From this time forth...

This blog will no longer be updated at a consistent rate.

I now don't really have time to do this, nor am I as interested and as motivated as I previously was.
I really hope to however, in the future, begin work on it again and invest a bit more time in getting word around about it, maybe getting a bit more support and help.
I'm sorry to anyone who still looks at this blog every so often for any possible disappointment.

Though, at this point in time, if anyone sees this and wishes to continue what I have started, please send me a PM at Gaia Online.
My username is: Jeboo

It's been good working on this.
Catcha.

Gaia's New Layout

It seems like Gaia is on it's way to finishing the new layout they promised.
They've currently just fixed up the number of tabs up the top, so I guess it's safe to assume that the rest of the features and re-design should be here soon.

Makes the right of the toolbar seem a little empty, but small complaints aside, lets hope this turns out to be one of the better re-designs they've done.

You can check out the announcement here.

Halloween Town? Or Holiday Town?

Finally, something to post about.
Though admittedly the news I post now could be old because I haven't been trying to find stuff for a while.
So excuse me if I'm a bit out-of-date.

Anyway, back to the story.
We now have a new place on the Gaia World Map! It's Halloween town.

It reminds me so much of Halloween Town from Kingdom Hearts (not that thats a bad thing), and the most obvious reason at the moment for it's existence is the Halloween event coming in a couple of months.

Though this has raised speculation that it's a "Holiday Town", and will change it's appearance every holiday we have.

Either way, very stylish Gaia. Very stylish.

Here, take a look! (Or, it's left then down from Durem)

The major source for this article can be found here.

New Urn Poses

There's been another mini-evolution by Picolitrosso's Urn recently.

They both appear to be hats/head-gear.

--

On another note, I've been away and not up-to-date recently, because I'm hosting an exchange student. It's getting kinda busy, and I haven't been able to look for things to post about.
But I should be back to finding stuff on a more regular basis in about a week.
Thanks for your patience.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Gaia Raises $11 Million

It appears that these days Gaia is making quite a bit of money.

I'm not sure if this evens out the whole thing we were hearing a while ago, about Gaia being short on funds due to keeping servers maintained and paying staff, but even so this is great that they're getting a lot more funds these days.

You can find the full story here.

I found the link to the full story, however here.

Skins Explanation!

Woah. I found this excellent explanation of how the skins are gonna work.

Thanks a lot to Cube B for letting me quote him.

"I can explain.

Coming monday, Skin Tyte will begin to carry 13 new potions, (and the Zurg drink)

5 of them are new skins based off of the manga. 1 is the vampire skin, and 6 are special potions that allow you to switch between basic skins.

The 13th one is Experiment 105, a special potion for Grombies that allows them to return to Grombie form after switching skins. It only works for grombies though. (No Grombie re-release, sorry)

The price of each potion varies. Basic Human potions are very cheap, as are most Halloween skins, but more complex skins are more expensive. Apparently all the Halloween skins and many other new skins will have potions made as well in the future."

It looks as if Grombies are gonna be happy with this kind of arrangement, allowing them to swap back and forth.

Personally, I like this idea. All the skins in the one place, and the versatility to change between them (provided you have the gold).
Congrats, Gaia. I think you will have done a good job with this system.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Skins Update

Okay, so I'm not entirely sure what is happening with the skins. Though, there is this little scrap of info.

Previously, we assumed the permanent event skins were going to be sold in the Cash Shop. But, apparently a Gaian threatened to do something to the Cash Shop, and so they haven't been released.

I have no idea what-so-ever about the threat that was made.

The major source for this article can be found here.

[The next day]

Okay, so now Gaia have decided to release them in Skin Tyte. Yay! But on Monday.

It's a little late, you'd think they'd release them a little earlier to let people use them more during the event.

But, oh well. At least whatever problem there was is now sorted.

Domo?

Some of you may have noticed, some you may have not.
But the Domo icon is now unavailable for use.

I heard somewhere it is due to a legal case of some kind.

Rest In Peace, Domo.

You will be sorely missed.

Note: It appears that at this time, whilst the Domo icon is gone from the list of emoticons, in the forums you may simply type in ":domo:" and he will be available for use. However, this does not extend to guild forums. Thank you to Koka for informing me :D.

