll Ears and the Kiki Plushie. The Doll Ears was the first thing I ever quested, and I remember having a hard time saving up for it, because gold was so much harder to earn back then, so I did a whole lot of polls. I also originally based my avatar from Chi from Chobits, so I saw this item as a must. I like the Kiki because it’s cute and simple-looking, and goes well with almost any other thing I’m wearing.

For how long have you been hanging around on Gaia Online? I’ve been here since 2004. I was on hiatus from 2007 to early 2009, though.

Who of all the Gaia NPC’s do you find most manly, and why? The sweaty jock boy from the shops, Liam, was it? He looks like he smells like meat and onions.

How come the hiatus? I left because most of my friends left too. I didn’t really feel like staying after the people I got close to were no longer online. I returned because I was bored one afternoon and decided to log onto my account, I was surprised how much the prices skyrocketed. Thankfully I never sold most of my old items, so the value increase helped me greatly.

Out of all the yearly events here on Gaia (halloween, christmas, april fools, gaia anniversary e.t.c), which one is your favorite? I like the Easter event, because I love keeping the Easter items. Bunnies and chickies.

Join date: 05/14/2004

If you’d describe Gaia Online with only 3 words, what words would they be? Unpredictable, Discombobulating and Baffling. Why these words? Give us a tiny explanation why you chose just them. :3 Unpredictable, because there are just so many things that can happen when you log on. You can meet new friends, or see a new item you like and have a really fun experience. Or, you can meet a total idiot or a troll and get really pissed off. Discombobulating, because even after being a member for several years already, Gaia still finds ways to confuse you. You fail to log on for a week, and there’s already a new trend, or a new term you can’t understand. It’s so easy to fall out of the loop. Baffling, because the people here baffle me a lot. People are so different here, than from how they act IRL.

Thank you so much for the interview. Do you have any final vise words for all the readers? ^^ You should cherish the friends you make in Gaia. Gaia is a place where people can act without any inhibitions, and the friends you made here are the people who have had the opportunity to meet the weirdest, nastiest, most embarrassing side of you, and still chose to accept you. I think online friends are also as equally special as IRL friends.

Did You Know That: The most users ever online on Gaia Online at the same time was 123,381? Gaia Online used to have a Domo-kun emoticon, but it was taken away due to copyright circumstances? The first Angelic Halo ever sold on Gaia Online were prized somewhere around 25k?

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FEAUTURED PAGE

Avatars

Kayao

Pistol Bunny

Pretty Damn Dandy

theChuu

Threads The Complete Evolving Item Artist List

Complete Avatar Arena Winner’s Circle

The name of the thread pretty much speaks for itself. It’s a list of all evolving items and who created them. A good page if you feel like passing on a “Thank you” to one of the creators for making such nice-looking pixels.

Ever wondered who won the Avatar Arena back in 2005? Need a few ideas on a new outfit? This place have all avatar wins ever recorded lined up smoothly in this thread.

POSEIDON’S ADVENTURES! PAGES AND PAGES OF TANKS AND CHATTER!

CSS Profile Codes Tutorial -- A Comprehensive Guide

The ultimate thread for booty grabbers!

A very useful CSS guide on how to make your custom profile look neat and awesome.

[VIVA GAMBINO]-- +18mil! Top prize = +7mil. Please enter!

“MPT” LET’S GET THIS THREAD TO A MILLION PAGES! “ORIGINAL”

Draw Jasette’s avatar together with Gaia’s most powerful NPCs, the Gambinos. +18 millions in prizes! End date: 20 March 2010

The Most Popular Thread. Help lupig get his thread past 1’000’000 pages by chatting, bumping, and posting nonsense.

Trash into Treasure - The Origami Paper Cranes Petition

~Dreams To Come True Charity™~

Gaia Guides and Resources - Helpful List By: Legend

Gaia Aquarium - Booty Grab Thread By: The Tallest Building Ever

Art Contests By: Jasette

Petitions - New items By: Pie

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Avatar Arena - Helpful List By: Lady Rat

Gaia Guides and Resources - Profile Guide By: Kahime

Chatterbox - SPAM thread By: lupig

Charity/Quests - Charity By: ll son zack ll

One of the biggest charities on Gaia. “I plan to have this charity for as long as Gaia is around! Even if I were to leave I have very professional staff that are here to help everyone.” - Son Zack

FEATURED PAGE

Profiles Have something you’d like to say? Send a PM to theMeji labeled “SHOUTBOX”, and it will be put in here the next issue.

Diagonal Sleeper

theMeji

theMeji Yay! The first issue is out! Hope you’ll all like

it! :3

Sheepy Shinigami

Check out my gaian off-site news paper site! Click here

Mikeia This magazine is so EPIC! Already looking

ll son zack ll

forward to the next issue!

TKid

Guilds Legion of Helpers

The Sketchbook

Are you new to Gaia? Need a place willing to help you that does not make fun of the fact that you’re new? Been with Gaia for a while and just need to make some new friends? Then this is a Guild for you.

A cozzy little guild where art meets art. The plot of this guild is to gather a lot of happy artists and art whores at the same place, making it a cozy little hangout where happiness lurks in every post.

Teh Hoarding Guild

☆Vocaloid☆

Learn how to start your path as a successful gaian trader by learning how to vend/exchange and HOARD. Be first to know what items to watch out for, either for investment or purely exchanging purpose. An awesome guild for those that want to earn a little “extra” gold.

This a guild for vocaloid fans. Roleplay, talk, join in on events, and sing your hearts out to these cute Japanese digital singers.

