Zombie wrote:
Eh...I have sort of mixed feelings about it.
As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with the Pound being the risky place it is. It lets younger users potentially get really lucky and have the pet of their dreams even though they are still learning about the site.
See, though, that's the thing. In my opinion, a new player can think "wow, that grey gelert is really cool, and look at that Darigan eyrie!" but neither of those is going to be "the pet of their dreams," because they haven't been around long enough to... well, dream about it. They don't understand how much NP it takes for a pet like that, and how coveted those pets are by many. To them, it's just a cool-looking bunch of pixels -- it only becomes more when you've been around for a while, grown attached to your pets and really want to paint them one of those colors. And like you said:
Quote:
most of those accounts didn't go anywhere, yeah, they probably didn't take care of the pet that well or train it or improve it, and yeah, a lot of the time the users left Neopets.com anyway
And that's because the pet didn't mean much to them, as they never worked for it themselves, or had time to get attached to it before it turned a cool color. I know that doesn't matter to you, but I find it kind of sad -- those pretty pets could have gone to users who had been playing a long time, and who would have been ecstatic to receive one.
Anyway, I don't think this new rule is fostering elitism or anything. Anyone can paint their pet any color if they work hard and save up enough. They can even buy a lab map for a pretty good price and have fun zapping their pet and seeing it turn all kinds of species and colors. <4-monthers shouldn't get shortcuts -- I'd wager that hardly any of us did!