To all those who have played Neopets or may currently do so, prepare to probably have your views on the entire game changed. This article, especially for hardcore players such as your battledomers, traders, or other rich entities, will challenge everything you’ve ever known.
First a question: How many of you know someone who has been iced? I’m sure most of you know at least one person. Now how many of those people claimed an unfair icing? Again, a fair amount. Now I’m sure some of these people have legitimate claims, but the rest may have slipped up at least once which resulted in an icing.
I don’t claim to be very well known – at least now. I used to frequent the battledome chat back in the day, and I’m 100% positive I was, at worst, at least a little known. First let’s get some back story though.
I came from humble beginnings, creating my account, quitting it, and picking it back up one day. I wanted a battle pet, but I had no money. My first real gains came when some space weapons item was converted to the 8 icon florbix blaster. Immediately I bought several of them, selling them all for around a million a piece. This was my first big chunk of money.
Restocking was my next endeavor, and once I learned the ins and outs of it, I was off and running. I made a fair amount, at least enough to buy thirty million worth of items. I was on top of the world battling with my pet with good weapons. Restocking was as easy as breathing no matter if they changed it to a three letter code or a clickable picture.
I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, ‘Wow, where’s the shocking news.’ This has been setting you up for everything else. As I said, I was a somewhat prominent figure – no nothing like your garet_jaxx, featheralley, hrobi etc. but I would say I was a respected figure. Never would I achieve a “legendary” status, but to those who claim staff favors owners this may affirm your thoughts. (I’m not sure, but it might?)
I too saw my fair share of icings, especially of others similar to me, and I never knew what to think in terms of fair or unfair. But after thinking about my own history, I cannot know what to think. You see, despite my respected status, I was not all that moral of a person.
To begin, I engaged in a friendship with a relatively unknown account back when I was in my prime restocking. (I was very naive and young at the time.) He befriended me, gave me tips, and helped me sell some of my HTS restocks. It always seemed like I got a good deal, and more than a few times he engaged them by saying he was looking for that specific HTS for a lot more than they were paying for it. This would end up with them buying my item only to not have a buyer themselves. I never realized this until the end of what came to be a long story. In the end he scammed me out of a few items, and I learned my lesson. This would be bad moral decision 1.
While restocking was great, sometimes it just didn’t bring in the money I desired. My friends and I would often buy up r90 items or similar rare but low priced items, inflate them, and then mass offer them in trades. More than a couple of times we received easy to sell items in return. We would also support, very biasdly, a bad offer in acc/rej/beat boards, just to gain more profit. Bad moral decision 2.
This next little revelation is not exactly cheating, but it is against the rules. My friend had an auto-buying program. Always was I interested in how they worked. I never cared for them because I trusted my own skills over some program. Still I actually used this one day in bakery just to see how and if it would work, though not with actual intention of using it to profit. I did not get anything and never used the program again, but still this is bad moral decision 3.
When adblock came out for Firefox, I at first used it for other websites’ ads. One day I figured out that you could use it to block crap items in shops so that only the images of good items showed up making them easier to spot. I also turned off flash – a big no-no because it got rid of the Yes-No haggle button – and did my dirty restocking for a little bit this way until I stopped for fear of my account. This is 4
This is probably the worst offense, maybe rivaled by the next. I was totally addicted to restocking. There were days where I stayed home “sick” from school just to capitalize on easy restocks during the day. Despite my well known account and decent pet, I created several accounts for the purpose of multi-restocking. I never went past a second account, but the times I was restock banned on my main I made a lot on my other. I even put up screenshots of my alternate account just altering the screen name to my main to show my accomplishments. Like the last, I stopped doing this for fear of my account. Bad decision 5
The last illegal thing I partook in is, as mentioned, possibly the worst. I took a break from Neopets for a while, instead focusing on other online games. I got addicted to those just the same, and eventually lost interest in them as well. I got back into Neopets, and with my account from the other game I actually bought neopoints with it. Yes, my account in another game was used to purchase neopoints. This final offense probably shocks most, and back then people might have been shocked that this happened. 6.
The next time you’re scrolling down your neofriends list, think to yourself just what they might have done. As you may have guessed, my account is still in tact. Somehow, someway I got through the filters. I’m not sure how, but I did. I did not use proxies or anything else that might confuse IP addresses. You might ask how I did this. I’m not sure. I’ve wondered the same thing. How did I do all of these things and never get iced? So many others got iced – some I thought might be fair and others not so much – but how did my account haphazardly pass through the filters? Another interesting thing to note that is on 4/4/04, the day when passwords were being freely given out, my account was not broken into. I am not sure how, and multiple people KNEW my name and knew I had over 40 million in items in it.
My entire Neopian life I have wondered just WHAT others do to get frozen or at least what made me the exception. I now hope that YOU question just how Neopets works because nothing seems so simple after this, does it? – battledoming101