Tags: Help, Friends, Contests, Quest, RolePlay Entry Fee: None

Tags: Hoarding, Vending, Marketplace, Investing, Exchanging Entry Fee: None

Tags: Art Trades, Events, Sketchbook, Friendship, Computer Graphics Entry Fee: None

Tags: vocaloid, utau, music, japanese, awesome Entry Fee: None

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OLD GAIANS

Share their best memories from Gaia theMeji

Join Date: November 5th 2004

t must have been back in the beginning of 2005. I was clicking around in the chatterbox, looking for funny threads to hang out in. Heck, I even recall playing around in all those “Girls trapped in forest, guys rescue them” threads. Funny thing was, though, Gaia had been having problems lately with their whole avatar system, so at that time, avatars wasn’t displayed at all. All one could see was this tiny gray box with an red X in it. But, since ignorance is bliss, I kind of didn’t mind it. I entered a new thread, and after a short time, I found myself talking to one special Gaian. We came to notice that we had a lot of things in common, so we decided to befriend each other and get to know each other through PMs instead of posting around in the forums. Now, funny thing is, this Gaian had a very... how should I put it, feminine username? So, back at that time, I found it pretty obvious the person on the next side of the screen would be female. Why didn’t I ask for this persons gender? I found it pretty rude to do so. Time passed by, and we became even closer and closer. Then one day, Gaia decided to go fix this whole avatar-bug. So, as I logged on as usual the following day, I found myself that I had received a new PM! Although as soon as I opened it, I pretty much fell out of my chair. The avatars were back online and working, and in front of me was this pretty noobishlooking male avatar whom I had been hanging out with (almost dating) for some time now. I was quite shocked, indeed. Funny thing is, though, the person on the other side was just as surprised as I were. He had been taking me for a girl, as well. xD And even today, we’re still really close friends here on Gaia Online. Bugs make the world go round. Ray Valentine

Join Date: March 7th 2003

remember the good old days when Monthly Collectables and Donation Letters were worth only 16,000 gold. If you had 60,000 gold, you were practically rich, and

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the Angelic Halo was only 500,000 gold. Back then it was unattainable, almost like nowadays, except today it costs like 500,000,000 gold. I remember when all the events dealed with Gambino and how Gino use to get punked all the time. When we actually had meaningful shop updates.. now a days we get a shop update like, what, one or twice a year? But a freaking cash shop update every week. Back when I first started in 03, the chatterbox was a place to hangout and make friends. Avatar Edits were fairly new, and the legendary masters were what seemed to be the originators of the art. Back then, making gold on Gaia was a lot easily too, just like it is today. Or at least so it seemed. Yes, we had no games, no daily chance, and no cash shop/aquariums, but what we did have were the essentials. We had events like gift boxes, pink links (which I don’t even think still exist), and other things like that. The Market place never took 2% of the money made from a transaction, so when something was sold for 16k, you received your 16k. Back then Gaia’s Donation Items/Monthly Collectibles were themed with Angelic and Demonic items, and though back then they only came with one or two forms they were essential and showed quality... unlike the MC’s today which seem to be produced on random thoughts and ideas. We have long lost the Angelic and Demonic themes. I remember back when Gaia was run on different servers, named after all the NPCs of course. Ian’s server was the best. At least for me. The quality of the servers pretty much depended on your location. I remember back when Gaia wasn’t gaiaonline. com, but go-gaia.com. Some fond memories I had of the good old days would be my family & friends here on Gaia. We were a true family. It wasn’t all just role-play, we talked to each other over MSN and yahoo, discussed real-life issues, we sung to each other with mics. We were as close to the real thing as you could get, except for the fact we all lived in different places. It was fun, up until 2006 when we all disbanded. In fact, in 2006, the reason it was disbanded was because my Gaian wife passed away in real life. It was a big shock to all of us. Gaia wasn’t a fun place for me anymore, I couldn’t continue to roleplay without her. Time passed by, and slowly but surely I got over it due to the help of the other family members & friends and recreated a new, different character. Almost like pressing the “New Game” button when playing a game. This character I’m writing with now is that very character that was created. But soon after that, the others had

OLD GAIANS

changes in their lifestyles, making it a tad harder for them to log on every now and then. Times changed, Gaia got itself a new layout, and the coming of the cash shop and other things pretty much caused them all to make their final leave. Unfortunately, some tend not to like changes. We all still keep in touch though. In fact I was talking to one of my old friends earlier today. She was showing me her son via her webcam. He’s 4 now, but I remember before he was born. Back then when you made friends and family on Gaia because you loved them, unlike now most friends and roleplay-families are based on popularity, and the items/payoff. Or so I have noticed. I wish Gaia would have stayed the same.

Kyuu

Join Date: February 23rd 2003

aia Online. The ever expanding, virtual cooking pot inhabited by more conscious minds than many countries. The melding of ideas, the exchange of inside jokes, the inflation of pixel values – growing and breeding upon itself like a frighteningly selfaware cancer. And how sweet it is! Something along those lines was my final verdict upon the community as I reflected back one day and realized that I didn’t need it anymore. Bittersweet memorial or something like that. I think I emphasized the word “cancer” to myself a bit harder back then though, but in summation, I never thought much ill of it. At the time of writing, in other words right now, I haven’t posted a word on Gaia for more than two years I believe, and quite frankly, most of my current ideas of the place are based on sheer prejudice and the fascinated rambles of friends who still hang around there. So with that out in the open, I’m not going to say anything about Gaia today, but about the Gaia of... Herp derp, seven years ago? JEEBUS CRIKEY! I seriously can’t believe it’s been that long. But yes, sometime around February back in 2003, someone told me about this totally huge new forum for weeabos such as myself. And indeed, how HUGE it was! I mean, it had hundreds of members back when I joined... And funny to think, compared to a lot of internet forums, that’s pretty impressive. So, yes, close to a thousand people or so I didn’t

