Pink Poogle Toy Forum

1. How do we know you're an actual staff member? I want proof.

2. There SHOULD be hundreds of staff working behind neopets, the sheer workload can't possibly be effectively and efficently managed by a mere 25 workers, and I'm sure the neopets corporation earns enough to finance the extra labour force.

3. 40% is probably an exaggeration, but the principle behind it holds true. Too many innocent people are frozen, far more than can be adequately accounted for by your rules and regulations, and this is something which must be publicaly addressed. Why isn't there ever any news about frozen accounts? Why are there no guidelines about what exactly can and cannot be done?

4. Brainwashing... when people are exposed to the same ads everyday there's no way they WON'T be influenced by them, no matter how few or how brief they are. It makes a invisible but indelible mark on impressionable young players, which is evidenced by the success of promotional projects (eg. McDonald's Happy Meals)

5. I'm sorry, we can't just "GET ON WITH IT" when we lose millions of neopoints from a glitch which should never have occured in the first place (if tnt were doing its job properly). Yes, its fake money, but even real money is only bits of paper. It's what it represents that makes it valuable - namely, our time and effort. These things are irreplacable, and possess infinite value which could have been utilized in innumerable other ways, but was chosen to be used at your site. You can't possibly expect us to disregard it so easily.

6.

So why does it lag so often? Either you're lying, or its too much for the current amount of staff to handle, which means not enough money is going towards maintaining the site (and benefitting users). Both are equally bad.

But anyway, you say we should treat tnt as individuals. How can we do that when there is hardly any information about these individuals and their jobs at neopets? You can't expect us to refer to you as anything more than 'a group' without at least giving us an opportunity to KNOW you as individual people - nowhere is there even a single paragraph on all of the staff members, we rarely see staff posting on the chat boards, and the news and neopian times articles never reveal anymore than basic details about you. I'm sure you all work hard, and that is to be commended, but the way things are presented to us we obviously cannot sympathise with you or appreciate your individual efforts. And that is why we criticise you so much.

I hope you come back and reply to all our messages.

I'd like to see you come back and reply as well, since none of us ever hear from any member of TNT anywhere else.

I thought some of your post was informative, but I also think some of it was promted by incomplete information about the users on PPT. First off, there has been a HUGE debate about DoA on here. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some think it's a waste of time. Myself, personally, I think it's a waste of time, because there are enough people buying expensive items on neo that a few people refusing to buy won't affect anything. And I do agree with a lot of what's been said here. I'm sorry for your gallery, truely I am, but to say that it's 'just' fake items and money is gross mistatement, at best. If it were just fake items and money, we would go on playing neo and regaining np like so many of my friends have. But it's the loss of valuable TIME spent earning those points and buying those items that can't be returned. I have since quit the site since an unnanounced rollback caused me to lose over 400 items. And it wasn't the items I was mad about, it was the fact that I spent upwards of 4 hours DAILY playing on neo, only to have it wiped away in a heartbeat. I sent several messages, and didn't get one reply. There wasn't even a blurb on the news.

And about being treated like individuals- maybe some 10-year-old kids on the boards say all kinds of nasty things about you, and maybe some people on PPT choose to bash you, but for the most part we respect the work all of you do. I, for one, have made quite a few posts here and on the neoboards talking about the things I thought TNT did good on. Every letter I ever sent in was courteous and well thought out. I never went to insult anyone, because I was aware of how hard it is to run such a huge site. But-and I'm sure you'll remember this-when a glitch hit neo that allowed anyone to see someone's email and password, there was total silence for hours before it was fixed. A few people on the BD board were warned, but not one other person, causing many of my friends, who were powerful TCers, to have their accounts stolen or frozen. It wasn't even posted in the news. Now, I think you can imagine why incidents like that could make us feel like we're not respected by TNT.


Basically, the thing which bothers me and so many of the people I've talked to, is that fact that we can spend so much time making neo the popular site it is, only to have our countless hours of work erased without even so much as a mention of what happened.

