Gaia Online

Gaia Online (formerly known as Go-Gaia) is a online forum and games site founded on February 18, 2003 by Derek Liu (Gaia username Lanzer), Josh Gainsbrugh (username L0cke), Long Vo (username VO) Ling and a team of their friends, Studio XD artists, and programmers/web designers. The site currently revolves around its forum, avatars, and in-game currency, but is expanding to include features such as games (slots, cards, and fishing), Gaia Towns and homes, and the Marketplace. Note that Gaia Online is a heavily modified PhpBB software.

Gaia's forum is the largest forum-based community on the Internet, with over 440 million posts (plus over 350 million in storage), over 11 million registered users, and an average of 20,000 or more people online at any given time during the day. The most users ever online was 102,092 at 5:54 pm on Monday, September 03, 2007, due to a announcement a few days earlier that pledged that on September 3rd, Gaia would have over 100,000 people online. Participants received a prize.

On Gaia Online, each user can create their own virtual character (or avatar) and customize it through clothing and accessories located in virtual shops throughout the site. The customizations begin with choosing gender, skin tone, eyes, mouth, and hair style and color. From there, the user tries to earn "Gaia gold" by doing everything from chatting on the plethora of forums to choose from, rating in the galleries (there are many galleries including art, avatar, and homes), answering polls, and more. Almost everything done on the site can earn a user gold, which can be used to buy clothing and accessories, which a user can in turn use to customize their avatar.

Gaia Online is free to play and is able to be reached at www.gaiaonline.com

One of the newest and most exiting developments is the 'Battle' game which is said to be very fun. It is in the Beta testing.

Gaia Gold,Cash, Random Events, and Items
Gaia Gold is the currency of Gaia Online forums site. It can be earned by posting on the forums, playing games, browsing the site and through other means. Once a user has earned gold, they can use it to buy items to dress up their avatar. The items range from normal to the fantastic (wings and tails, for instance). There is also Gaia Cash which can be bought online or by purchasing Cash cards available at many outlets accross america.

Gaia has also teamed up with Scion and others to allow Gaians to have their own car (or spaceship) and 'pimp' it up. Other features include Cinemas and Houses.

The option of donating to Gaia is also available. For every $2.50 one donates, one receives a "Sealed Envelope". Around the 15th of every month the letter turn into a "Thank You Letter" which can be opened for an exclusive donation item. Users can sell these for gold, but cannot buy gold directly. Some donation items that have been released in the past include Halos, headphones, gravity defying scarves, and plush hats. Due to the limited amount of them and the increase in users, these items tend to rise in value very quickly. The administrators of the site have promised that these items will never be mass re-released on Gaia. However, through conventions, administrators give users who show up a chance to spin a wheel which offers a small chance of receiving an old donation, or other expensive items.

In the forums, or towns a user has a slim random chance of receiving a rare event such as a Pink Link, Giftbox, or Trunk. These give the user either Gold or rare/uncommon items.

There is also the Daily Chance draw on every main page in which you can recieve anything from 5 gold to cheap junk or sometimes rare items or larger amounts of gold. In addition, Gaia also holds events for holidays as well as the site's anniversary. Often event items are given, which become extremely rare over time similar to the donation items. Other user-run events are often run during the year, but these usually have no administrator interaction, and are completely run by a user.

Tektek
Gaia Online is heavily affiliated with an ingenious site called Tektek. It enables anyone (even non-Gaians) to design an avatar for free and try out new items or design a new outfit without having to buy the items. Tektek has also included newer tools such as item data, toolbars and car designers.