The Current State of Neopets

[Infected]

This is going to come off as a rant, but I just wanted to highlight my current thoughts on the site. I started playing Neopets back in 2004 when my cousin showed me the site, got instantly hooked. And since then I’ve been on and off and had a few main accounts. Back in 2010 I discovered the cheating scene of Neopets, and needless to say my interest was renewed. I cheated to gain trophies, avatars, NP, items, all the cool stuff that was rare and fun to have at the time. I stopped playing around 2014 and only returned again full time a few months ago. Aside from a few very short stints in the 9 year period.

But every time I returned in the past, there was something to come back to. Something I found fun. I guess I’m much older now than when I started, but the site is so different now than it was before.

Firstly it’s pretty much all broken. Half the things or more don’t work on the site. The core essence of the site which used to be the flash games are dead. The few still working are a pittance and I don’t know if it’s just me but even those don’t work great. Like for example, on Hasee Bounce, I can’t get the Hasee to go left or right, just up and down. This is such a pity because one of the most nostalgic things about Neopets were the games. Whenever I did come back in the past was to play the games I loved as a 12 year old kid, hoping to make some Neopoints to buy cool things and show off to my cousins and friends. That’s not the aim anymore, but the nostalgia too, is now denied.

The battledome, which was and still is a big aspect of the site, is broken for the better part. The scores don’t count, the old scores and new scores haven’t been added up, and things like Defenders of Neopia are long gone. I trained my pet over the years to be max stat, and am still constantly training the HP. But what for? In essence, I only ever play 1-Player battledome. The challengers don’t get stronger, the obelisk battleground is fun till I collect all avatars, but that too soon will be done. What happens after? Just grinding for daily item drops? Which mind you, if you’ve been playing for years, you have enough NP or RSing skills to not really care about the grind.

Most of the returning player are returning to chase the high of nostalgia from their youth, but return to find a derelict, and almost dystopian, post nuclear war Mad-Max-esque Neopia. Where nothing works, and the things that do, are glitchy, inflated, or gotten through cheating.

But yet, the site still remains hugely active. It’s either the older players or the returning players that have still kept the community strong and thriving.

Now here’s why I’m really ranting. The part of the site that does still function, is basically the item market - for avatar hunting and battling, (and clout), and the pet customisation/pound chat crowd. The thing is, Neopets has gone through 2 or 3 owners, and none have bothered fixing anything.

The economy on the site is mainly driven by illegal purchases offsite, whether it’s items or NP. There’s one or two people controlling the economy basically, and the rest of the users are buying items and NP and pretending like they aren’t, and everyone goes about business as usual. Which is fine, because I do it too. But in essence the site is just mainly broken, and we’re just making do with whatever is still working. The inflation makes things ridiculously priced. I remember completing entire stamp albums for as much as the cost of a single big stamp on the page now.

JumpStart (or whatever entity they’ve moved to now) can so easily just make a few basic fixes and get things going. If they even had a plan or roadmap, it would make the site so much better and bearable, but it’s like they just don’t care. All they want to do is release NC items and monetise the dying cow as much as they can.

Like we discussed in another thread, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them launch a UC pet converter item for NC, which would basically destroy the last valuable thing loft on the site - UC pets and customisation. So while they don’t fix the things that are broken, they sort of don’t have a single clue about what makes the site still run, and won’t hesitate ruining that last bit for just a few NC sales.


I guess all I wanted to say is this is game we all love and have loads of memories attached to, most of us from when we were much, much younger. It just sucks to see the game be like it is now, with owners that don’t really care, users who basically are all high and mighty to a point where you’re just policed all the time over irrelevant things, and at the end of it sometimes it all feels like it’s all for nothing.

Also I didn’t think at 30 I’d take the time out of my day to rant about a dying virtual pet site but here we are lol.

I know we've all accepted it for what it is, and that's best as there's nothing we can do anyway, but. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think anything will change on Neopets? Will they ever fix the big things like the battledome? Are you playing for anything other than the nostalgia hit? Or is this all a sinking ship with an end it sight, and if yes, what happens when it does sink? Where do we go from there?

