Donna (and sometimes Adam) Question and Answer

[parakeet]

(you need an account to see links)

Pretty cool stuff! Go with questions!

[Osprey]

This one struck me as interesting.

[–]akatora [score hidden] 2 hours ago

How do you feel about unconverted (aka UC, pets with the original artwork that existed before the NC Mall redraws) pets?

There's a massive black market where people hack into inactive accounts (for the most part. Some are still active), take the UCs on them, and sell them for real money. TNT obviously don't want this to happen, but they're absolutely refusing to acknowledge that UCs even exist in any way, shape, or form.

However, UCs are really a huge part of the culture on the site. They are extremely sought after and rare. It's nearly impossible to trade for one if you don't already have one (yeah, pet for pet trading is a thing now). If UCs weren't around, the user base would be a lot smaller than it is now, and right now, it's still just barely hanging on. I think the average is like 13,000 people online during the day in the US, and as low as 7,000 at night.

That being said, do you think all pets should have been converted, leaving no UCs? Or are you glad they still exist? And what are the copyright measures for that anyway? TNT claim that they can't create new ones because of copyright rules, and that's why they won't give us an option to make new UC pets. A lot of people (myself included) think that's just bullshit being fed to us to make us shut up about it. I don't know if you'd know anything about that, but it's worth asking because people fight over it on the boards all. the. time.

Thanks so much for doing this!

[–]thyassa[S] [score hidden] 52 minutes ago

I think the UC pets are better and I think that the conversion could have been handled in a much better way personally.

As far as I can tell the whole reason to change them was just to make money through micropayment clothing sales in the mall, I dont see why you would risk annoying your entire user base to implement something that the site wasnt really made for.

A better solution may have been to reboot Neopets in a different format. Using unity maybe? Then you could offer far more customisation options, and you arent just changing the look of the pet, but you are letting people get other benefits like being about to move around in a virtual world, actually see your pet fighting in the battledome etc. If people wanted to have that, then they could move to the new Neopets, otherwise they can stay with the old site. Obviously things would have to be thought through more carefully than I am doing now. You would have to offer existing players something to make them want to move over although letting them start with a level 300 pet wouldnt make sense, but I am sure a solution could have been found.

UCs just sound like something they would like to automatically update, but can't due to database limitations, which is why some still exist. I wouldnt think that they have any way to make a Neopet be an UC so I wouldnt bank on that UC paint brush coming out just yet. I could be wrong, but it doesnt sound like an option they would have to hand.

I dont see how there is any difference in copyright of a UC or a new look Neopet. The images are still 100% owned by Neopets. That just sounds like fluff to make people stop asking about them.

[j03]

Someone should ask her to sign up on here!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[pollysaid]

I just read the whole thing. That was awesome. I love when they do AmAs because they tell it how it is without sugarcoating it.

[j03]

Some of this is hilarious!

Haha wow thats funny.
There were a lot of script kiddies and "hackers", it was almost always cookie grabbers though. We were actually happy when we found someone had found a proper exploit (ok after the initial oh crap moment). It was good though, helped us make the site stronger. i dont remember any of the stuff that site is claiming ad0 did though.
There were some over zealous freezings, that much was true.
Featheralley etc wasnt so much favouritism as not keeping a close enough eye on what people were doing with their staff admin priveleges. As soon as we realised what was happening we cracked down, but a lot of damage had already been done.
Rest of it, I have no idea about. Seems like someone got their knickers in a knot to me.

There you have it! Jasmine is a fraud.

[Carnage]

Some of this is hilarious!



There you have it! Jasmine is a fraud.

I was just about to post that. I hope she elaborates on it a little more

[eatingandrew]

I always miss the AMA's :<. Some of the responses are awesome though.

[BGH]

Some of this is hilarious!



There you have it! Jasmine is a fraud.

Wait I don't understand, is Donna saying they gave top players like featheralley admin powers? Well that isn't much of a surprise...

God this AMA sucks donkey dick, they are dodging all the key questions and not giving serious and direct answers. Like when asked about ad0 Adam didn't even bother to fully discuss him nor when asked about the DSoD, although he stated he forgot the icon amount for the sword which is strange considering its 1 of a kind item, how can you forget something like that unless he was completely high when he made and gave the sword out which wouldn't be a surprise considering its ridiculously over the top icon amount (or at least presumed) and only given to a certain privileged individual...

[Jager]

They're making a new site yes? Hopefully it'll be n times greater than neopets. I always enjoyed reading the news just because of them.

[j03]

I already know about ad0 lol