Gaia Online Over the Years

By: Angela Russo (@NerdGirlForever)

Gaia Online has been through a variety of ups and downs over the course of its 14-year lifespan. For those less familiar with the site, Gaia is an anime-inspired online community with customizable animal or human avatars, extensive discussion forums, an original manga, creative arenas, and interactive games ranging from simple classics to a full-fledged mmorpg: zOMG! The enjoyment factor of the site has been highly reliant on who is at the helm.

Golden Age of Lanzer (2003 – 2014)

Derek Liu (AKA Lanzer) founded Gaia in 2003 and remained in charge until 2014. Widely known to be benevolent and user-friendly, he strove to create the most positive interactive experience possible. If community members expressed a desire for a feature, game, or event, their requests were heard and implemented. During the golden age, Lanzer encouraged and celebrated the creativity and spirit of Gaia members with various art and video competitions, and even held contests for artists in the community to design special items that would be wearable by avatars. The site manga was updated regularly and was skillfully integrated into site-wide interactive community events where users could take part in the narrative via quests, forum postings, and gameplay.

Dark Age of Goldemort (2014 – 2016)

In 2014, Gary Schofield replaced Liu as CEO. His apparent goal was monetizing Gaia into a pay-to-play website. He is infamously known for flooding the virtual market with currency in an effort to herd users into shelling out more of their own money. Fortunately these efforts were not successful, and the vast majority of the site is still completely free. Regrettably, Goldemort was unresponsive to member input. Any complaints made about management of the site would result in getting a user banned. Thus his amusing monicker was born as Gaians reverted to calling him “he who shall not be named.” Within months of his reign, the beloved mmorpg zOMG! fell into disrepair and was deemed unsalvageable. Discouraged by the lack of community-focused efforts, many users let their accounts go dormant.

Return of Lanzer (2017)

One gloomy winter, day a new hope revived the spirits of Gaians everywhere when Liu suddenly reclaimed his rightful place at the head of the site. The hashtag #MakeGaiaGreatAgain started filtering through the forums as long-time loyal Gaians began trickling back to the community. As a welcome-back gift, an incentive has been offered granting free special chance items for each day of login. Lanzer’s priorities appear unchanged by his time away from Gaia as he remains extremely responsive to user feedback. In fact, it is welcomed with open arms. Lanzer immediately posted numerous polls, created a regularly scheduled ask the staff Q&A session, and provided forum threads for members to voice their concerns and give their input on what improvements they want to see. By a landslide vote, users clamored for the return of zOMG! Within three months of investigation and code-fixing, Liu restored zOMG! to life.

Gaians’ Favorite Features

When the golden age ended, original manga updates and the accompanying seasonal events quickly became a shadow of their former glory. Gaia’s original manga has been the basis for the expansion of map areas, npc story development, special chance items, and seasonal or holiday major events. These site-wide events are a long-time favorite feature that users are eager to see fully restored. The holiday manga updates were a community bonding ritual that provided a series of item-granting quests and activities spanning the forums, virtual shops, towns, and the mmorpg zOMG! Halloween has historically held the most highly anticipated and compelling manga storylines uniting users in the face of everything from vampires and dark elves, to zombies, and aliens. The return of these community-building experiences will be important to ensuring Gaia’s future success.

Future of the Site

Now that Liu is back at the helm, things are looking up for the community. The focus of the site is quickly shifting back to the users themselves. Despite only having a few short months to pre-pare, an Easter event was posted to positive reviews, as well as a revival of community art con-tests, with the most recent winners having their zOMG!-themed art prominently featured in the mmorpg. This gives Gaians hope for greater things moving forward. Furthermore, a weekly community magazine has been announced with content by Gaians for Gaians. The site still has a ways to go to be restored to its former glory, but the most important features are back up and running, and the community spirit is being renewed. Personally I feel the return of zOMG! has been the crown jewel of Lanzer’s triumphant return. The mmorpg is deeply embedded into eve-ry aspect of Gaia. Users have swiftly flocked back to the wildly popular mmorpg. Considering its continued popularity, I’m hoping that Lanzer will continue to expand the game as originally planned. As the most interactive feature of the site, I believe it is the key to Gaia’s future.

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