Item leak(?) and Cash Shop event skins

It appears that DJ Helsing has an item equipped, that well... hasn't been released yet.
It looks like a backwards Mischeif Makers sign.
Could this be a possible Olympic Event item? Could it be exclusive to DJ Helsing? Who knows. But it aint released yet, and he has it. DJ Helsing's profile can be found here.

In other news, it appears that the very-soon-to-be-released event skins, are going to be for sale in the Cash Shop. And they're permanent.
So there's no earning skins this event, it's either fork over real money, or save up your gold. And you can't change back.
They should be arriving in the Cash Shop soon.

The major sources for this article can be found here and here.

Nothing. At all.

So right now, in the lead up to the Rejected Olympics, nothing has happened.

Yes, I'm still searching around for things to report on. But so far nothing has come up. We're all just waiting to see what allies the Isle de Gambino and Aekea get.

Oh. There is a little problem, not sure if I've mentioned it. People can clone themselves in towns. And they can make themselves look like mods/devs/admin. It's kinda old, but thats about it.

Anyway, just thought I should post to show I'm not killing this project off xD.

Event Skins!

With the release of the new Manga plot update, we've seen the introduction of the Dark Elves.

In Ask the Admin today, Lanzer was asked whether we'll be getting a Dark Elf skin, and his reply:

"Not at the immediate moment, but there are fantasy related skins in the upcoming event."

I guess it's fairly safe to assume each Rejected Olympics team will be getting a skin each? I'm not sure.

But hey, we get skins!

The major source for this article can be found here.

Monthly Collectible Ad

Recently the front page hint for the July Monthly Collectibles was taken down.
It was up for a short period of time, half a day at the most.

Here's a short summary:
- two Gaian's standing together
- A light shines down on one, who looks excited, before a fist crushes him from the sky.
- The text "Get fisted" appears.
- Then the text "Gaia's first hand-me-down item - July 15th" appears.

It was most likely taken down in response to the overwhelming number of threads throughout Gaia giggling at the possible sexual connotations (myself included xD).
So now, we don't have a hint.

There should be a new one coming out soon.

The major source for this article was me.

Padmavati's Lotus - Possible reference?

At this point in time, a possible reference for the item designers of Padmavati's Lotus has been found.

It is an old story, which basically points towards... babies. Yes thats right. We could be getting babies on Gaia. The key word there being "could".
This is all speculation, and is barely news-worthy (I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for stories today xD). But it's kinda interesting for those who have the item or care.

Anyway, here is a link to the story. You can read it for yourself if you wish.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Ask the Admin (7th of July, 08)

Ask the Admin was on today, so I'm covering and summarising main points made from Lanzer and others in the thread.

- The item norm project didn't affect item layering at all. There will be an avatar system update however that will focus on that, presumably giving us more freedom. Lanzer has said that the item norm is half security and performance, and half for feature upgrades, such as forging items.

- The item shading feature when dressing your avatar will stay. It's a permanent feature (for now) and will help see which item you have equipped if you have multiple of one type.

- A "forum re-write" is coming up "pretty soon", in which the forums will be worked around, fixed up, and changed a bit. More formatting options, etc.

- After the battle system is released, the update focus will be on Guilds and Forums (during Autumn). After that, they're also planning a Homes and PM update.

- After the item norm, some items if they were listed in the Market Place and in trades may take a few days to return to your inventory.

- Devs are going to be working on inventory usability and loading speeds over the next few weeks, after all of the item norm issues are fixed.

- The price reductions in the Market Place could be atrributed to the decline of botting now the CAPTCHA system is in place, and the fact that the Bag of Win is now gone.

- Lanzer is allergic to alcohol and likes tiramisu.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Gaia Rally Hack

Recently there have been reports by users that a few people are hacking the Gaia Rally.

They're hacking the Prize Wheel in there, to direct people to another fake Gaia page. On the page the user is asked for their login information. An obvious scam.

At the moment, it appears the hackers must be in the same room as you when you spin the wheel. So the safest way to spin the wheel would be to go to a private room.