[Quasar]

It's all about nostalgia at this point. Nostalgia in items and pets. At least they haven't taken away the cool BD items or UC pets. Games were cool to have but were never super profitable by any means.

It feels like we are all just holding out for the time when TNT decides to maybe fix any of this stuff besides constantly creating more NC items. I assume they think the only way they can be profitable is by creating items that cost real money instead of NP, but that is not how they gained the player base that keeps coming back...

[j03]

To each their own.

Much of the points you highlighted I can agree to disagree with. I don't believe Flash was the core of Neopets. I feel like that opinion changes from person to person.

To me, it's about collecting and building your account through the various features around the site. You can still play the Flash games with various patching methods, or just straight up score send if you want to fill up your avatar and trophy collection.

A bunch of the bigger games like KQ, Invasion of Meridell, LC, Bilge Dice were removed. Though I try and believe some will make a return eventually, I also acknowledge a lot of other bigger games are still functional and working well. All of the cumulative high score card games like Pyramids and Solitaire, Neggsweeper, NeoQuest II, Sewage Surfer, and so on.

The layout has changed and while I did not like what was in front of me in the beginning, I've grown to not think about disliking the interface. It's actually something I've adapted to easily over time.

The social aspect is at the top regarding Neopets for me. It introduced a huge playerbase I can interact with. It's not as big as it used to be, but it's still pretty big. And people are always feeling a kind of online nostalgia and eventually circle back to check the game... sometimes staying longer than planned.

So what I'm trying to say is, you can live your life looking at the glass half empty, or half full.

Edit:

Responding to more points...

I always hear the BD is "broken". Is it really? Our bot still does my daily battles for me. Though, it would be nice if they could tidy it up and finish some of the features they promised us years ago.

The economy on the site is mainly driven by illegal purchases offsite, whether it’s items or NP. There’s one or two people controlling the economy basically, and the rest of the users are buying items and NP...

Pause. Please provide proof of these claims. Major cap, IMO.

[I_royalty_I]

"JumpStart (or whatever entity they’ve moved to now) can so easily just make a few basic fixes and get things going."

^I'd say that is easier said than done. They might seem like easy fixes from the outside looking in, but there's a tremendous amount of code that all works together. There are definitely fixes they can make, but they might not be that easy. I'd certainly like it if they were to use their resources to make those fixes a reality. Even if they just focused on the battledome, that would bring a lot of activity back. People would have a reason to train and participate.

There's a lot still going for the site, but there is a lot missing. I guess we just have to make the most of it until /maybe/ something changes.

[goodnightmoon]

I do understand your sentiments.

I think, for me personally, I don't take it that seriously. I do agree with several of your points about how frustrating some of the less-functional corners of the site can be. However, I enjoy a lot of the social aspects of it. The "camaraderie" is a big part of it for me, and I just kind of take the site at face value. I've made on- and off-site friends that I'm grateful to have.

The lack of flash games is a downer, sure. I'm just bummed that I didn't get the game avatars while I had the chance. But there are so many other ways to engage with the site that it's not really a thing that takes up space in my mind.

It is very unfortunate that the larger parent companies that Neo has been housed in have not valued it like the player base has. But that's... well, not surprising.

I hope they do continue to move forward in ways that aren't money-making projects like NC, however, I'm just glad we still have the site we DO have.

[Alister]

Are you playing for anything other than the nostalgia hit?