know, all posting fervently in the many sections of the forum. And here I have to stop and ask myself, how did I even end up getting hooked at the time? Well, the early “cool” crowd – the people you saw around a lot, the people who made the popular threads etc – they were a bunch of RP:ers. Migrated to Gaia from some other site I heard. Anyway, they were nice, fun people who are responsible for firing up what, I think, somewhere deep in there, is the very yolk of that feverish Gaia-obsession that kept me for so many years. There was no “Gaia Commerce” at the time, so when you entered the Barton Town forum section, you’d see a list of night clubs, cafés, “mysterious back alley”s and other spots people had thought up as a part of that imaginary city. The NPCs of Gaia were very ad-hoc at that time (Like, “O HAI, I SURE AM A STOREKEEPER, DERP”), so all the plots and the surroundings were a blank sheet for the user base to fill out through imagination. I remember the Night Syndicate, the one night club were RP-plots would entwine with each other because it was the one place to take your characters when they wanted to just hang out. I also remember the onsen, the dojo, and the scandalous opening of the very first strip joint. It was even pretty tasteful compared to what was to follow, since everyone who bothered to post at the time were more or less serious about their RP. A tiny disclaimer here: I’m going to spend a lot of this rant saying positive things about forum RP, so if you know that it’s something which gives you eye cancer, better just save yourself the pain and stop here. Because to me, the roleplaying was that which really embodied the liberating escapism that Gaia could provide. The scope of a limitless world, where everyone in sight was a sparkling, personal manifestation of anime and fantasy clichés all stirred together, it had my head doing backflips, to be honest! Anyway, let’s fast-forward a few years if this article is ever going to end: To my most memorable event from Gaia. So it’s 2005 sometime, Gaia’s population has perked to what, a hundred thousand, something like that? I don’t know, to be frank. Barton Town is an unsightly mess of Vampire/Inu-Yasha RP:s led by selfcentric dyslexics, and every thread in the Gaia Commerce is a strip club. Every thread except one that a friend of mine suddenly and spontaneously decided to revive with a self-contained little story: In the Sanctuary – a lush garden for people seeking

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OLD GAIANS

inner peace, her character comes rustling along with a batch of kindergarteners and sit them down to tell them a story. This story features a number of characters based on the people she knew – me, among others – except in a tounge-in-cheek kind of fantasy environment and portrayed as parodist, exaggerated takes on their usual personalities. Her little idea for self-amusement ended up with me and the other people mentioned in the tale scurrying to the thread, bursting with inspiration, and before long, the children’s tale she had thought up was a joint effort RP featuring a collection of the funniest and best RP:ers I’d had the pleasure of meeting during my Gaian career. We created textwalls upon textwalls about the silly new renditions of our characters and the exaggerated world they lived in. It was simply marvelous! Today, I partially wish I’d gone through with the idea of saving a transcription of the thread simply because it was so glorious, and because it’s the most fond memory I have from Gaia today. Never got to it in the end, and now it’s inevitably lost in the eternal dwindles of some digital archive. Well, this turned a bit cringe-worthy towards the end. But I guess you can’t write personal stuff without getting personal. I don’t know quite what kind of monster Gaia Online is these days, but the one thing that’ll never change is the presence of awesome people with the creative resources to blow your walls down, so go find them! Sincerely, Kyuu Pixie Saylor

Join Date: December 17th 2005

ell, I joined back in the end of 2005, so I’m BARELY reaching “oldbie” qualifications, and it’s still weird to consider I’ve been on the site for over four years now. But a couple months after I joined, in early March, I joined a game in the GCD called “The Sniper Game” run by Zaeyde. From then til June, our thread would become the fastest growing and largest in the GCD. Over 100 people joined our games. Unfortunately, because of personal issues, Zaeyde ended up unable to continue running the thread, so our community moved to a Guild and our thread moved to Memorable Threads. Those people who I got to know in that thread have be-

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come my best friends. One of them is coming to visit me over her spring break, I’m quite excited, I haven’t seen her in person for about a year and a half! I even dated one of the people in our community for two and a half years. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The bonds all of us have spawned just from this one thread in the GCD four years ago have been monumental, and greater than any of us expected. So, more than my quests where I don’t sleep until I’ve acquired the item I’m questing, more than being a Forum Assistant, more than ‘Donation Items’ going for 5k, my favorite memories are those first few months in the GCD, making friends that would change my life.

BellaMuerte1 Join Date: January 30th 2004

et’s see now back in the day when I was a wee nooblet. I was introduced to Gaia by a friend who wanted me to join his Naruto based roleplay. I remember one of my first times going into the exchange, not too sure at first what to do. I’d found a seller who was trying to sell a devil tail, the item I’d wanted so badly when I first spotted someone wearing it. Now mind you at first I had no idea about gold, k ,or million terms. This was when devil tails were still under 20million. Me thinking with my 14 or so k at the time thought I had enough so I bid. In the end I was waaay off in what I thought was right. But luckily the seller was extremely nice about the situation. I’d learned since then values and so forth. Going after items I desired, RPing and having fun. And getting into drawing Gaia art for items or gold which at first I wasn’t that good... compared to now. I remember all the crazy error names Gaia used to have. My favorite would have to be the Sushi error, that to me was the most memorable. Or the front page showing off someone’s avatar, or when Gaia used to be Go-Gaia. When there was no crazy cash shop to pour your hard earned money into. Or zOMG! “mmo”, or all the games now featured. Back when Gaia didn’t have to worry about constant scammers and hackers, it was quiet and peaceful. Instead of now it’s full of more people than you could probably imagine some of which probably shouldn’t even be allowed to be on due to age. I’ll freely admit it. I miss the old Gaia, it was

