Powerpets vs Neopets. THE first move

[vinylraven]

People say all kinds of nasty things about politians and celebrities but no lawsuits are filed. It's because once you enter the public view as someone "famous" people are allowed to criticize you, your actions, etc. No matter how horrible and slandaerous as it may be, it is not something you can sue over.

They (PP) didn't name names, so it's just implied that they ARE referring to Neopets. They could go to court and say that they meant some other Virtual Pets website and Neopets, Inc is just jumping to arrogant conclusions.

It just occured to me that since it's written, it's considered liable not slander (which is spoken).

I could be very horribly wrong about this- I am not a lawyer or an aspiring one but am a Forensic Science/Criminal justice major. *shrugs*

i think you're right, actually. although i'm obviously no authority

although about your first paragraph, im not sure if that's always the case, because if a tabloid publishes something horribly slanderous about a celebrity, i think it is within their right to sue. of course i'm not sure either, hehe. (and im not talking about this PP situation, obviously that's not a lawsuit situation)

Last edited by vinylraven on Tue Dec 07, 2004 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[davthocao2]

Seriously, why did Adam choose to sell Neopets? If Adam was still the owner of Neopets, he'd still make profit, and the site would be better than it is now. Bleh, I just can't imagine why ANYONE would sell a site to Doug Dohring, who was also the owner of OpinionSurveys... =/

[coming2atvnearu]

This can be compared to the famous GM vs. Microsoft list that General Motors (allegedly) put out after Bill Gates (allegedly) criticised GM for not keeping up with technology.
[url]
http://www.ajokes.com/jokes/272.html[/url]

There's one major difference.

PP's wasn't funny.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cheap shots, a punch in the gut and a stab in the back for good measure... as long as (here's the clincher) its funny.

There's a difference between a sizziling witty retort and a whiny kid crying about how the other bigger kids won't play with him on the playground (see also: Canada, international affairs)

Not saying that they don't have valid points, because they do and I agree with them on several matters, but due to their conduct I would never associate myself with them (see also: Democrats... while you're at it see also:Republicans)

I would personally have never released it unless it was a funny, smart piece that was something more than an "oooh, did you see what they did" whiny piece of envy stained garbage.

Last edited by coming2atvnearu on Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[ProfessorRemusMoonyLupin]

That is so utterly idiotic. And they are so much a neopets ripoff, I used to play there(for like two weeks), but decided it wasn't that good and was rather boring how it was almost just like Neopets except the things they changed to keep from getting sued. It's like if you took, let's say, Harry Potter and made a story about a girl that goes to a wizarding school in Ireland called Pigsfeet Academy of Sorcerous Education.

The books that actually taught you about how to own real pets were pretty interesting though.

Adopt one of our cute pets waiting for an owner and start your journey to conquer BarkChem. Taken hostage by the evil Padam Snide, many pets are believed to be experimented on. Can you help save them?

Hmmmm.... This seems somewhat familiar, I just can't put my finger on it...
(Okay, I might be wrong right there though. I'm going to have to remember my login... Ehh, I don't feel like going back in there... Somebody else do it...)

[Waking Reality]

Hmm... didn't Dr. Sloth take Grundos hostage on Kreludor and experiment on them to make them into mutants to help him take over Neopia? o.0;

I do think that this is a common theme: a race or group of beings are taken hostage by a dastardly villan and turned into mindless/superpowerful/mutated soliders/minions/slaves in order to take over the world?

I personally do not like the wording of those 2 sentences, or rather how they chose to write the sentences. I think it's sound better a different way but that's just the writer in me. ^^;

[Twisted Sanity]

I just had a look at Powerpets, and IMO it looks unorganised and kinda messy. I made an account, just to see the message myself, and I think, like many other people here, it was extremely childish.

Satires are one thing, but going out of your way to bag out somethine someone has spent years working on is something completely different. What do PP think they're doing? This isn't a rap war or anything! It's just Virtual Pet sites for goodness sake!

TNT probably won't respond to it. Well maybe they might hint something very subtly, like they did with the Pink Poogle Toy But all-in-all I think this was a very childish and immature move on PP's part. It's naturally okay to be angry because everyone belives that they copied NP, but blatantly insulting a competitior isn't going to help your business, thats for sure.

[Pero]

No offensee to anyone but am I among the minority that isn't spazzing out over this? You now, this is a satire. I really wouldn't call it a cheap-shot, which is considerably harsh.
I mean, why hasn't the Pink Poogle Toy's description been brought up? Don't you think that's a bit equal in the "cruel" humor of the Powerpets article?

who's "spazzing out?" the pink poogle toy description was in good humour, this article obviously wasn't.

Maybe "spazzing out" was the wrong phrase for it...

[bgryph]

This year we discovered that paying search engines and traffic rank monitors to keep other sites off the charts is really a great tactic. While they might notice increased volume on their servers, indicating an increased amount of visitors, we will still be able to show our sponsors that we are the only player in the game. We will increase funds towards this goal, despite the fact that it will have no advantage towards you, the player.

My guess is that this is the heart of the issue right here. It suggests to me that Powerpets believes -- rightly or wrongly -- that Neopets is using its influence as the 500 lb. gorilla of virtual pet sites to undermine its competitors.

I'm not saying this is true -- I have no way of knowing that -- but from this statement it sounds like Powerpets believes it to be true and is feeling bitter about it.

