Antonio (03-30-2019),Brickhaus (03-30-2019),bry (03-30-2019),Corliss (04-02-2019),Extraterrestrial (03-30-2019),Meepit (03-31-2019),nrv (03-30-2019),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (03-30-2019),Ruff (03-30-2019)
Two nights ago I caught the count on midnight and it was roughly 450 members right at 11:59 PM (it clears at 12).
Our community has been a "not so actively posting" community since day 1. I would say 80% of the time people will post solely for the purpose of ranking up, and one of the main drives for this is to be able to use the bots here (though we do have a large group now that enjoy posting for the community, engaging and making discussion). I'm surprised we still have people actively posting every day after 7+ years. Happy to say this forum has somehow turned from strictly cheating/botting into having a division for people to come and talk, build up their account, make friends, and generally just want to be around/lurk. I'm 100% okay with that.
As you pointed out, people lurk a LOT. Lurking is still activity in some form. It's traffic.
As long as there is content, the die hard Neopets fans are always going to be around. Heck, even the people that casually play. You have no idea how many people I've witnessed post on IG (discovered via neotag/neopets hashtags) that they came back to Neo after X years because they either saw some merch, someone talking about the game, or saw my clraik account follow them and remind them the fact that Neopets still exists... and their favorite games are still there for them to play.
Like I said, if there's content, people will come. Though Neopets has been declining in traffic for nearly 10 years now, the game is still around. I've said this way too many times.... Neopets was the #1 website at one point, and the #1 game site for years... that record enables the game to always have traffic given it is still hosted on some server we can visit.
As long as the game is around for us to play, it will always have people doing their restocking, gaming, collecting something out of the hundreds of different things you can collect on the site (trophies/avs/items/pets/etc).
With that said, the economy won't look the same now as it did (auctions/trading/shops) when the game was super popular.
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Lastly, I don't know how but our community continues to GROW in activity (people logging in) every single year. I have the AWStats to see this! And if you want, feel free to scrape the daily # of logged members every day (nothing else ) and you'll see the average being 400+.
If you think logging in is not considered engaging... sorry, but you're wrong. People still do things on this site even if they aren't posting. And this 100% applies to Neopets as well.
(you need an account to see links)
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[02/24/2013] Stealth CORE is made into the first standalone Neopets auto-player.
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Antonio (03-30-2019),Brickhaus (03-30-2019),bry (03-30-2019),Corliss (04-02-2019),Extraterrestrial (03-30-2019),Meepit (03-31-2019),nrv (03-30-2019),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (03-30-2019),Ruff (03-30-2019)
I browse the forum regularly, but I generally refrain from commenting unless I feel that I have something substantial to contribute. This place is plenty active, but perhaps some of us are struggling to find the right place and time to chime in. I've made some nice friends though, and I'm in contact with them regularly!
This community is largely what you make of it, and its level of engagement certainly can't be concluded by the count of lurkers versus commentators on a single thread that poses a specific kind of question.
Antonio (03-30-2019),Brickhaus (03-30-2019),Corliss (04-02-2019),Extraterrestrial (03-30-2019),♥ Harvest Goddess ♥ (03-30-2019),j03 (03-30-2019),nrv (03-30-2019),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (03-30-2019),Styx (03-30-2019)
You hit the nail on the head. Long time lurker here. You wouldn't know I'm around nearly every day for months at a time. Same goes for Neopets. I keep my mouth shut online in general most of the time to avoid trouble or conflict. I'm too old for that sh*t.
Also, this is a cheating site, and the more you cheat, the more you try to keep your head down. Or at least I do, anyway. Probably why I've never been frozen.
I blame the decline of the site on being severely outdated in general and TNT's destructive attitudes towards players over the years more than anything else.
Corliss (04-02-2019),♥ Hydrapple ♥ (03-30-2019),j03 (03-30-2019),Meepit (03-31-2019),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (03-30-2019),Ruff (03-30-2019),Styx (03-30-2019)
I never post anything anymore on the boards because you can get frozen for saying almost anything. It's kind of TNT's fault if the boards outside the PC aren't very active.
For instance, I once got frozen for making a joke to a friend that TNT considered harassment. My buddy also got frozen for telling people about the right click trick on Goparokko. :|
Ya i feel u.
Which was my point to begin with, the economy isn’t the same because the items that are in demand ex: stamps or rare bd items are only affordable by a small minority of whatever amount of people are left in the playerbase.
The rest of the items in the game, aren’t really worth restocking lol.
I mean it depends tho.
I just liked dealing with the high end stuff and it was either shells or the same group of people dealing in those items.
400 daily log ins is a lot for a neopets forum. TNT might as well make this a fansite.