OLD GAIANS

more fun to me. You had less to worry about. I wish we had it back... but of course as goes with life, everything changes. Sometimes for the better, other times not. But lets forward to now. The start of 2010, it’s been about 6 years for me being on Gaia. A lot has changed, features gone/added, etc. I’ll admit some are great like saving an outfit (though there are not enough slots, least for me) is a nice new feature. Or being able to view past Donation Items on your avatar be it on Gaia or in a more updated avatar creator. Though some changes don’t feel as if they are for the better, like the cash shop. Sure nice items... but not everyone can use it or has the money to spend on a Cash Card. I wish I’d saved for screen shots of the past, but at least there will always be memories. I wish I could say I’m happy with how Gaia is now, that I love the new layout and so forth... but at least I have my friends, to those who are left who have stuck by me for so long. At least we can bitch about Gaia together! The one and only BellaMuerte <3

from separate countries with different time zones. We spoke about our own places and what it meant to us. We sent inside jokes and random hearts to each other whenever we felt like it, just because we could. Meanwhile on Gaia, my avatar grew to have an actual look and I joined a handful of threads, connecting with lots of people who have helped my find my way. As for my friend, we agreed he would come over the ocean to my place. It was such fun, even though I think what he loved most about my country was the radioactive cereals with 6 kinds of sugar in it. (Which he actually brought back home to his family.) Time passed again and this time I crossed the ocean to go to his place, where I left my heart at the aquarium with the 6 ft catfish and his family who spent the entire time speaking my language just for me. Gaia is a place of communication, some people just have to learn the hard way. But apparently, in this crazy world, we are all connected. (Or at least that’s what I try to remind myself as now a days when I pass threads such as “Kitty Café: 18+” or “CB! Guess what I found in my sock today?”)

[[ Deidara ]]

Join Date: October 5th 2004

he wonderful world of Gaia. The place of cheap adventure. The place of the personalized pixels. It is also the place of the art of communication. So I choose to believe. Ah, back to the days of first logging in. (Back when all the threads were still PG.) Trying to earn gold by any means possible. Braving the forums that already had many circles of friends, RP’s that had thousands of posts and pages. Remembering the days of posting and never receiving a reply, or sometimes the thread would empty right after words leaving me all alone. A thread killer. I remember thinking that maybe no real communication was going on here at all. Just people saying empty words at each other just so they can finally get that freaking OMG Hat. I was on the verge of giving up this strange site and all of its difficult people, when someone took notice of me. Sending me a friendly PM, I was so happy that I didn’t care what the subject was, as long as someone would talk to me. Months had passed and my friend and I had learned a lot about each other. Turned out we were

Share your own stories!

Visit the Gaia Online Magazine Guild and submit your favorite memory. It will most likely be featured in the upcoming issue!

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TUTORIAL TUTORIAL

How to become a Master of the Exchange

theMeji

Join Date: November 5th 2004

Want a little more gold in your pocket? Questing for something? Follow this step-by-step tutorial and learn how to “Play the Marketplace”, so you’ll be able to squeeze out that extra little amount of gold here on Gaia Online. Just like Johnny K. Gambino did.

Step 1 - Starting Out

Make sure you have a good amount of gold to begin with. About 100k should be enough to start out. If you have more than 100k in your pocket, you can skip to Step 4. If you don’t have a sum like that yet, follow this first step and learn how to earn a handsome sum of gold real quick. First of all, put on your favorite music, grab some snacks and put on that one eye patch. ‘Cause we’re going bootygrabbin’.

Make your way towards the Gaia Aquarium forum. It can be found under the Gaia Community part. This is a forum where people feature their amazing tanks, wanting comments, taps, and booty grabs. This place generates more gold than any gold mine around the world.

Step 2 - Find the Gold

Okay, so you’ve made it into the Aquarium forum. But don’t rejoice just yet. This is only the beginning. Next, search for any topic saying either “Glowing”, “17”, “Dolphins”, or “Recycled”. Why? Let me explain: Glowing - This means the user who made the thread aquarium is currently in bloom, ready to get booty-grabbed. If a users aquarium isn’t glowing, one can’t booty-grab it. 17 - The magic number. 17 is the maximum allowed limit of fish one can have in your tank. Thread names that contain this number often comes with tanks filled up with 17 glowing fishes, giving you a lot of gold. 23 22

Dolphins - The dolphins are recognized as one of the best fishes. They throw out a lot of gold (even red coins, which are worth a stunning 5 gold each), they trigger often, and they’re not too expencive to get, so a lot of users have aquariums filled with them.

Recycled - A recycle thread is, just as it sounds, a thread that is reused everytime that user glows. One often have a link in ones signature saying “Bump here if my tank is glowing” among with a link. People bump the thread the link lead to, and voilà, the thread goes onto the first page.

TUTORIAL

Step 3 - Booty-Grab

Congratulations! You’ve found yourself a glowing tank! Now quickly booty-grab it before its light fades away (if you are unsure about how booty-grabbing works, click here for a little information on the basics). If you keep doing this for around 2 hours (beware of repetitive strain injuries), you should have made a little more than 100k. At least that’s how much I managed to collect.

Step 4 - Memo

Now that you’ve found yourself some gold, it’s time to start hunting the big fish. I’m speaking of the Marketplace. Once you’ve made your way to the Marketplace (MP), you should start analyzing the various prices of a lot of items, so that you’ll know what they’re truly worth. This is useful when you “play” the MP, since one has to act rather quickly at times.

