Gaia SMASH!
We smashed another concurrent user record on Monday, like we did last week, and then two weeks before that. We hit just over 52,000 concurrently logged in users. I don't remember what it was before that, but I do remember that we hadn't broken it since the Easter event in April.
I guess we're doing *something* right smile Now it seems like we're breaking the record almost each week.
If You Earn ANY Gold, You'll Be Banned
... or at least that's what some users want you to think, and what some users actually do think. It's not true, in case you can't detect sarcasm smile
Here's the story as I understand it:
Within the last few months our admins/omnis/mods/gaia-gnomes caught some MAJOR botters operating on the site, and anyone they made a large donation to (we mean large) was considered as profiting from botted gold.
"Profiting from botted gold" is an umbrella term which basically means you intentionally got gold in a way that's in violation of our ToS, e.g., running a bot, getting a large amount of gold from a botted account, buying gold off of eBay, selling firstborn children for Gaia gold. (Does it sound that inplausible?)
Understand, of course, that we KNEW these guys were botters - the kind of folks who sell Gaia gold on eBay and generally upset the economy, make babies cry, and so forth. So if we noticed that a botted account gave you, say, 100,000 gold, we see: wahmbulance wahmbulance wahmbulance
So a handful of users ended up getting banned when they shouldn't have. Around June or so, we started accepting ban appeals - allowing people to argue their case for unbanning.
So for those of you who think things are just getting worse and worse, there's one feather to stick in your cap: we didn't ever allow unbanning appeals before, but within the last 2 months, we've started to.
Unban Purgatory
At the moment, it can take a while to get unbanned. Here's why:
People had sent in a bunch of unban requests before we began actually accepting them -- so there's a huge backlog of unban requests. Right now we're playing catch-up -- so even though the form says 7-14 days to get back to you, it could be quite a bit longer. We're resolving ban-appeals MUCH faster than we get them but there are a lot in the backlog, so patience, patience.
"But my friend's friend said everyone on her friendslists' sisters' boyfriends were all permabanned!!!"
A lot of users seem to think that we're doing mass unfair-bans left and right every day. The truth of the matter is that 99.999999% of the people we ban are actually guilty of it and our unfair banning rate is very low.
Often you'll see a thread, usually started by someone who may have been unfairly banned, who's trying to stir up mass fury because they were one of the unfortunate ones. We do sometimes unfairly ban an account -- but we WILL re-instate the account if the person is actually innocent. Some people just like to make it seem like a bigger problem than it actually is.
The Realities
Truth is, you don't have to be afraid of getting donations, you don't have to be afraid of buying from the MP, etc. etc. etc.
If you are unfairly banned, use the contact form at the bottom of the site to get in touch with us.
It may take a while because of the backlog, but it will get faster over the next couple of months.
Holy crap, Aliens?
Yep. Aliens currently have their sights set on Gaia. Personally, I think the entire storyline has been pretty silly since, what was it, some weird crazy merger between Gino and Johnny? Crazy huge arm? Gigantic explosion?
At this point, I think Aliens are one of the more normal things to happen to Gaia.
What does this mean for Gaia? Well, you know as much as I do -- but I don't think they're coming here to usher us into a new era of peace and happiness, if you catch my drift.
Visitors! Ping Pong! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
I had a friend visit yesterday and I'm having another friend visit today. What do they do?
1. They see the office
2. They meet the people
3. They eat at Snacktopia
4. THEY PLAY PING PONG
If you've read my last post, you know one of the obsessions around Gaia HQ is ping pong. At any given time, we can dial in to our "ping pong cam" to see who's playing.
That's right - we have a camera in our ping pong room so we can always see who's playing, who's winning, and if a table is free.
Ant Knee and Brunosmad recently bought their own ping pong paddles. Last night, when my friend visited, we ended up staying and playing until past 8:00 PM. Gaia is the only place I've ever worked where we'd stay after hours because we actually wanted to.
One of these days I hope we have an official in-office tournament. We'll see how that goes.
Community Member
Friends can visit!
I'm your friend, right Fleep? =P
Botted gold and bannings don't really scare me. I know not to accept large amount of gold and I don't ever break any of Gaia's rules. ((At least to my knowledge)) ninja
More Ping-Pong! Who won?