Personally, I think everything you said is an interesting point that I had never thought of before. I guess I did imagine you sitting their with your walls covered in cash, pressing the freeze button or whatever.

For me, neopets provides and interesting escape from my reality, which tends to be every bit as bizarre and prone to strange, unexplainable glitches.

I love what you do, I really do, and I hope that you carry on for may years drawing wonderful pictures and being lucky to have a job that you enjoy, while the rest of us slave at things we hate and use complaining about as a release for the crapness of our lives.

Good luck to you. *hugs*

You know, the first thing I thought when I saw who wrote the original post in this thread was, "Hooray, shroomy's back!" I might have done a little celebratory dance, but you can't prove that I did. So there.

Shroomy, you raise an interesting point about how we as a group tend to treat you as a group. It's very polarized, and I'll admit that I've been a part of it (although I'm pretty sure that I've also tried to qualify things with "although the artists work hard blah blah blah," and such).

ocean_wave, shroomy is, in fact, a member of the dreaded staff - I think anyone who's been here over the last 6 months would vouch for her. Although you, too, raise an interesting point: there should be hundreds of staffers at the Glendale offices. There aren't, but there isn't so much an artist can do about that.

Anyway, back on topic: perhaps one of the things that we as users of PPT can do, instead of insulting the entire staff as a group, is simply add in a little caveat.

It's not TNT that's the problem (usually)...its the suits of TNT. I'll reiterate: a corporate mentality harms the users. Simple as that - and that's what you've got over there. Not your fault, but that's the way it's coming out. And the suits have a responsibility to raise money, sure, and turn a profit, but they also have a responsibility to at least pretend that they care about John Q. User - and I haven't seen much of that over the last couple of years.

To start, I know not everyone on ppt supports the Dae o' Akshun...I wasn't trying to lump you all into a group, I was just objectively stating some facts about the office.



Erm, Neopets didn't send me; I was just relatively annoyed after reading the whole Day of Action debacle on the main page, and as my writer friend and I were contesting the points made, I decided they should probably be voiced. The Day of Action isn't going to have as much of an impact as people suspect, so, while most of the office knows about it, it's not really a concern... The site may run faster and restockers may have a field day, but otherwise, meh- it's a Saturday and we're out of the office.

Also, a note to everyone replying to this thread, I'm just an artist- I can't address all of your questions (duh), and I'm just stating my perspective on this whole situation. I'm not asking everyone to get to know each and every one of The Neopets Team so we can be hated on a more personal level, I'm just asking people to stop assuming we're such money-mongering, self-centered little arses. We do care about the site, surprisingly.


Gosh darn, now my cover's blown!


I'm not the one to bug about financial issues; we have maybe 70+ people working at Neopets (25 monitors) and that seems to work dandy for the time being (new people are hired when the need arises, remember), and don't underestimate the millions it takes to keep up webspace and bandwidth.


And again, lots of us don't like the freezing system. Lots of us want to change it. We're trying.

Yarr.
-S

Having read some of Shroomys posts from before on PPT, and having seen her post on anti_yerf... it's most obviously her. I don't think many people would write "Yarr" on their threads, and end it the way she did, with her "s".
If theres any doubt that it's her, which there isn't, i'd be happy to point you to a couple pictures on Yerf, that I know she did that proves her as a Neo artist.

And again, thankyou Shroomy. Dracosolaris said something along these lines, but in a different manner and was flamed because of it. She didn't like what she saw here at PPT, and I am sorry to say, that didn't go over so well with the members.
However, that being said... not everyone here feels this way. I've been gone for three days, came back and see this DOA thing. *shakes head* it doesn't interest me in the least. Things like this happen, it's annoying as i'm sure you know. But as you said, it won't make much of an impact.
I have a feeling most people who play on neo, havn't a slightest clue as to what PPT is (considering we're a blocked site), not to mention that many of them just don't care. And i'm sure an even larger percentage have never heard of the DOA.