If you’re having a though time remembering all the different values, a tip would be to write down the most popular things at a piece of paper so you’ll easily be able to remember them in the time of need.

Step 5 - Just Added

Good job. You’ve memorized a few items and their values! Now it’s time to get serious! Go to the “All Listings” part in the MP, and sort by “Just Added”. Doing this, you’ll be able to see the newest added items, and also be able to buy them quickly as they are listed, which is a good way to earn a little extra gold. For example, let’s say someone sells a Sealed Envelope for around 60k instead of 70k. May it be by mistake, clumsiness or by will, but as soon as an item lands on the MP, you can’t do anything about it if it’s sold out cheaper than you wanted it too. So, let’s say you were quick enough to buy that Envelope from the MP,

then you would, simply put, have made a 8k profit. Let me explain to you how that works. Once you’ve bought the item, re-list it at the MP again, but this time at a higher price than what you bought it for. Let’s say you decide to sell it for 69k, about 1k under it’s true value. That way, someone will buy it of you sooner or later, since Sealeds are quite popular. Then

by doing the math, we can find out that: (-60k + (69k*0.98)) = 7.62k. (multiply by 0.98 because of the 2% fee)

Also, if you’re lucky, you might get a hand on something like this, a Summoning Tome for only 13 gold. Unfortunately, I was too busy taking a screen-capture of it, so I never managed to buy it. Someone was quicker than me. 22 23

TUTORIAL

Step 6 - Investment

If you don’t like refreshing the Just Added list all of the time, don’t worry. There are lots of other ways to earn those extra gold for your pocket. Here’s another helpful tip. It’s called “Investment”. It works pretty much like any gamble there is. So there’s a slight chance one might lose gold instead of earning some by doing this. But, if you succeed, you’ll earn more than you’ve ever dreamt of. But don’t forget I didn’t warn you. I bet you’ve noticed how some items have ridiculously gone sky-high in value? Why, one might ask? Well, it’s mostly because of their popularity. But sometimes it’s also about its rarity. Anyway, let me tell you how investing works. For example, let’s say you buy a brand new “Compass of Seidh”, the new evolving item. These sell for around 500k per piece. Buy a handful, then wait for them to evolve and hope they turn into something cute, lovely and popular. In other words, something that the residents of Gaia would love to have in their inventory.

Step 7 - Hoard

As it becomes more popular, like I said earlier, the price goes up. A good example would be comparing the Compass of Seidh with the Hidden Ace. These are both 999 Gaia Cash Evolving Items, but the difference in price between them are great. It’s because Seidh has yet evolved (one does not know if it will turn out awesome, or like a failure), while the Ace have evolved into something very neat, having a lot of users wanting it. If you now would have bought 10 Hidden Ace while it were in its first stage (back then it costed around

Like to monopolize? “Hoarding” simply means one buys a huge amount of the one and same item, causing it rise in value (since its rarity increases). Keep in mind, though, that as soon as other users notice that items value go up, they try to sell of their own. So at most times, one have to buy a REALLY large sum to earn some gold. A good idea, though, is to cooperate with friends, or making a Guild, for hoarding purposes only. That way, you all might be able to buy up the whole stock. Negative thing about it, though, is that one have to sell off every one item later.

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500k, just like the Compass of Seidh does now), and then sold them all of today, you would have made a profit of 5 MILLION GOLD. But, then again, you had no idea this item would turn out to grow this awesome. It could, for example, have had become as unpopular as some of the other Evolving Items, shrinking in value. Do keep that in mind when investing. You’ll either win big, or loose trying.

TUTORIAL

Step 8 - The Classic Way

If you’re not that devoted to the 2% listing fee, there’s always the good ole classic ways of trading on Gaia, the Exchange Forum. Haggle, bid, bump, this is the perfect place for those that either want to boycott the marketplace, or sell something real expensive (such as Mini Angel Wings,

Portables, e.t.c.), since 2% of approximately 100 million gold is... quite a lot. Negative thing about it, though, is that not everyone lurks in here (the marketplace is more popular, obviously),

Step 9 - 100% Gamble

Last, but not least, don’t forget about the Lotto/Money Games forum! Sure, it has absolutely nothing to do with the exchange, but it’s a great place to earn a few extra K, if you’re lucky enough. Buy yourself a ticket of your lucky-number, and hope yours will be drawn. Or you could try your luck in the any one of the “Casino” threads. Gamble with other users. You’ll either win double, or lose it all.

and selling an item make take some time unless you’re offering a great deal. The Exchange Forum is where all the “big” exchangers hang at.

Charity/Quests Forum

Didn’t the tutorial work? Still need a little extra gold? Don’t forget about the charities! Here are a few popular ones, just click the image and it’ll take you there.

Don’t forget to visit the

Gold Mountain!

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Written by Keist

even years ago, on a chilly February day in San Jose, a group of friends launched their latest pet project: an unassuming little website called Go-Gaia. Intended to be an anime link list with room for

a small role-playing community, it has since grown into one of the largest social networking sites on the web. Award-winning and feature-rich, Gaia Online is the hottest spot online for millions of users each month.

