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Yeah, that's great! But the service is unavailable in the Philippines. sweatdrop

While the new alerts are nice and handy, I don't believe that there needed to be an incentive for the feature at all.
Many people are just subscribing only to rescind their subscription, essentially giving them 3K for no effort or lasting subscription. Anybody who actually wanted to use them would most likely have signed up anyways. Although the amount is small for each monthly subscription, I don't think that it's necessary to give them anything to keep using the service (unless it's somehow generating some amount of IRL currency toward Gaia per user subscribed).

On a related note, I believe that the gold granting system should be tweaked again to give out less gold. Seeing as prices are continually spiraling upward with little regulation, things are getting harder and harder to obtain for regular users and new members. A larger effort should be maintained to keep gold in a moderately similar range throughout the year. The marketplace is simply not draining enough gold from the economy to keep the value of gold in check, and neither are the shops. Perhaps some sort of feature that requires a small flow of gold to be constantly drained in order to maintain usage, but as to what that feature would be is beyond me at the moment.

Mhm. Inflation is a problem, but I'm sure we'll all figure something out. I signed up for the e-mail one, in case I get an important PM or something during Christmas when I'll not be on as much. Also, really stoked over the manga pages now. whee

The thing is, inflation has not completely taken over. It's only affected MCs. Pretty much everything else has deflated to nothing (you can no longer sell paper hats or common fishing prizes for any kind of decent profit, when you used to make ~100g+ on some of the items). Even many of the uncommon items (Giftbox items) seem to keep a stable price. It continues to baffle me that the Katana was about 70k when I bought one this past June. Now, it goes for about 250k! How did that jump SO high in 5 months?

As far as the gold granting system goes... I think that more goldsinks should be considered. All kinds of different customizing features could be added for our avatars (tanning salon, eye doctor/contact lens, nail salon, etc), and our homes (more additions, more rooms, let us add an outdoor/patio/yard "room", etc).

What about paying a gold fee, even a small one (10-50g), to use special Post Styles? The normal ones will of course be available, but I'm sure if there were unique styles (holiday-themed, Kiki, Gwee, Grunny, etc) people might pay a small fee to use them.

I know there was a huge uproar the last time it happened, but I also think there's something to be said about adding REALLY EXPENSIVE store items, once in awhile. I saw a very noticeable drop in the MP during the week after the Elegant set was added. Yes, we have the Cash Shop, but expensive items can still be put into stores. Also, not just clothing items -- why not have really super-expensive, ridiculously luxurious items for Cars and our Homes?

meh. i like free gold. thanks gaia!

The big concern about the price of items nowadays are pretty much on the popular MCs. Yes, the MCs we're receiving are a lot more versatile and better in detail, it won't change the wants of older MCs. Even if we cut down the gold gained from users all around, bots would still get the upper hand.

Thanks for the new feature on the pm alert though. I wouldn't use it but it's helpful for those who needs it. ^_^

I think in general the uproar is greater over making it harder to get gold than in trying to cut back on the gold in circulation, since in short term that tends to hurt newer users and they're the ones who cry without looking long-term. The initial raises in gold gaining were made to address them if I recall, and keep overall user happiness higher.
I also honestly think the gold generated from this promotion is just a drop in the bucket. It shouldn't have anything more than a tiny ripple effect. If people really want to make 100 mules and then pay to be able to trade all those to a main account... well I guess more power to em.
And any changes to try to balance out the economy are probably going to cause craziness and upset initially, so its just something we have to live with. Personally I'm still completely behind the Marketplace 'tax.'
As much as I like how most things on Gaia are free or cheap to use, so new users can at least get a basic setup easily, making small things that require gold fees as suggested would continue to trickle off amounts.

I don't have a text messaging plan myself and I'd rack up a crazy bill getting the SMS service, but its a nice feature for those who do and I know texting is a big thing with many people now. Maybe I need more offline friends LOL.
I do like the email alerts, I signed up for those though honestly I check my Gaia PMs about as often as I check my email wink

I'm looking forward to the Winter holiday events since Gaia has always had a unique twist to them, and good luck to the art department thinking up another set of holiday-themed giftbox items!