Why did I only ever get 2 responses from the staff. The first one was from the legal department (everyone gets the same message) and the other one was from someone at support asking me to e-mail them from a different e-mail address to get my account back. I e-mailed them about 10 times over the course of 3 months from the e-mail address, and I still didn't get a response. My username is 17294. It still says: Our automated system does not know why you were frozen. Please contact us by clicking here if you'd like more information. Allthough I contact you, no one wants to reply, so what is the point of having the support team anyways. If they don't even know why they freeze you, why freeze you at all. And if the support can't answer the questions, why have them. They will be answered better if a computer did it all. Then, on my mikeomanel11 account, someone somehow got my password and went in to it and got me frozen with this message when I login This account was found to be asking for or offering to be a Neositter. Neositting is only a scam to try to gain other people's passwords, and it is not permitted. I still have not gotten a reply, allthough this has happened more than 5 months ago. So please, I request that my mikeomanel11 and 17294 accounts, which I was wrongly frozen on, be unfrozen, so I can regain trust in the staff at Neopets.com. Please take that into consideration.

Personally I support the DoA beause I want to take advantage of the restocks and such. I'm a parasite an I'm proud.

You guys are always talking about how it's just a game, which it is, but you complain about the injustices of it as if it were more than a game. I love the game and I'd be devastated if it were frozen. But I'd move on. Of all the things you choose to have a day of action against, you pick neopets? Understandable, it's not like there are more important issues going on in life or anything...

Very well put. I mean, Canada just had its record lowest number of people who voted on Monday. They were probably all on Neopets... *joke... or is it?*

Anyway, I agree with everyone that shroomy said, and I learned a lot about how Neopets actually works which surprises me. But you've actually been saying what I've been saying: They are individuals, and that the programmers/artists aren't the ones doing merchandising, so the sponsors and merchandise aren't interfering with their work.

Well, we are- the artists are, anyway. There are reeeally mixed feelings among the user population about artists doing the art for merchandise & advertising- people want us to work on more stuff for the site, and yet they want the TCG to be drawn in-house so the pets are still on-model enough. In the long run, actually, the two never really conflict... Contrary to popular belief.

ahoteinrun, I love the fact that my writing style's that recognizable.

-C

Just one more question. Why do y'all start something (*COUGH*neoschools*COUGH*) and then not finish it, but it the time you could have done it, brought out a ton of other things instead?

Take the MIM (mystery island mystery). 'Oh, the new clue will come out in a few days'. then it's -random theme- chokatoe day. Then it's 'Oh, the new clue will be out soon!' And we're there around one week later to finally get the clue.

I'm not trying to be all nasty and lumping you all together, apologies if it sounds that way.

*shrugs*
I've seen you post before, thats all. Here, and on anti yerf the Lj community. I've watched you argue bfore (as usually I am but a silent observer).
Plus, i'm fairly confident that anyone who posted "as you" who was not you, would be torn to shreds by yourself and others.




I've seen some of the trading card art you posted on yerf, and it was pretty darn amazing. I think it's a good thing that the artists work both on the site and on the trading card because in my belief this will lead to more true to type neopets.
The worst thing I could see as happening would be to have the neopets cards warped and turned into something more akin to pokemon or *shudder* yu-gi-oh cards.
I really don't have a problem with neo right now, i'm not a big money player, the glitches really don't affect me all that often if ever at all (i've been caught a couple times) but I personally just shrug it off and keep on doing what i'm doing in my own quiet way.
I have to admit to not liking the way the art gallery is run, I personally think there was someone very corrupt on the staff for awhile... who was running the gallery with reguards to how some people were chosen, time and time again. And others never at all.
I can understand what others say about support from staff, because I got one hand written reply from a staff member, replied; and never heard another word from them. It is frustrating, but again, a site as big as neo... *shrugs*
i'm sure they've more important things to discuss then the art gallery. *grin*

Something else I was thinking about re: not telling users about glitches -- I think it encourages users to think of reasons for the glitches that are less than flattering to Neopets.

