For the last few years, since JumpStart’s ownership, Neo has been so fucking difficult. The year-long lag episodes, the permanent closing of major site components that players loved (like Habitarium, Keyquest, Petpet Park, etc), the laying off of every damn artist on the site (and it has ALWAYS shown), the constant broken ass events or events just not happening at all, multiple instances of art theft, lying without remorse to players (people glossed over the “we can’t make UCs… actually we can but only for staff… OKAY we can for everyone but only if you pay microtransactiona” sooo quick), etc etc. It’s been a nightmare & I have been stupid enough at points to try to defend it and stay optimistic. I stayed optimistic when I literally couldn‘t play for months because that one purple cloud event broke every webpage for me and caused it to lag so much it would crash my browser. I downloaded all the dumb shovelware apps and really gave them an earnest shot. Maybe Neopets Scrabble™️ will be fun! Lmao.
I’ve been a player since 2003. I still have my account from 2003. I still have pets that are nearly 20 years old. Some of my most beloved OCs, including ones who have been featured in work I’ve published locally and plan to put into upcoming novels and such, originated from Neopets. My parents faxxed in the parental consent forms for me for my birthday when I was 11. I always bought shitloads of merch. When the Darkest Faerie came out I begged my parents to buy me a whole PlayStation 2 for Christmas JUST for that. I ate the Neopets CEREAL religiously until it was discontinued. I had Neopets merch I don’t even see people talk about, like Neopets school supplies lol. I have Neopets Zazzle shirts from middle school that I still wear as pajamas. I have spent an embarrassing amount on NC and I will even admit to resorting to black market illegal Neopet purchases in the past, not the scummy account hacking kind but the “hey, you have more NP than me and I want this item, I’ll give you some cash for it” LMAO. Hell, as annoyed as I am at TNT for flat out lying about UCs, I even said myself that I think that making UCs a microtransaction is a good idea and to be honest were it not for the NFT garbage I’d have most likely bought some. I also went on about how cute the Neopets Pride merch was! Even if just a rainbow capitalism cash grab, I thought it was really nice. I have IRL friends who bought some. I have always been “a consumer” when it comes to this site. I love it.
When Neopets first unrolled the HTML5 site redesign I even defended THAT. I thought it looked a little Fisher Price-y but I don’t think it’s awful. I like that it feels more immersive, I like that it’s pet-centric, I think it’s generally user friendly and cute. It’s not perfect, but it’s a respectable beta that makes the site feels dynamic in a way I can get behind. But my fucking God, as a whole this site has gone to shit and I don’t feel like it’s salvageable unless it was basically restarted from scratch. A hard reset with whole new upper management. There’s just no fixing this.
I keep saying it and keep saying it but I am just fucking shocked that a site entirely based on VIRTUAL PETS still cannot LOAD. THE. PETS. The pets themselves, except for on the main page and in their static “miniature” version on the side of the unconverted page layout, have not been converted from Flash. My own pet’s lookup looks like this:
But every week they’re able to release new microtransactions and lootboxes? Give me a break. This shit is insane.
We still can’t play the hundreds of games the site boasted (also the easiest way to achieve quick currency) beside like 5 poorly converted games that hardly work. We still can’t see any of the world maps (not even a placeholder unclickable image? Like 75% of the site maps weren‘t even flash to begin with?). The pages that have been converted do not work well and often freeze and glitch, which would be understandable as the site is supposedly still in beta form but I honestly do not have faith that these smaller kinks will be worked out and fear that these issues will just go unresolved. Hacking and security breaches are still a massive, constant issue.
And I’m still hung up on the fact that this is a virtual fantasy animal site with no competent artists. We joked about the Advent Calendar’s terrible quality last year but honestly, how was that acceptable.
Small things have (IMO) signified to me for a long time that the site was dwindling. Implication from staff behind the scenes that they are barely holding things together. The downgrade to only one new pet color per pet day. The lack of new plots or events. The death of flash felt like a nail in a coffin that has led to a much more rapid and pathetic death than before. I have gone from encouraging people to try Neopets, telling them that it’s not dead and it’s still around and fun, to straight up not recommending the site. I don’t even log in anymore. I tried to find things to do while waiting for the HTML5 conversion to be “finished,” or at least made less broken, but I could not respark that excitement, especially when half the pages I was going to were inaccessible without having to Google something convoluted and go through Jellyneo or something and the pages themselves would be half-converted and covered in tombstones. It’d be ironic if it wasn’t so sad.
I’ve been saying this for awhile but it’s very clear that Neopets does not care about its userbase. I used to think maybe they were just out of touch, but I have to believe at this point that JumpStart/NetDragon truly does not give a damn. TNT maybe — I do think this is largely an upper management issue. But it’s just not tolerable anymore. They will listen to some amount of pressure & frankly know how to placate people with short term friendly gestures, like lifting the LGBT ban or removing dated offensive terminology from certain pages. These are appreciated, but what do they mean on a larger level when the site is still lying to users, stealing from people, and refusing to listen to any substantial criticism that would require more effort to fix? What does it mean when JumpStart chooses to prioritize selling THOUSANDS of NFTs over converting THE PETS THEMSELVES on the actual damn site.
The NFTs are just too much for me at this point. I can’t continue to engage with this shit until/unless major changes are made. I still love Neopets for the nostalgia it gave me for like two fucking decades of my life. But I don’t really have any passion for the site anymore. I’ve moved over somewhat to PonyIsland, which is pay to play but so much better run, with a small but active player base and mod team, frequent events, just as much (if not more) customization but minus the microtransaction/lootbox nature and artificial scarcity, etc. And, y’know, I can actually see my pets. That’s a plus. Just goes to show that I will literally throw real money at websites if they can actually deliver a product that is worth it to me. Neopets has not done that for YEARS.
I really do encourage people to boycott the site. Cancel your Premium memberships. Stop buying Neocash. Get an Adblock app if you don’t use one already or (better yet) just log out for awhile. We all make fun of people who think that Neopets can die, y’all know perfectly well they’ll be fine while you’re inactive. Send in your complaints. I know that Neopets has always been Gambling For Babies but y’all can stop doing dailies for awhile in the name of Not Destroying The Environment with half assed pixels of cartoon animals bought with Monopoly money, right? Right?
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