We're Gettin' Healthy: No More Tobacco Items in Shops!
We're Gettin' Healthy: No More Tobacco Items in Shops!
In an effort to keep your virtual lungs lookin' clean as a whistle, we're ceasing the sale of tobacco-related items on Gaia. Aside from being all gross and unhealthy in real life, we don't think they make your avatar look any sexier.
If you have any pipes, cigarettes, or cigars in your inventory, you're welcome to sell 'em back to the shops for a nice, tidy profit.
If you have any pipes, cigarettes, or cigars in your inventory, you're welcome to sell 'em back to the shops for a nice, tidy profit.
User's were baffled, distraught, so they mutinied immediately. The Site Feedback forum caught fire from heated e-smokers rioting in the streets.
But, Gaia dug their heels in, stuck to their guns, and reversed the ban 7 days later.
Lanzer
I wanted to apologize for the frustration and anger caused by the tobacco item removal. We've read through the feedback and concerns from all of you, and we wanted to let you know about some changes:
•Tobacco items are back in shops.
•The items are no longer soulbound.
•If you sold yours to the shops, we're granting them back.
The motivation to ban tobacco items did not come from wanting to take away items, but from a desire to do something positive. Obviously we did a lousy job explaining the motivation, and our decision to act was awfully hasty. The end result was that we did not take the core values of you, the Gaia user, into consideration.
I'm sorry that we messed up, so in return we're undoing this as best we can. In the future we'll be more cautious and open regarding any actions that might impact any of you in a negative way.
•Tobacco items are back in shops.
•The items are no longer soulbound.
•If you sold yours to the shops, we're granting them back.
The motivation to ban tobacco items did not come from wanting to take away items, but from a desire to do something positive. Obviously we did a lousy job explaining the motivation, and our decision to act was awfully hasty. The end result was that we did not take the core values of you, the Gaia user, into consideration.
I'm sorry that we messed up, so in return we're undoing this as best we can. In the future we'll be more cautious and open regarding any actions that might impact any of you in a negative way.
It wasn't mentioned in the post, but we can thank this mini-crisis for giving us the additional poses on the Cig item that we enjoy today, like the pose where your avi is smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once or coughing up a black cloud.
The cigarette ban is a tiny footnote in Gaia's history, but it was significant for me, because it set into motion the sequence of events that would introduce me to the my perfect person, my best friend, and my life partner.
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Immediately after the reversal, the marketplace price for all tobacco items skyrocketed. Smoking was cool again and everyone wanted to be cool.
This didn't apply to the cig, of course, you can buy those in the cash shop for a song, but premium tobacco items saw massive price increases, like the Case of Pietro because it had a "Inspector's Smoke" pose.
At the time, I was a senior in high school. I didn't have a cold Case to scalp, I didn't have any money to spend on Gaia premium items. I earned my gold on the daily grind: polls, forum posts, aquarium booty grab, mini-games, you name it. But there was one item in my sights I could flip, a "get rich slow" treasure: the Long Drag
The Long Drag was an exclusive item purchasable from the Prize & Joy. The P&J was like an arcade redemption centre: you could only purchase things using Tickets and Tickets could only be obtained by playing the Slots and Blackjack mini-games (Tiles, which also rewards Tickets, wasn't released until a year later)
On the marketplace, the Long Drag was going for a mountain of wealth, selling easily at 60,000g. It cost 13,000 Tickets to purchase it from P&J.
I could do it, I could work hard, press my luck, double down, and make some gold from cigbanflation.
The reversal was on November 24th. It was the week of Thanksgiving. I had four days off of school and a single mission: buy a Long Drag and flip it.
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I started off with Slots. Slots is basically an point-and-click RNG dice roller, and if I had known that ahead of time, I probably would have skipped straight to Blackjack.
One night, I joined a Slots room with a Gaian named This Devil Wears Converse. I misread their username as The Devil and asked them about it. "Hey Devil, what's with your username? Were you wronged by someone who wears converse or something?"
"Huh. No one's ever asked me that before."
And that was our first conversation.
---
And that set us on our journey that led us here, to today.
I remember thinking it was crazy how I met a cool person on Slots. And it was crazy we were only 6 months apart in age. And it was crazy when we met IRL, over a year later during her spring break. And it was even crazier when she packed a bag and came to live with me after she graduated.
And a million other crazier things have happened since then.
But it all stems from here, from Gaia, from the tobacco ban, from that chance encounter in a Slots game room.
Thanks Gaia team for creating this space. Thanks even to the wacky people who jumped the gun on the ban. You made this all happen. I owe you everything.
I love you, Cleo.