Seven Years of Gaia will explore the continuing history of the site we so adore. We’ll look back on the best and the worst; the developments and the glitches, and the glitches, and the glitches... By touching on the favourite forums, features and faces of Gaia, we’ll take you back to your newbie beginnings and jaunt together down memory lane! If seven years in seven pages seems like it just touches the surface, there are plenty of resources out there that will take the discriminating Gaia historian right back to their glory days. Gaiapedia is an off-site wiki that covers everything about Gaia, from Admin to zOMG! If you’re particu-

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storie storie teim nao?

larly interested in the debut year of Gaia, check out the First Year Memory Timeline. Why not take a look through the Wayback Machine at cached Go-Gaia or GaiaOnline front pages? Peruse the Memorable Threads subforum to glimpse old events and significant topics, and check out the Gaia 9 Action Newsletters to keep up with the monthly goings-on. Of course, it’s a must to check out the teeming Gaia Community Discussion to chat about the past, present, and future of the site with your fellow Gaians. Now take a deep breath and brace yourself -I’ll see you in 2003!

7 YEARS OF GAIA

2003 Go-Gaia Arrives On the Scene Hello and welcome to Gaia’s first year! Many of Go-Gaia’s first users had come over from the forums of Studio XD -- an earlier project of the founders. But there was room for more! To get their name out there, the founders went to Fanime ‘03 and handed out cards advertising Gaia. Little did they know that years later, they’d be a major feature at anime conventions around the United States! The first few months’ developments reveal what kind of surprises the admin faced at

The old, famous Go-Gaia Illustration brings back a lot of memories to the older Gaia members.

the get-go. Overwhelming spam brought about the Chatterbox forum in just three days time, and a day later the overwhelming sense of community necessitated the Guild forum! March brought about the first Gaian Annual Ball -- a userrun event that continues today. (Look for it in summer ‘10!) The first admin-run event was Easter 2k3, but the devs hurried back to work and unleashed Gaia Personals (shut down the next year), the

trading system, and rare events in the same month! Summer saw the release of a brand new section of the map: Isle de Gambino. With the Isle came two new stores, the Bank, and NPCs like Sasha and little Peyo! The main page got a little facelift, too; and the Avatar Spotlight was introduced, highlighting talented users’ work. In May (not June!) the now-scarce Angelic Halo became the first ever Donation Item.

As autumn drew out, Gaia’s second admin-run event was a very spooky Halloween 2k3, with Jack showing his face for the first time. In December, we all rang out 2003 with the first spirited Christmas event. Hold on to your Jolly Hats -- we’re moving on to 2004!

The first Go-Gaia page layout

The late 2003 page layout

Important dates: February 18 - Gaia is created. March 7 - The First Gaian Annual Ball is held. May 20 - Isle de Gambino was added to the world map, introducing Sasha, Ruby, Peyo, and Meredith. May 24 - The first donation item, the Halo, was released. June 27 - We’ve got Moderators! October 31 - First halloween event is held, and NPC Jack makes his first appearance. December 25 - The first Christmas Event takes place, giving users Jolly Hats and Jolly Slippers. Rejoice!

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7 YEARS OF GAIA

2004

Year of the Critical Error Out of all seven years, this one was probably the glitchiest -- but it also brought us a lot of awesome, lasting features. After a month of bugs and errors, the devs announced a new store, and a new event! While Barton Jewelers held its grand opening, the First Gaian Anniversary Ball (not to be confused with the user-run Annual Ball) occurred, bringing us the most powerful and wealthy (and handsome) NPC Durem, and along with it came a revolution in shopping: the Salon, where users could now easily switch hairstyles. It was a big month for items, too -- the Donation Items were the first to have multiple poses, and the Marketplace system was rolled out. Later that summer came a triplehit: the Gaia Store, Guild Network, and Friendslist feature were all unveiled within three weeks. Lanzer also announced the upcoming release of a Battle System... but that one would take awhile. The days were getting shorter

of all time, Johnny K. Gambino. Gino, just a boy back then, was also introduced. On April Fools 2k4, the devs let their sense of humour really shine through, with a fake giftbox for every Gaian that revealed a nasty surprise when clicked! Just a few weeks later came a huge landmark that was no joke: the name Go-Gaia was retired, along with the old domain. The new name -- Gaia Online -- and the accompanying URL remain to this day. Another year, another town! The sunny month of May brought us when another load of features came our way: this time the siteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own Journal feature, and the extremely handy Thread Subscription tool. Gaia further defined itself as a distinct universe with the mysterious G CORP entity, and Gaian Standard Time. We had an explosive Halloween event that dragged on into November -- the same month that introduced Gaia Fishing! By December, the Avatar and Marketplace systems had been completely reworked. A few more errors weasled their way in, but there was no stopping the second annual Christmas Caroling event. Not even delicious turkey.

Important dates: February 18 - The first admin-run Gaian Anniversary Ball is held. April 1 - Gaia fooled its users with exploding giftboxes. April 30 - Go-Gaia becomes Gaia Online. May 12 - The Vending system is released -- letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get rich! July 23 - Friendslist and Guild Network are now active. May 24 - The first donation item, the Halo, was released. October 30 - Halloween 2004 begins! November 19 - Gaia Fishing rolled out.

