What would you prioritize if you were Neopets CEO?

[Ghastly]

How do you feel about what the Neopets team is currently prioritizing? What would you prioritize if you were Neopets CEO and why?

In the recent live stream, the current Neopets CEO, Dom Law, gave some updates about what is to come for the future of Neopets, while also addressing some recent issues across various Neopets communities.
You can watch the live stream (you need an account to see links), also have a summary below if you don't want to watch:

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I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks about this update they've provided, and to hear about what you all would change/update first in their position!
It seems like they are pretty heavily prioritizing NeoPass and marketing it as the infrastructure overhaul that will be the catalyst to updating 'everything' else. Knowing Neopets, I'm of course skeptical, but at least also hopeful to have at least a bit of a 'roadmap' to what the team is currently working on and prioritizing. It was nice to see them addressing recent issues too and explain why they happened (VPN ban and NC processing). Overall, hearing about the infrastructure update is leaving me in high hopes that good changes will be coming to the site that we love! I'm glad they aren't just cash grabbing with shitty NC events/NC UC tokens (rip no announcement about the next batch), and are prepping Neopets for the long term!

[UCWerelupe]

Infrastructure. Neopass is a start to trying to tie database things togethr, but that is only one part. They need to upgrade physical infrastructure. As much as everyone likes to joke about the slowness being nostalgic, I think we can all agree it is terrible and it is definitely a turn off for newcomers.

[DarkSkies]

Revamping and security. I'd love and believe when I'll see it, still a long way if ever happens. Please prove me wrong!

[Infected]

I'm surprised they're actually 'fixing' the battledome after categorically stating they wouldn't for a long time as there were other pressing issues. But it's great news.

I think they're generally on the right track. Like others have said physical infrastructure need to be improved but I guess they want to fix the small things they can before getting there which seems fair to me.

On the issue of the economy and prize pools etc, Im not sure thats the right way to go but we have had that debate on here multiple times over so it is what it is I guess.

[bakery]

On one hand the slow, buggy, glitched, security breached, hacked, spaghetti-coded nature of the site almost feels like it's part of Neopets' identify by now, and part of its 'nostalgic charm'. On the other hand, it's getting tired. I also don't know a single game or virtual space (that respects itself) where hackers freely go on reddit and brag about their backend access to everyone's information. Imagine if every week somebody came on World of Warcraft's reddit and "spilt the tea" on everyone and everything. Unprofessional.

With that being said, I also acknowledge that Neopets is in too deep, overhauling the site and its security is actually not enough. Even if they somehow managed to fix every security flaw by tomorrow, everyone's information is already out there from the countless of past security breaches. There's nobody stopping bad actors from abusing that information to fraudulently "recover" accounts that aren't theirs and sell them. So that will have to be addressed as well.

And of course fixing all the broken NC items.

Maybe with future AI advancements they can upscale all this work, but I don't see how they'd realistically manage all of this with current technological tools (unless they have a few hundred millions at their disposal).

Maybe in 2030

[Jackalope]

I honestly wish they'd shut the site down for maintenance for as long as it takes to genuinely fix the security issues and potentially some other stuff or implement daily maintenance time like Flight Rising at least until the site is repaired from Flash death if nothing else. They don't ever take actual time to untangle the spaghetti imo. I would gladly take a hiatus from the site if I knew I was coming back to a more secure and well built site.

[blaziken]

I hope they are able to focus on battledome more and bring back HP increase and high score tables as well. It would also be great if they could fix the customization side of things, where some of the UC pets are still blurry, wearables not showing up on pet lookups, and some of the NC UCs do not align with the avatar frame as well.

[UCWerelupe]

I'm surprised they're actually 'fixing' the battledome after categorically stating they wouldn't for a long time as there were other pressing issues. But it's great news.

I think they're generally on the right track. Like others have said physical infrastructure need to be improved but I guess they want to fix the small things they can before getting there which seems fair to me.

