<center>Ye Olde Renaissance Times
[will have graphic titles later]</center>
Top Story:___________________________
_________________-+Inflation, Rollback not a help?+-__
Written by: mocha_san_v.2
Recently there has been a drastic price increase in almost all donation items. Now, you may be asking youself, "Donation items are always high, what's the big deal?" Good question! Yes, donation items are always going to be inflating, but not always steadily--as the last few weeks have shown. Due to glitch that left users to gain obscene amounts of gold in a short amount of time, donation items soared, some almost doubling.
Lanzer and co. couldn't just stand by and watch what was going on, could they? They came up with the soluton to the problem being a rollback. Now, Gaia hadn't witnessed a rollback since the Summer of 2004. It seemed a vast amount of users weren't even aware of what a rollback was, or what it entailed.
Everything on Gaia that had to do with gold including market transactions, trades, and inventories were all taken back to their state on May 9th. Users who didn't read the announcements, and even some who had, were stunned. What was going on in the world of Gaia? Everything seemed as though it was falling apart at the seams. Almost everything but posting seemed to be down for the count.
- <img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/Raekna/Rollback2.png align="right"> Bank
Marketplace
Avatar Saving
Inventory
Gaia Fishing
Gaia HOMES
Stores (all towns)
Rare Events
Normal Gold Gain (lurking, posting)
Guilds
<img src=http://tinypic.com/5bemn8 align="left">Within an oh-so-short amount of time, everything was back up and running flawlessly. At least that is what many users would have hoped for. The rollback, it seemed, lasted a few days due to its effects on the Gaia populace. The staff did graciously grant us all with a generous sum of 1700g, because that would make up for all of the gold we all lost.
This, my friends, is where the inflation comes creeping into the picture. Just because all transactions had been brought "back in time", so to speak, peoples' mindsets of what donation items should be priced at remained the same as it did before the rollback. While the "poor" Gaians complained about the greedy "exchangers" causing inflation, they took no burden onto themselves. The "greedy, rich people" as the exchangers were referred to were not 100% to blame, if at all. They simply went along with how the rest of the economy went.
- Now, children, a lesson in economics:
<IMG src=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Demand_shift_out.png align="right">When more people want something, the quantity demanded at all prices will tend to increase. This can be referred to as an increase in demand. The increase in demand could also come from changing tastes, where the same consumers desire more of the same good than they previously did. Increased demand can be represented on the graph as the curve being shifted right, because at each price point, a greater quantity is demanded. An example of this would be more people suddenly wanting more AFKs. This will cause the demand curve to shift from the initial curve D0 to the new curve D1. This raises the equilibrium price from P0 to the higher P1. This raises the equilibrium quantity from Q0 to the higher Q1.
So, now that you understand inflation, you can hopefully see why the donation items are raising in price. Normally they only go up a bit at a time, unless there is an outside force on the market (i.e: the glitch) that affects how the economy functions. Since there will never be a re-release of the donation items, according to the administrators, the ones you see now are only going to decrease in size as people get banned, leave Gaia or the items are eaten in glitches.
So, the question remains: Was the rollback of any help whatsoever? They apparently didn't go through all of the people who abused the glitch and ban them, since there were far too many. Why were innocent Gaians to suffer for the actions of a few? We will leave that up to you to decide, since it will most likely go unanswered.
_______________________________-+Gossip Column+-_________
_________________-+Crime Spree Still Rages!+-__
Written by: mocha_san_v.2
In the latest news: [ Hiroko ], aka "baby-faced Roko", went on a shopping spree to bolster her army of Kiki Kitties. Everything was <img src=http://tinypic.com/5bd4yg align="left"><img src=http://tinypic.com/5bdab7 align="right">going along swimlingly for Hiroko, until she saw Rae-kun. The two had crossed paths before in life, but Rae-kun, infamous pocky smuggler, and Hiroko decided that this time would be different though, sources say.
The two girls became the Thelma and Louise of the Gaian world. None were a match for Hiroko's army of Kitties and Rae's... "assets". Their rampage was nothing that was expected by the Gaian public. They started small, going from store to store in Barton and Durem, but they soon moved up to the big leagues and went to Gambino to the marketplace. User shops were terrorized, people unable to believe why someone would want to steal their precious over-priced clown nose. Everything from cheap items to expensive donation items were stolen.
The two girls have yet to be caught. There whereabouts are currently unknown. Authorites have them pinpointed to being in one of the millions of posts on Gaia, so they are very close to catching the naughty girls. If you see them, be very wary of them and head to your local police station. For those of you in Aekea, you have nothing to worry about. You all have nothing but junk over there anyway.
____ ____ _-+Nipickers Corner+-_____________________________________________
_________________-+Bitching helps, really it does!+-__
- "Gaia reeks like the sewers of friggin' 15th century Europe at times. People and their "dream items" and how they'd die without it. Guess <img src=http://www.nekokomania.com/materials/anime_gif/images/ani_cat05.gif align="left">what, kiddies? (: They're called pixels. Just because you get some Hello Kitty-esque pixelated items on an online forum doesn't make you cool in the real world. That just makes you an idiot. "Look Ma! I got a pair of minis!" Say that to your mother, she'll love you for it. :3"
~Rae-kun
- "As opposed to popular belief, n00bs are actually very useful! Yes,<img src=http://www.nekokomania.com/materials/anime_gif/images/ani_attention.gif align="right"> you heard me right! Who else would we blame everything on? When something goes wrong who does everyone blame it on? The n00bs! We would be lost if the n00bs didn't exist. Life as we know it wouldn't exist! THE UNIVERSE WOULD COLLAPSE UPON ITSELF! Oh yeah! I almost forgot... they also make great bait for shark fishing."
~free2cast_spells
Special thanks to Rae-kun who drew two of the pictures in the top story section of the newspaper. Other .gifs taken from Nekomania.com. In future issues (if there are any) there will be an editorial and a comic section. Since this is only for an example, these sections were omitted. Opinions are loved on the concept <3