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The first 2004 layout

The second 2004 layout was a little more hightech than the previous versions. This one had a dynamic character-creation

7 YEARS OF GAIA

2005

This year had a tough act to follow, but boy did it come through! February held a preDrama, Riches and Masques, Oh My! view to the Homes feature, and the introduction of Going Postal -- a showcase of all the talented artists that send their work to Gaia HQ. The action-packed second Gaian Anniversary Ball introduced the Von Helson Sisters. Just weeks after the destruction of both the Gambino and Von During the late 2005, Gaia changed its layout once again. Helson mansions, the devs gave all houseless Gaians

continue to be an invaluable tool for roleplaying, contests and other fun today. Gaia Towns were released just in time for the Halloween 2k5 event, hosted by none other than an all-growed-up Gino Gambino -who could foresee it would end in flames?! As Christmas neared, we witnessed an explosive rivalry between Santa and Jack; but they just as quickly became friends again, thanks to an intervention by a mysterious figure called the Masque. Meanwhile, the devs had been working hard! In November, users got the Enhanced Profile system -- they could now customize their profiles to their hearts’ content, and share their work and constructive criticism in the Profile Discussion forum. The site, too, got an overhaul: navigation was now divided between My Gaia, Community, and Games; all

the opportunity for a comfy abode, with the Homes feature! After a month of bugs and glitch-exploiting, the admin came back with the Gold Mountain Casino, the fanciest place to develop a gambling addiction on the web! The summer brought yet another item update, and the Inventory Organizer to easily handle your bloated collection. Post actions and types were unleashed -- and they

familiar categories to even the new user today. The very last development of 2005 was the Housing Arena. Drama was still waging among the NPCs: the Masque’s identity was revealed as Gino Gambino in a steamy New Year’s kiss with Sasha, and the much-adored Ian was arrested in connection with the Halloween fire! We’ll have to skip on over to 2006 to see the dramatic conclusion.

Important dates: February 18 - The Von Helson Sisters appear. March 3 - Gaia Homes is unveiled! June 21 - Gaia Casino is open for play. October 25 - Gaia Towns is released. October 28 - GRUNNY INVASION! November 23 - Enhanced Profile System rolled out. Decmber 20 - Site redesigned top to bottom.

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7 YEARS OF GAIA

2006 NPCs Behaving Badly

The Year of the Dog picked up where the storyline left off: bringing us a community-driven event, The Trial of Ian. It was up to Gaians to decide whether or not our beloved, brown-hatted, boutique-owning NPC was guilty of arson. The idea of using the community to decide the outcome of an event would be used for years to come, but perhaps never quite so resoundingly: Ian was found innocent 4 votes to one! He

The admin took the hint and worked quietly until summer, when they unleashed a battery of updates in three days: a site redesign, and the introduction of the Starter sets (much maligned by some who wished to maintain the legacy of the humiliating, ratty peasant clothes). Gaia Towns received a major upgrade, including features like Gold-granting scenery, area topics, a spiffy new Directory, and more! They’d also been testing the Profile v2 system, which they unleashed weeks later -- opening up profile customization to those without CSS knowledge. The next major update was the Thread Rating system. Along with it came a page dedicated to the Top Forum Top-

wouldn’t go home unscathed, though -- no sooner did he descend the courtroom’s steps was he shot by a mysterious sniper. Valentine’s Day brought us an emotional moment with Sasha and recovering Ian; and there were festivities all around the site for other Gaian romantics. Among all the storyline kerfuffle, the devs introduced a fun way to burn tokens: Gaia Cards. They also gave the Bank a bit of a makeover, to ease the trading process. But it wasn’t long before the NPCs stole the focus again -- on April Fools Day, Gino challenged Ian to a very tricky fight to the death!

ics -- or you can see a sampling of them on the Community page. Fall brought about an out-ofthis-world Halloween 2k6, increasing reputation for Cindy Donovinh, and the Quest system. The skillful Gaia 9 Action News team managed to get an exclusive with Johnny K, and their coverage of Christmas was unprecedented!

The NPC storyline made great progress during 2006, and also let the users interact with it.

The 2006 layout had several different randomized images showing in the top left corner, changing every time one clicked a new link.

Important dates: February 1 - Ian declared innocent of arson -- and shot! March 13 - Gaia Cards released. April 1 - Gino challenges Ian to a duel. June 20 - Gaia has a new layout. July 11 - A new, easier-to-customize Profile system is unveiled! October 31 - Gaia is invaded by the Zurg!

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2007

Lights, Camera, Controversy!

The layout for 2007

This year marked the beginning of a marathon of updates and cool new features that continues today! ‘07 began with the usual Valentine’s Day and Gaian Anniversary Ball events, plus some St. Patrick’s Day revelry. The next announcement was far from ordinary: Gaia would now be presenting Sponsorships -- the first one (The Last Mimzy) was announced in March. The decision was controversial, and no doubt users’ reaction to the MMVII to augment their storyline manga. Later on in the year, the devs would bring us the Gaia VJ feature, where users can compile video playlists and share them with their friends. But don’t think the talkies were everything 2007 had to offer! We also got a huge summer event, where users would ally themselves with Gaia’s various towns and compete in the biggest water fight the web has ever seen. Layout, forum and logo updates were unveiled, as well as the biggest previews into the Gaia MMO we’d seen yet. Two highly skilled NPCs, Devin and Natasha,

7 YEARS OF GAIA news helped Gaia hit one billion posts just weeks later. To cool off, we could quietly look back on the history of Thank You items in the then-new Collectibles Museum. Anyway, we’d have plenty of time later on in the year to get riled up about the announcement of the 2% Marketplace listing fee, and the Gaia Cash system. Ultimately, this year would be all about motion pictures. The Gaia Cinema was released in spring, and one of the summer highlights was the Gaia Film Festival: a sitewide, international arena for all Gaian filmmakers to show us their skill. Gaia itself produced a series of dramatic animations called appeared with Skin Tyte -- Gaia’s very own tattoo parlor. Evolving Items made their debut; and the storyline thundered on with another appearance of the Von Helson sisters, plus deep insight into Ian’s past.