On the issue of the economy and prize pools etc, Im not sure thats the right way to go but we have had that debate on here multiple times over so it is what it is I guess.

He said the BD is an important part of the upcoming plot, so that is at least confirmed now. Start hoarding BD items for profit later

[Synth Salazzle]

Keyquest.

[Ghastly]

Infrastructure. Neopass is a start to trying to tie database things togethr, but that is only one part. They need to upgrade physical infrastructure. As much as everyone likes to joke about the slowness being nostalgic, I think we can all agree it is terrible and it is definitely a turn off for newcomers.

agreed, the lag alone makes the site difficult to be on, let alone new users coming on the site trying to navigate where anything is with the half updated, half old layouts!

I'm surprised they're actually 'fixing' the battledome after categorically stating they wouldn't for a long time as there were other pressing issues. But it's great news.

I think they're generally on the right track. Like others have said physical infrastructure need to be improved but I guess they want to fix the small things they can before getting there which seems fair to me.

On the issue of the economy and prize pools etc, Im not sure thats the right way to go but we have had that debate on here multiple times over so it is what it is I guess.

definitely glad they're updating/fixing the battledome; just curious as to how long it will take and what that means for the upcoming plot. since it sounds like they're prioritizing NeoPass before making other changes, I wonder if we'll be seeing the plot this year?

I'm curious about how they'll use the data from the first batch daily prizes to influence how they choose what items to release in future events! they've definitely been pumping out a lot more brushes and morphing potions than usual, think we just need a bit more time to see them pump out some more morphing potions that are still inflated to 2m+

On one hand the slow, buggy, glitched, security breached, hacked, spaghetti-coded nature of the site almost feels like it's part of Neopets' identify by now, and part of its 'nostalgic charm'. On the other hand, it's getting tired. I also don't know a single game or virtual space (that respects itself) where hackers freely go on reddit and brag about their backend access to everyone's information. Imagine if every week somebody came on World of Warcraft's reddit and "spilt the tea" on everyone and everything. Unprofessional.

With that being said, I also acknowledge that Neopets is in too deep, overhauling the site and its security is actually not enough. Even if they somehow managed to fix every security flaw by tomorrow, everyone's information is already out there from the countless of past security breaches. There's nobody stopping bad actors from abusing that information to fraudulently "recover" accounts that aren't theirs and sell them. So that will have to be addressed as well.

And of course fixing all the broken NC items.

Maybe with future AI advancements they can upscale all this work, but I don't see how they'd realistically manage all of this with current technological tools (unless they have a few hundred millions at their disposal).

Maybe in 2030

I hope they are able to focus on battledome more and bring back HP increase and high score tables as well. It would also be great if they could fix the customization side of things, where some of the UC pets are still blurry, wearables not showing up on pet lookups, and some of the NC UCs do not align with the avatar frame as well.

yes!! I definitely would love to see a bit more of a priority on them converting/updating the old NC items. there are way too many items I can't see in the closet and it's a bit ridiculous to think that a large portion of paid content on Neopets is unusable on their own site.

- - - Updated - - -

I honestly wish they'd shut the site down for maintenance for as long as it takes to genuinely fix the security issues and potentially some other stuff or implement daily maintenance time like Flight Rising at least until the site is repaired from Flash death if nothing else. They don't ever take actual time to untangle the spaghetti imo. I would gladly take a hiatus from the site if I knew I was coming back to a more secure and well built site.

I would just wonder how long the maintenance would take; like a month+? I feel like it's scary to try to do that since they just came back with a lot of traction with NC UCs. who knows how many people would come back from the maintenance and how long it'd take to rebuild the hype? maybe unless they release another set of NC UCs with the comeback aha

- - - Updated - - -

Keyquest.

I'd love if they revamped and reintroduced KQ! I remember hearing somewhere that they don't have the code or whatever for it? but also would be super sick if they just remastered it and reintegrated with the whole NeoPass update and Neopets universe