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Gaia back then, Gaia today, and Gaia tomorrow (part 3/3)
Six years came and went, and I feel fortunate that such a big part of my life is devoted to building something that is so significant and special to so many people's lives. Thank you to all of you that had helped make Gaia what it is today.
There is supposed to be three parts to the series that talks about Gaia's past, present and future, though because of the recent lay-off, I've been spending a lot of time re-thinking what I need to do moving forward and to make sure we do things right so that we'll never have to make such mistakes in the future. Going through a lay-off was one of the most painful process that I've ever faced, and after the sleepless nights and stressful remorse, it's time to re-focus.
Moving forward, Gaia will continue to be the best anime roleplaying community, the best virtual space hang out, and the best place for making friends and meeting new people. The Gaia world have had more hang-outs like cinema, VJ, more games and even our own RPG game. Though the core of who we are is still the community game that bring all of us together. We keep trying out new things and expanding our world, but that shouldn't strip away the basic aspects of what makes Gaia special.
What this all mean is that more of our time will be placed in making the inventory system better, making the store system better, when new items are released, everyone should be able to find new items easier, when you receive a gift from a friend, you shouldn't need to have a tough time finding where the item actually is, and on top of that, addressing popular requests such as the ability to try on different clothings at the same time before buying them, ability to save outfits, and having a better way to arrange items are some examples of the basic aspects to Gaia.
Then there are community features and focuses, anything that touches commenting, forum, and guilds. The list of improvements are really big, but we will be breaking those down into smaller chunks and tackling them one by one.
In between everything are the important things like item releases, rare item drops, events, to small but significant games and features that makes Gaia more fun. More so than anything, we wish to do more of that this year.
At the same time, there is one aspect that's still a big part of Gaia, and it's that we're still a site that's growing, plus a site that's trying to grow. It's our goal to make sure that when a new user join Gaia, that the new user would have a good time, enjoy what Gaia is, and be able to eventually become an active Gaian. However that goal is very hard to achieve. Without a friend showing a new user what to do, new users often feel lost or get stuck in Gaia. We're paying attention to make Gaia easy to use and understand. A lot of these things are for us to figure out now so that we can leave it alone and focus more on community features later down the road.
So these are some of the main focus we have today. As it is important for Gaia to remain focusing on everything that's important to us Gaians, that's where our focus will be. I hope that pretty soon everyone will be seeing the new improvements and additional fun things to do around the site. From fishing to housing, many features are in a waiting list for repairs and fixes, and we'll get to those features one by one.
Got questions? Remember that I'll be online every Monday at 6PM (PST) to answer questions in the Gaia Community Discussion forum. My time is limited to only an hour per week but I hope I can address a handfull of questions at a time. Any feedback or comments, feel free to send me a PM!
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