Important dates: March 7 - The Last Mimzy is Gaia’s first Sponsorship. April 13 - Gaia users have posted 1 billion times! July 23 - The Gaia Cash system is released. August 9 - Gaia Changed its Logo. August 25 - The Marketplace is updated, with a 2% listing fee. August 27 - Gaia Summer Festival 2k7 is launched, the worlds biggest virtual water balloon fight of all time. September 3 - Over 100,000 users are online at once -- the most ever! November 2 - The Cash Shop was released, and the first evolving items made their appearance. November 8 - The “Gaia Battle” website is unveiled. 31 30

7 YEARS OF GAIA

2008

If Gaia were a kid, this year it would be nearly ready to attend kindergarten. It certainly had all the qualities of a 5 year old! It more than made up for a cooties-infested Valentine’s event with an Easter 2k8 that turned into a groanworthy April Fools prank. Then there was Mischief Makers; a project that left it up to the users to create publicity for Gaia Online through any impish means they could think of. Labelmakers, a system where you can invite

your friends using teasing labels like ‘nerd’ also rang of that kiddish charm. It was also a year for teenage love: the buzz in spring was all about the Prom Crashers event, with deluxe fashion designer Christian Siriano supplying his creations for formal dancewear. With the Prom came some NPC drama, including a quest from Liam that had users running around collecting love advice from various male NPCs... and Bludeau, too. The summer brought about the second round of Gaia Olympics -- this time, with the users competing. The Rejected Olympics were a crowd favourite, with minigames that caused

many of us to break into sweat. And nosebleeds. On the technical side, the admin were challenging users to break Gaia Pinball, a flashy new game that had just entered open beta. In the forums, CAPTCHAs were introduced to fight the ever-threatening plague of bots; resulting in hilarious two-word phrases popping up here or there ever since. The My Gaia page was repurposed, and the Gaia Instant Messenger system debuted. And hey -- all you Booty Grab-

bers would be nowhere without the invention of Gaia Aquariums. Finally, arguably the biggest news of the year: the Battle System, initially promised in 2004 by Lanzer, was at last released! The winning entry in a naming contest predicted the noise we’d all make when we saw it: zOMG! For all their hard work, the devs were rewarded with a hefty ego boost when TIME named Gaia Online among the 50 Best Websites of 2008.

Does This Mean We’re Out of Beta?

Important dates: March 27 - The Mischief Makers project is unveiled. April 1 - The Easter event turns sour... and explosive? May 16 - The Prom Crashers event took place. June 18 - Gaia numbers among TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2008! July 21 - Rejected Olympics begin. September 24 - The Aquarium is released. November 3 - zOMG! is released to all Gaians!

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The 2008 layout was introduced, and here to stay.

2009

The One That Had Everything Here’s a year that’s fresh in our minds, eh? Nobody missed the sixth birthday of Gaia Online -- all users were given their very own sash to commemorate the year they became a part of our community. Around tax time, it became apparent that many Gaian shop owners were way in the red. Threatened with foreclosure, the NPCs called on the Gaia

year. The navigation, header, and footer also got revamped -- but probably the biggest update went to the Help section of the site, which now acts as a comprehensive guide to issues faced by beginners and advanced users alike. The biggest event of Summer ‘09 had to be Camp Chaos. This time around, users allied themselves to one of four Camps: Fitness, Juvie, Rich, or Science. A fun competition with mini-comics to boot, the spirit generated lasted for months. Halloween 2k9 showed us we could love newbies, with the introduction of two characters fresh to the manga: the wicked Sentinel, and the previously submerged Overseer. The event was raucous, and the victory narrowly went to the bad guys.

7 YEARS OF GAIA community to donate to their cause -- and oh BOY did we donate! In total, the shop owners got hold of one and a half billion Gaia Gold. Not only was this enough to get them in the black, but it also bought them all snazzy new storefronts. Three new shops (Global Imports, Junk in the Trunk, and the elusive Dernier Cri) would eventually join them. The developers proved time and again throughout ‘09 that there’s nothing quite like a feature tweaked to perfection. The Guild Network and Garage were two of these features: both seeing several major updates throughout the

Fitting that for four days in November, the staff at Gaia became the bad guys! With nothing but healthy intentions, they made a sudden decision to remove all tobacco items from circulation on Gaia. The outcry was tremendous, and ultimately the admin reversed the decision with a heartfelt apology. Pleased, users quietly went back to abusing their pixel lungs. The year ended with the Sentinel and Overseer reprising their roles, spreading holiday cheer for assuredly selfless reasons that had nothing to do with regaining immortal status. With the same healthy spirit and strong community, let’s make 2010 a year to remember!

Important dates: January 30 - Booty Grab is released. (Bump if glowing!) February 18 - Gaia turns 6 years old; everybody gets pretty sashes! May 28 - The Promageddon event starts. Dance like crazy! July 16 - The new Help Page is rolled out. August 5 - Summer 2k9: Camp Chaos begins. November 20 - Tobacco items removed from circulation for 4 days. December 24 - Happy Holidays from everyone at Gaia!

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SKILLED GAIANS

Skilled Gaians

show of their art skills theChuu

19, female, Sweden http://meji-chuu.deviantart.com/

kukico & tenhou

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/t.54618595/

35 34

SKILLED GAIANS

LividPeas

20, female, Canada http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/t.58107671/

bluefeathers_onDA

22, female, Canada http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/t.40870099/

bekamonster

21, female, California http://bekamonster.deviantart.com/

34 35

GAIA COMIC STRIPS

Made by: Anonymous Comic Maker 37 36

Made by: Anonymous Comic Maker

GAIA COMIC STRIPS

OTHER FUNNY IMAGES

Made by: Anonymous Comic Maker

Images randomly found on Gaia Online 36 37

ill be out

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03.20.10 03.18.10 ill be out

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