[Magica]

I have an account, but rarely to I check it. If I remember correctly a former Neopets user is the artist for the site.

[Meimaireina]

I feel bad for those article writers. Jealousy is a horrid emotion.

[matchbow]

Well i'm surprised that they'd do that. Powerpets has an ongoing plot but they seem to use it only to get more users. and you get bored of it so easily until all you do is rs 24/7 like i did. The users are real bitter and seem to be composed primarily of neohaters and people with frozen neo accounts who don't pursue getting them unfrozen.

I doubt thay could be sued and lose over that article. If they had any sense, they'd take it off and apologize in order to save them the loss of hundreds of PP users who also play neopets

[sciencetv]

(...)If they had any sense, they'd take it off and apologize in order to save them the loss of hundreds of PP users who also play neopets

The only problem is the part 'If they had any sense'. If they had any sense, would they actually not put it up at all. It is a cheap shot that tried to be funny but dreadfully failed. Note the un-witty sarcasim(Spelling's wrong...) such as 'For only $39.99 per week, you can enjoy premium play!' and 'In order to keep the site free, we decided that from now on, we are going to place LARGE banners covering HALF your screen on EVERY screen.'. This lost the last bit of faith I had in PP, and if anyone told me the link I would gladly delete my account.

What a cheap shot to NP, in my opinion.

It's sad how large sites like this(It is a large site, it's just because NP is a huge site) can be so sensless(Sp?) and stupid to do this. Wonder how many users they lost.

Also, you know this is directed(While patched up for legal concerns) at NP because, well, what site just recently had a layout changed and sells toys?

Also. You know they check NP regularly because how would they know that the yused the term industry standards? I, IMO, think PP is a well patched up copy of NP.

Just my two cents.

[toy]

I signed up and I am totally clueless on figuring out thing. Hehe.

I signed up thru the link of the creator of this thread.

[meowth1982]

I have never had a high opinion of Powerpets. In my opinion the site is hard to navigate, I do not like their art, and now this little article of theirs is my last straw. They are very much being petty, and it's not exactly a good way to keep a buisness.

[ausen]

For all everybody's said here, you're missing a major point...

Neopets treats everyone like crap.

Seriously. They do. Every last member. Shall we count the ways?

1. Glitches. ALL THE TIME. TP glitches, BD glitches, ALWAYS GLITCHES! What do you get when a glitch happens? If you're lucky, they'll acknowledge it. IF YOU'RE LUCKY. Your millions in items? Nah.

2. Downtime. Unscheduled. All the time. DFM Pteri? All the time.

3. Scammers, cheaters, hackers, etc. More often than not? You get screwed over because of them.

4. Ads, and lots of them. Big, freaking HUGE ads, on every page.

I don't know how people play Neo anymore. They treat the players like crap. Seriously, they don't give a darn about you, the individual player. They care about the players as a giant number, but that's it. They make MILLIONS on those stuffed toys and other stuff the sell. Cute? Sure. Overpriced? Like everything else. What does that get you? Servers that crash and lose you your stuff?

Say what you want about PowerPets as a game (and I'll freely admit I think the artwork is better on Neo)...they treat the players like people. they fix the problems and compensate people who lose because of them. I've NEVER had unscheduled downtime there, ever, in almost a year of playing. They don't toss ads at me.

Why do I play PowerPets? Because Neo treated me like crap, and I don't care to have that anymore.

http://www.powerpets.com/signup.asp?rfID=339450 sign up today. Best decision you'll make

And for those who say it's libel, it isn't. Public figures and corporations (like, saaaaaay...Neopets) are held to different standards for libel. In order for it to be libel, PP would have had to have malicious intent AND caused tangible (read: measurable) damage. Same reason Jay Leno gets away with making jokes about people ;)

And for everyone who said it's a cheap shot...

did you consider the things Neo does to PP? Naturally, you don't hear about these things, but that doesn't mean they don't happen ;)

Don't believe me? Consider this...PP has over 300k active users (they ice all the cheaters and actually DON'T count them in the user total. nice to see a legit amount ;x)...gets well over a mil pageviews a day. I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot.

Search engines rank sites by the traffic on the sites. PP may not be number one, but it's safe to say they're in the top 10. Google has them fourth, Ask.com has them 6th. They aren't even in the top 10 on Yahoo. Not even the top FIFTY. You read that right. Coincidence? Unlikely. Neo "asking" Yahoo to bump them? Well....

Lest we forget the countless times Neo's mailed PP complaining about things PP has done.

Anyone who's read the full article would know that there was a nice header attached to it. "Quite often we receive emails or questions on the boards claiming we "copied" some other site. In light of recent changes on a larger *other* site, we thought it would be fun to show you what Power Pets *could* be like if we actually *did* copy anyone else:"

The article was in response to all of the users who claim PP copied Neo. the Creators were making it quite clear...they weren't going to copy Neopets. They DIDN'T copy Neopets. The goals of the site are different and they aren't going to try and do the things Neopets does. That simple.

Say all you want, that it's a low blow or whatever. If you judge based on the one side of the story you know...your loss. Me? I'm never going back to the crap I put up with on Neo. Enjoy losing your H4Ks in unequip glitches and your 500 Dubloon Coins from TP glitches.

Inrun Edit: Please don't double post. Use the edit button located in the top right of your post box.