It also appears multiple users can hack the wheel in the same room.
Probably best to just leave the Rally alone for a bit until Gaia fix it, or use private rooms.

The major source for this article can be found here.
There is a topic in the GCD regarding this, which can be found here.

Inventory Tab Changes

Recently the Gaia Online inventories have been worked around a bit.

The tabs used to swap between sections of the Inventory and My Avatar section were being made to take the user to a different page, slowing down the process of changing your avatar.

The developers have been messing around with this for a short while, but with the amount of negative feedback being received, the devs are currently deciding what to do about it.
The process involved fixing issues for users with lots of items.

Though since the inventory code is connected to the item norm, we're going to have to live with slow inventory and avatar changing processes for a while (due to the item norm being reworked on Monday morning).

The major source for this article can be found here. It's from the development teams update journal.

Picolitrosso's Urn Mini Evolution

Today the Picolitrosso's Urn has made one of it's mini evolutions we were previously told about.

Whilst it's not a full evolutions, a few extra poses have been added, giving us a small taste of what it could be in the long run.

Market Place - Picolitrosso's Urn

A velvet mantle, velvet hood, and a combination of the two have been added on.

I found this info somewhere in the GCD xD. Sorry, can't remember now.

Gaia Zeitgeist

In a post made in Jakobo's Journal , she announced a small fun feature on Gaia.

Called "Gaia Zeitgeist", it basically just shows the latest posts being made on Gaia. Jakobo has said that there will be no formal announcement made regarding Zeitgeist, but that 'it's just one of those "cool" things'.

Anyway, this is kinda fun if you're just looking to kill some time. Or marvel at how many RP'ers there are. And there's a lot.

The Gaia Zeitgeist feature can be found here.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Battle System Screens

Whilst this isn't the most groundbreaking news, it is kinda interesting.

In a topic found here, you can view some new Gaia Online MMO screen shots.

From what we can see, it appears the MMO is well on the way to being complete.
Hopefully it'll be ready for the Halloween 08 event, which Gaia plans on integrating into the MMO.

The major source for this article can be found here. You can also find the original screens from IGN here.

Cash Cards sold in 7-11?

In some as yet unconfirmed news, apparently Gaia Online will be expanding it's retail availability of Cash Cards to 7-11 stores.

Whilst this news is still quite weak in terms of reliability (the source so far being the child of a 7-11 Field Consultant), it is a possibility Gaia is looking to expand it's availability of Cash Cards.

So far Gaia has made no announcement to confirm this as yet.

According to the source they should arrive by early July, but so far we're not sure exactly what is happening.

Seeing we've had no confirmation from Gaia, this could all be pure rumour.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Ask the Admin (16th of June, 08)

I know this is a slightly old AtA thread I'm covering, but it contains some stuff I thought I thought should be summarised here.

- Gaia is revamping the gold earning system slightly to benefit those who spend time on the one account, and not on lots of mules.

- With the increased bandwidth Gaia is obtaining, the turn around time for hacking incidents and returned accounts is dropping. From what used to be sometimes a year long wait, users are now getting their items/accounts back within a few months, and Lanzer expects that by next month it'll be down to a week.
He's asked those who've been waiting longer than a year to contact an admin.

- And lastly, Lanzer has announced that we should expect some guild updates quite soon. They're hoping to start work on the guild update around fall.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Faunzy's Items Leaked

In a glitch supposedly exploited by a few Gaians, all of Faunzy's Flute items are now released.

Apparently, there was a glitch that allowed Gaians to play the interactive mini-game over and over from the first PM they got. The glitch was assumedly fixed soon after discovery.
Everyone who took advantage of the glitch didn't have to wait out the 24 hour long cooling off period between games, and now all of the items are available.

With the exception of one. The Horns of the Prince of Darkness. This items is, available in a way. It's just nobody can as yet view the icon for the item, or try it on. Though it is for sale on the Market Place.

Maybe Gaia took the icon down as soon as the glitch was realised, only time will tell.
But for now, most horn lovers are happy. As thats what the majority of the other items are as well. Here, take a look.

The major source for this article can be found here.

Edit: The Horns of the Prince of Darkness are now viewable, and can be tried on.