Declining Numbers
Wed Jun 30, 2010 9:55 pm
I was browsing on Jellyneo, looking for older news for fun, and I came up with this news post.
Pretty much explains the questions I was going to ask, but how many virtual worlds will there be so there wouldn't be enough players to support all of the sites?
The State of Virtual Worlds
Posted by Dave
Posted on April 11, 2010, 10:49 pm NST
We just came across an interesting article in the New York Times that discusses Kung Fu Panda World. The article was published today, April 11th.
Look! I have my own Kung Fu Pandaphant Puppet!
The article announces DreamWorks' entrance into the realm of virtual online worlds with their release of Kung Fu Panda World. For as little as $5.95 a month, you can live in the world inspired by the movie Kung Fu Panda and learn kung fu. (Now where's Illy? She'll be pleased.)
The article connects back to Neopets by reporting some startling facts about the site's visitors. According to the article, Neopets logged 2.1 million unique visitors in March 2010, which is a 25% loss compared to March 2009. In other words, in the past year, Neopets has lost about 25% of its fanbase.
Similarly, Webkinz suffered a 58% drop with 2.7 million unique visitors logged (still more visitors than Neopets, however), and Club Penguin suffered a 7% loss with 6.7 million unique visitors logged in March 2010. Strangely, Webkinz and Club Penguin both have more pay-to-play features than Neopets does.
The question remains... where in the world did all of those people go? And why did they leave? And specifically, why did all of those visitors leave Neopets? Discuss in our comments.
Pretty much explains the questions I was going to ask, but how many virtual worlds will there be so there wouldn't be enough players to support all of the sites?
Re: Declining Numbers
Fri Jul 02, 2010 3:59 pm
Well, that's sort of an odd question. Just like chat rooms, there will always be SOME users who prefer specific chat rooms/bulletin boards over others. For example, I frequent a football board that has maybe 10 regular members.
As a biologist, I'm a huge fan of the idea of adaptive landscapes - you can draw a three-d (or more) chart that shows what the peak fitness of any living thing, in a specific environment, is. If the environment never changes, living things will eventually move up the "hills" to the peak fitness.
Of course, just like the InterNetz, there will be shifts in the positions of the peak - basically, the hill moves out from under the living thing. Same here. Neopets was on top of its game, but things changed - some self-imposed (four ad boxes? really?), and some were simply shifts in the landscape, and the hill moved out from under Neopets.
Neopets has the distinct advantage of being fully playable at zero cost. That will always be helpful. But if they want to move back up the hill, they'll have to make some changes.
As a biologist, I'm a huge fan of the idea of adaptive landscapes - you can draw a three-d (or more) chart that shows what the peak fitness of any living thing, in a specific environment, is. If the environment never changes, living things will eventually move up the "hills" to the peak fitness.
Of course, just like the InterNetz, there will be shifts in the positions of the peak - basically, the hill moves out from under the living thing. Same here. Neopets was on top of its game, but things changed - some self-imposed (four ad boxes? really?), and some were simply shifts in the landscape, and the hill moved out from under Neopets.
Neopets has the distinct advantage of being fully playable at zero cost. That will always be helpful. But if they want to move back up the hill, they'll have to make some changes.
Re: Declining Numbers
Thu Jul 08, 2010 3:33 am
I had been thinking about this recently, especially seeing the Neopet "players online' stats decrease fairly substantially during non-event days.
Social networking sites, Facebook in particular can offer more than just virtual gaming sites.
I have virtually stopped playing Neo, only visit once a day to keep check of things. I use FB for the games and socialising. You do not have the same restrictions on language so it is more 'adult friendly' compared to the babification of Neo.
The game applications on FB offer more variety and can still be competitve with neighbours if you enjoy that aspect of it.
Social networking sites, Facebook in particular can offer more than just virtual gaming sites.
I have virtually stopped playing Neo, only visit once a day to keep check of things. I use FB for the games and socialising. You do not have the same restrictions on language so it is more 'adult friendly' compared to the babification of Neo.
The game applications on FB offer more variety and can still be competitve with neighbours if you enjoy that aspect of it.