A few weeks ago NQII was rolled back, resetting everything everyone had done on the game over the last 24 hours. (I lost all my leveling-up to face Zombom on Insane -- one of the most difficult and annoying parts of the game -- but that's not as bad as some people who play for a really long time each day.)

Although this was a glitch that afftected a lot of people, nothing was ever posted about it on the news. TNT was totally silent about it.

I think this had two effects:

1) NQII players lost, at the least, a combined hundreds of hours of playing time. The fact that nothing was mentioned suggests that TNT didn't think it was important enough to mention -- that their time and effort doesn't even merit a single sentence in the new. Again, this helps contribute to an impression of not caring about the users.

2) In the absense of other information, people start thinking up reasons why a rollback might have occured -- and as irritated people are wont to do, some people came up with reasons that were less than flattering. I recall several people came up with the idea that an "important" user like featheralley lost in Insane and so everyone's game was rolled back so she didn't lose hers. You know, the old "TNT favors a few important users" theory. Is this what happened? Almost certainly not. (I certianly don't believe it for a second.) But in absence of other information, people make up their own and some of this speculation increases negative thinking about Neopets.

Both these problems could have been solved by simply putting a sentence in the news saying something to the effect of, "Last night the database that Neoquest II games are stored on crashed and we had to restore from a backup, so everyone's game was reset by 24 hours. We apologize to everyone who was affected!"

It's a cliche in customer service that good customer service isn't about not making mistakes, it's about how you deal with the mistakes that are made. But it's a cliche because it's true.

**********************

I can certianly see how it must be tiresome for staff members to come see lots of negative posts about Neopets on fan sites like this one. As they pointed out in the letter accompanying my first teaching evaluations -- people tend to refrain from making positive comments, and negative ones often reflect other stresses in people's life unrelated to the class, or in this case Neopets.

Certainly I admit I don't spend a lot of time gushing about the things that TNT does well, although there are a lot of them. If I didn't love Neopets, I wouldn't be playing!

And no one wants to drive staff members away from PPT.

On the other hand, no one wants to see PPT become a forum where you're not allowed to say anything negative about Neopets, either.

I really think the only solution is for everyone to remain polite and reasonable when making negative comments (always a good rule to follow anywhere in life) and hope for the best.

Thank you for posting that, shroomy.

I've never had a problem with TNT. I haven't been frozen, warned, anything. I guess that would be part of the reason why I don't support the DoA. I'm not against it, I'm just not going along with it. I guess you can say I'm neutral.

The sponsor games aren't a bother to me. Actually, they help me. Sponsor games usually give me enough neopoints to keep my pets fed and taken care of. Per day. Currently, out of the 66 action games, only 6 of them are sponsor games. Correct me if I'm wrong. I may have accidently skipped over a few...

Although some things still aren't done (Neoschools), there are plenty things that TNT did that I DID like. Neopets is FREE, there are awesome games, well drawn characters and pets, and daily freebies, too!

I have nothing against tnt, and i think they're doing a damn good job at keeping the site running. I've never been frozen or warned, I have been scammed once or twice but I have managed to recover, and i'm doing fine.

There are things which could do with improving or adding, such as the rate at which things like neoschools (whatever happened to those anyway?) were progressed/ released. Overall though, these do not bother me, but perhaps if we wern't told about these things until they were released we wouldn't be too disappointed.
Some glitches need ironing out also, but what major sites don't have off moments?

Sponsor games also don't bother me, i just treat them like any other game, especially games such as the crash/ spiro game (which, when the sponsorship runs out on, i hope is replaced with a similar game) so no worries there.

So I don't support DoA, and i probably won't ever unless something outstandingly significant manages to change my mind.