I have nostalgia about Neo's old days and ridiculous pet roleplays and being in guilds and such, things I haven't done in over a decade. What I love most about Neopets hasn't ever changed though, it's a fun forum for making creative content. I've always been so enamored with the idea of people taking these blank slate pets and creating characters for them. I used to fucking LOVE drawing my pets, even though I wasn't particularly good at it, and it was a very prominent hobby of mine from middle school through college because Neo gave me a forum to show my characters to other players. Once I got in the professional workforce I abandoned Neo altogether until a friend pestered me to come back during the pandemic. I'm so grateful she did because I hadn't realized how much I missed drawing until I picked it back up again. It's an amazing mental health thing for me, drawing feels like the complete mental opposite of my day job. Neo is still the same enticing empty canvas that gets its hooks into my brain and gets me excited to just make stuff that it was when I was a kid. I bought a pet from someone this week with a name I *love* and my brain has been buzzing with character and design ideas so I'll be writing and drawing instead of binging TV or something equally unfulfilling (for me)

[BryanCranston]

Neo would have to be bought out by a real neo enthusiast in order for any changes to be made. It just doesn't make sense for them to allocate resources to fix a site that generates such little profit for a company.

[Cocobutter]

I've always loved playing Neopets, and though I've taken a lot of hiatuses throughout my time on the site, I always come back. It's one of my core interests, and as a neurodivergent person my interests don't change much and tend to stay fairly obsessive. (Just my experience, of course everyone is different.)

Obviously the site is very broken, but it doesn't hinder my enjoyment much. I do miss things like KQ and Habi though, and I do wish the site could be fixed. I am hopeful that whoever will be managing the site from now on will do a better job and make more income (in ways that the community will like) so they can hire more employees to be able to work on the site more.

On their podcast, they said they only have around 20 employees and they are all remote workers. And I'm sure it's a huge job, and I will take a guess and say Neopets' code is probably a huge mess, just referencing the limitations that users have with their lookups and pages.

Also, if I worked for TNT, I'd be super uninspired to do much for the community if I'm being honest. So many people are hella toxic and rude, it'd be entirely thankless if they weren't being paid. This doesn't excuse things such as the atrocious customer service that lots of people receive, but you guys know what I mean, I think. (Such as NCC screaming over evERYTHING that happens involving NC, PC's doomsday freaking out over everything, etc) Some things are justified to be frustrated about to be sure, but a lot of the hate they get is pretty severe and unfair for what they are complaining about imo.

That kind of turned into a tangent, sorry XD

[Alister]

Neo would have to be bought out by a real neo enthusiast in order for any changes to be made. It just doesn't make sense for them to allocate resources to fix a site that generates such little profit for a company.

do we know how much profit Neopets makes? I'm super curious now that you mention it. I'd love to know what their margin percent is...I would guess it to actually be pretty high given NC sales and Premium probably have excellent margins depending on how well the artists are compensated (which I assume is unfairly low)

[Infected]

To each their own.

Much of the points you highlighted I can agree to disagree with. I don't believe Flash was the core of Neopets. I feel like that opinion changes from person to person.

Pause. Please provide proof of these claims. Major cap, IMO.

I can see that point of view too. And like I said, even with all of my issues with it I still continue playing and building my account as well.

I don't have any concrete proof, but we all know there's a huge secondary marketplace which it's likely most big accounts and various small accounts have dabbled with. What I'm trying to say is most of the accounts selling big items are relatively new. There's like 6 or 7 different suap buying and selling threads on the Neoboards. Now for arguments sake if all those accounts were 100% legit, I still look at them suspiciously, which I'm sure happens to my account as well. Which then again makes me want to keep a low profile in the community on Neopets.

And while we can say there's always been cheating on neopets, what I was trying to say is we go back mainly for the nostalgia - maybe not all of us - but a lot of us, but there's not much of the nostalgia left on there. Like you said, you can still play the flash games by by patching or score sending to get trophies and avatars, but again that's because the site is broken. The bot does the daily battling for us, but again, if you are actually into the battledome, the opponents don't get any stronger, and aside from the daily drops, there's nothing rewarding really in it.

If you collect stamps/avatar items, someones just bought them with actual money, which kind of lessens the value of doing it legit or illegit.

Again these are just my personal views, which is why I opened this debate to see other views, and yours do make a lot of sense and put things in a very different perspective, which is great!