Polygon Article: "Inside the Neopets Black Market"

[Merit]

Link: (you need an account to see links)

Full transcript:

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[motherfucker]

Thanks for sharing! I was waiting for this.

Glad to see she took the hard work people put into answering her questions seriously....

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I'm disappointed that the half-assed article was published, only shedding light on the recent UC incident and not Neopets as a whole.

Edit: I'll clean up and post what I communicated with her shortly!


Here are some important TL;DR snippets:
(Not included is the back and forth we had, just the important things which were brought up. We chatted over 2-3 days.)
Here are the big guts I thought should be driven home. In no way did I expect all of it to make an article... But there's some important things which I think were left out.

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To the others who reached out, I would be interested in reading what information you provided as well!

[♥ PrettySarcastic ♥]

Thanks for sharing! I was waiting for this.

Glad to see she took the hard work I put into answering her questions seriously....

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I'm disappointed that the half-assed article was published, only shedding light on the recent UC incident and not Neopets as a whole.

I'm glad that at least there's something out there that's factual and says CK isn't full of monsters targeting active users and passing their accounts around like Pokemon cards, but there's always a lot more that could be said.

I'd be interested in what you said to the author that didn't make it into this follow up, maybe others would too.

(I didn't personally have an opportunity to chat with her for a number of reasons, but in trying to keep positivity in mind I struggled to come up with something cohesive and helpful anyway.)

[Merit]

I'm glad that at least there's something out there that's factual and says CK isn't full of monsters targeting active users and passing their accounts around like Pokemon cards, but there's always a lot more that could be said.

I'd be interested in what you said to the author that didn't make it into this follow up, maybe others would too.

(I didn't personally have an opportunity to chat with her for a number of reasons, but in trying to keep positivity in mind I struggled to come up with something cohesive and helpful anyway.)

Several people I know reached out to her and gave her more info and answered more questions than any one person on Neopets could ever possibly know.
I'm hoping she makes more articles talking about some of these things! A lot was said to her about the current state of management, the state of the playerbase, the support, etc.

[kittyray]

I'm also kind of disappointed in this.

I felt really excited (and even kind of proud) to reach out and get her in touch with clraik people and wanted to see something cool. Maybe it was doomed because anything discussed would be overshadowed by the big happenings the other day. I don't know.

I didn't say too much to her personally about my experience (I'm more a behind-the-scenes type), so I can't really claim I wish a certain thing I said was included, but I tried.

[Erik.]

I'm just nitpicking on a small part of the article but:

the rift between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” players has continued to widen

There is no rift. You can't convince me that the far majority of users on Neo hasn't cheated/played illegitimate at all during their time on the site. And besides actively cheating, there are also a lot of people who "passively" cheat, with scripts that TNT probably wouldn't accept, or by trading for nps/nc items or pets that were honestly sus, or by exploiting glitches, or by letting a family member get high scores for them, etc. etc. There is no motherfucking rift.

[motherfucker]

I'm just nitpicking on a small part of the article but:



There is no rift. You can't convince me that the far majority of users on Neo hasn't cheated/played illegitimate at all during their time on the site. And besides actively cheating, there are also a lot of people who "passively" cheat, with scripts that TNT probably wouldn't accept, or by trading for nps/nc items or pets that were honestly sus, or by exploiting glitches, or by letting a family member get high scores for them, etc. etc. There is no motherfucking rift.

I have told three players who I thought were legitimate about CK within the past week.
Two said they had bought pets and items before and joined because it looked like more fun.
One said they were a member here already.

From looking at these accounts and they way they played, I assumed they were legitimate.
You are 100% correct in your statement above.

[kittyray]

I'm just nitpicking on a small part of the article but:



There is no rift. You can't convince me that the far majority of users on Neo hasn't cheated/played illegitimate at all during their time on the site. And besides actively cheating, there are also a lot of people who "passively" cheat, with scripts that TNT probably wouldn't accept, or by trading for nps/nc items or pets that were honestly sus, or by exploiting glitches, or by letting a family member get high scores for them, etc. etc. There is no motherfucking rift.

Yeah, if anything it gets blurrier and blurrier. I don't think I've met anybody who isn't flexible on something.

[Erik.]

I have told three players who I thought were legitimate about CK within the past week.
Two said they had bought pets and items before and joined because it looked like more fun.
One said they were a member here already.

From looking at these accounts and they way they played, I assumed they were legitimate.
You are 100% correct in your statement above.

I also suspect that a lot of my Neo friends are on here. Cause they're all so nice to me
But seriously, CK is not that hard to find and for example I started coming here because I just wanted to be able to bitch and moan about TNT and users without getting penalized for it. If a user can discover r/Neopets, they can discover CK.

[Aero]

I like how Polygon once again shows they just have unknowledgeable individuals “reporting” on the hottest game trends of the moments, thus spreading at best superficial takes and at worst misinformation.

- Signed,
Still a salty AC fan

Thanks @(you need an account to see links) for posting your original email. It was nice to have it to compare to the version published.

Edit: If anyone likes longform drama write ups by people usually in the hobby, r/Hobbydrama on Reddit has been a longtime favourite stop of mine. Tread with caution on newer posts as in the last month the sub gained 7-10k people overnight and some newer posts feel more biased to me than before. Neopets has been featured there several times.