Neopets Downhill???

[purifiedirt]

i totally agree with medusa. neopets is coming up with too much, not completing them, not having the disk space for everything. plus, in my opinion the new neopets so ugly! too detailed, maybe. i mean, look at the chia! or kacheek or usul! cuteness multiplied!

[the_mongoose2020]

I find needs to communicate more with users. That's all and maybe be a little more flexible with freezing poeple and givving accounts back that have been scammed.

[firesprings]

I have to say they've absolutely gone downhill. It's funny how our standards keep getting lower and yet there is still so much dissatisfaction from the site. Their customer service record is freakishly bad and yet people still want to say a kind word - it completely baffles me.

[Waking Reality]

THe thing is, Neopets is international and bigger than anyone could've dreamed than it was back in Year 1. There were less games, less staff and most importantly - less members. The member base has just exploded and I doubt that they have enough staff to quickly and individually handle every individual complaint and bug report in a fairly short amount of time. I remember getting assistance within minutes when I originally had a scammer in my account while I was fighting to get back in to get my password back in the day. But now, I don't think that they would be able to do that just with the sheer volume of members.

I also don't blame them for the influx of sponsors, it is a free website and paying your all of the staff members, buying more servers, domain name registration, copyrights, tradmarks, rent, electricity, all cost money. Before, you could only get certain items by registering with a sponsor like the totems in order to visit Mystery Island or the discount cards. The sponsor games are a good way of encouraging sponsors to join, because if there is a daily NP reward for members - they'll have more exposure to the product and may actually buy it.

With the Secret deodarant game; the game was actually a quiz on famous historical and modern day women that are important figures which actually makes the content of the game educational in a sense. Kinda like someone might not have known that a forerunner for Women's voting rights was Susan B. Anthony or that the woman considered to be the founder of modern Nursing was Florence Nightngale. Yes, it was a deodarant advertisement BUT since the target consumers were young women it does make sense to have a game featuring strong women throughout history and in modern culture. But if it wasn't an advertisement, there really would not have been a reason for that type of game content to be on the website.

Little things like sponsor games, ad banners, help keep the site running for free. I don't see anything wrong for rewarding people who support the website through paid services or even by visiting the sponsors. If there is something wrong with Neopets giving the Premium members more perks, it would also be wrong in the same sense for Neopets to reward members who buy real life merchandise with a Secret Item Activation code to get rare and limited edition items that cannot be bouhgt in game unless from another user. It's a perk, but if the perk wasn't there, then less people might want to actually check out the service. After all, if you can play for free- what would be the point in paying for a premium account?

I personally like the sponsor games over the old system in which you had to sign-up for a sponsor service to see anything out of it. That old method still continues to SPAM my old e-mails accounts.

I do miss the old days before inflation and the faster turn around, since it was a smaller community - but I do like the advances the game has made. There are more worlds, more games, more things to do, and the graphics have gotten better. Progress just means change, and with a large community, you cannot make everyone happy.

There is also the matter of the constant changes in the Terms of Service, which is mostly self-protection on the staff's part in order to avoid any chance of offensive content. I do believe that when you sign-up to agree to those terms of service and that you understand that Neopets, Inc can change their TOS without notification to the users and can terminate your account at any time if they feel that it violates their TOS without any explanation.

Unlike real life legislation, ex post facto violations from TOS changes on a privately owned website can affect you. It doesn't seem fair, but it's their site. It's part of what you agree to when you agree to their TOS and they pretty much can change the law whenever they feel the need to. I am pretty sure that the changes to the TOS are just clearing up some rules that are unspoken (like common law) and to further clarify rules that are vague. They actually state some of the topics that they consider offensive in the TOS, and how many accounts one user can have now. This is also the reason why you must be over 13 years old to sign-up for an account without your parents' consent, because making an account is agreeing to the TOS and is entering into a legal agreement with Neopets, Inc that you will not sue them over anything you might find on the site and that you will obey their rules, and are accepting the fact that they will enforce their rules as they see fit.

[avvelenare]

I don't think neopets is going downhill, considering how many users it has, and how many new ones it gets every day. The things that people complain about the most ("unfair" freezing, sponsor ads, banner ads, sponsor games, downtime, cheaters, spammers, etc.) could be gotten rid of quite easily. Just plunk down your $9.95 a month to play, and most of those problems would vanish along with 75% of the other users. As long as all you have to do is make up a new email address to make an account, neo will have millions of users, some of them behaving badly, and need to have outside financing to run the site. If neopets ever stopped trying to overcome the problems that are inevitable with running a site with millions of users, then I would say it's gone downhill. I actually think I enjoy neopets more now than I did when I started playing two years ago.

[stampsyne]

It had definately changed since when I first started playing. Not all is good, not all is bad.