Re: Declining Numbers
Mon Jul 19, 2010 1:32 am
I think one of the big factors as to why Neopets is declining is because quite frankly, the Neopets I see today is really not too much from the Neopets that I saw 8 years ago when I first started, other than a few "major" UI upgrades over the years (sidebar, avatars, dressing your pets up, etc.). The site still doesn't use AJAX, so it's kind of awkward still seeing form submission, it's still primarily a click based "game"; even the battledome isn't Flashified or AJAXified yet. As far as the social networking goes, both MySpace and Facebook blow it out of the water, and you can't even find people you know easily on it. As far as pet customization goes, if you want the cool pet colors, you either have to get extremely lucky with the lab ray, get an extremely rare quest, or have the millions of NP to be able to afford the rarer paint brushes. As far as equipment goes, you need to have millions of NP once again to be able to afford the really good equipment. Unfortunately, the flash game NP payout is really poor and won't get you the kind of funds you need, and restocking is something that takes quite a fast connection, quick and accurate reflexes, memorization, and time. The great difficulty in gaining NP was one big thing that bored me about Neopets.
The other thing that really killed Neopets for me was that it's so incredibly hard to level up and strengthen your pet for the Battledome and to be able to make the amount of NP necessary for the good equips. You can really only level up and get betters equips through expenditure of NP, and you get absolutely no reward from the battles you fight in the Battledome (no experience, no equip drops, nothing). You look at a game like MapleStory (a game that a lot of people switch over to), and it works like a regular RPG where you get experience and equip drops from monsters, and you can progress through the game over time no matter if you're rich or not. I was always frustrated that I got stuck on Defender of Neopia mission 10 because I could never afford the Neggs or Equips to beat the Snowbeast.
Overall I think Neopets is a good site for kids to get started on online gaming with, but that's kind of about it. It's sort of a web 1.0 site that somehow is surviving in a web 2.0 world. I think they're going to need to move a lot more content over to Flash and implement AJAX if they want to start bringing some of their userbase back. Another thing that would help greatly would be to lower the price of the Hidden Tower weapons, increase the number of Smuggler's Cove weapons, and increase the amount of decent weapons that restock in normal shops. Also, if they would implement an equip/codestone/dubloon drop in Battledome where each battle you would win a handful of codestones or dubloons and occasionally an equip, that would be awesome. Especially if they improved the rewards as the base level of the monster got higher. They could put a lock on the Battledome codestones and dubloons so they couldn't be traded/sold, thus keeping the market from completely deflating, yet leave the equips open to trade being as they'd be rarer. They could put special bonuses on the random event codestones, so they'd be worth more than the regular Battledome codestones, which would still make them desirable to buy, as you could level your pet faster with them. And so on and so forth.... I just think there's a ton of room for improvement.
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The other thing that really killed Neopets for me was that it's so incredibly hard to level up and strengthen your pet for the Battledome and to be able to make the amount of NP necessary for the good equips. You can really only level up and get betters equips through expenditure of NP, and you get absolutely no reward from the battles you fight in the Battledome (no experience, no equip drops, nothing). You look at a game like MapleStory (a game that a lot of people switch over to), and it works like a regular RPG where you get experience and equip drops from monsters, and you can progress through the game over time no matter if you're rich or not. I was always frustrated that I got stuck on Defender of Neopia mission 10 because I could never afford the Neggs or Equips to beat the Snowbeast.
Overall I think Neopets is a good site for kids to get started on online gaming with, but that's kind of about it. It's sort of a web 1.0 site that somehow is surviving in a web 2.0 world. I think they're going to need to move a lot more content over to Flash and implement AJAX if they want to start bringing some of their userbase back. Another thing that would help greatly would be to lower the price of the Hidden Tower weapons, increase the number of Smuggler's Cove weapons, and increase the amount of decent weapons that restock in normal shops. Also, if they would implement an equip/codestone/dubloon drop in Battledome where each battle you would win a handful of codestones or dubloons and occasionally an equip, that would be awesome. Especially if they improved the rewards as the base level of the monster got higher. They could put a lock on the Battledome codestones and dubloons so they couldn't be traded/sold, thus keeping the market from completely deflating, yet leave the equips open to trade being as they'd be rarer. They could put special bonuses on the random event codestones, so they'd be worth more than the regular Battledome codestones, which would still make them desirable to buy, as you could level your pet faster with them. And so on and so forth.... I just think there's a ton of room for improvement.
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