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Post by Fraze on Mar 8, 2015 15:49:43 GMT -5
If neopets DOES end up biting the dust, I hope we can still keep the forum together. After all we don't just discuss neopets related stuff here, and I've made a lot of friends through the NTWF. I don't think the community here will dissolve because Neopets is going down. I believe the Forum is by now an independent enough entity that we can keep going without Neopets. The problem will be attracting new members and advertising. We'd basically have to start advertising ourselves as a general writing/creative forum and shuffle the Neopets part off to the side. Rebranding has worked for community-driven sites before (TVTropes spawned from a Buffy forum); the problem would be figuring out where to advertise. But honestly, I'm not seeing this as a sign of an impending shutdown, or at least not yet. It seems more like what The Scrac that Smiles Back said; the team is getting replaced with one that JumpStart feels will conform to the direction they want to take the site. Which leads us to the rather difficult question: would we rather have a completely new and unrecognizable Neopets, or no Neopets at all? Of course those are the two extremes, and the reality might be somewhere in between. I'm preparing myself for the former and hoping the latter won't happen. |
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Post by Shinko on Mar 8, 2015 15:53:33 GMT -5
I don't think the community here will dissolve because Neopets is going down. I believe the Forum is by now an independent enough entity that we can keep going without Neopets. The problem will be attracting new members and advertising. We'd basically have to start advertising ourselves as a general writing/creative forum and shuffle the Neopets part off to the side. Rebranding has worked for community-driven sites before (TVTropes spawned from a Buffy forum); the problem would be figuring out where to advertise. But honestly, I'm not seeing this as a sign of an impending shutdown, or at least not yet. It seems more like what The Scrac that Smiles Back said; the team is getting replaced with one that JumpStart feels will conform to the direction they want to take the site. Which leads us to the rather difficult question: would we rather have a completely new and unrecognizable Neopets, or no Neopets at all? Of course those are the two extremes, and the reality might be somewhere in between. I'm preparing myself for the former and hoping the latter won't happen. Completely overhauling the site seems counterproductive to me. Jumpstart explicitly said from the get go that they were interested in Neopets because of the existing playerbase. If they overhaul the entire site to conform to what they want it to be, that's going to alienate the aforementioned playerbase and lead to a mass retirement of old players like we saw when the original site overhaul happened when viacom took over. |
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Mar 8, 2015 16:17:15 GMT -5
I downloaded the images of my pets, just incase. I'd reccommend if anyone has anything worth saving on neo, SCReENSHOT IT NOW. Also, I hope Jellyneo saves all the item images and such. I'd like to take a screenshot of my trophies, but ULs aren't working.  If they do sadly decide to close the site I hope they at least get ULs working again so we can screenshot our trophies. |
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Post by Ziporen on Mar 8, 2015 16:26:37 GMT -5
I downloaded the images of my pets, just incase. I'd reccommend if anyone has anything worth saving on neo, SCReENSHOT IT NOW. Also, I hope Jellyneo saves all the item images and such. I'd like to take a screenshot of my trophies, but ULs aren't working. If they do sadly decide to close the site I hope they at least get ULs working again so we can screenshot our trophies. Not the newest cache, but here. |
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Post by Komori on Mar 8, 2015 16:27:40 GMT -5
Along these same lines, how fun/cool would it be to make an actual newspaper out of the big collab issues? Don't know that it was be practical price wise, but... it could be pretty cool if we could pull it off. I'm still in contact with my publications advisor from high school. Just don't have anything like Publisher on the computer (nor would I dare even TRY to put that on this old laptop), or I'd even volunteer to attempt to design it. Anyway, if anyone else would be interested in this, I can do some research and offer advice, if nothing else. Or, you know. This could just be some crazy harebrained idea of mine that won't work out. Dunno that it'd look that great. I mean, 470 px wide, only 72 dpi. The comics would all be pretty jaggy. But for the text-based stories, it'd be fine. |
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Post by Blueysicle on Mar 8, 2015 16:33:57 GMT -5
Well.
Crap.
I usually hate being the Negative Nancy when it comes to these sorts of things, but yeesh. This doesn't look good.
I do support the idea of -if the worst case scenario happens- having a fan-run Neopian Times. I know that the average issue of the NT has been slowing down a bit in terms of content lately (Particularly for series; I've noticed that there aren't as many New Series each week as there used to be) but I think there is still a large enough pool of creative people to pull it off.
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Post by Killix on Mar 8, 2015 17:01:36 GMT -5
I'm surprised Neopets has even lasted as long as it has. It has had a pretty good run.
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Post by Breakingchains on Mar 8, 2015 18:57:44 GMT -5
Guys? It's so doom and gloom in here.
I don't mean to sound naive but really. We're assuming everything we love is going to get cut, that pets themselves are going away (in which case they're gonna have to change that name, aren't they) on very little evidence. I think it's important to be conscious of the fact that there is just so much we don't even know right now.
I know things look really bleak on our end, but that's from our end. If they announce tomorrow that the site is going away I'll eat my words, but I'm not ready to give a eulogy just yet.
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Post by Komori on Mar 8, 2015 19:12:52 GMT -5
Guys? It's so doom and gloom in here. I don't mean to sound naive but really. We're assuming everything we love is going to get cut, that pets themselves are going away (in which case they're gonna have to change that name, aren't they) on very little evidence. I think it's important to be conscious of the fact that there is just so much we don't even know right now. I know things look really bleak on our end, but that's from our end. If they announce tomorrow that the site is going away I'll eat my words, but I'm not ready to give a eulogy just yet. I mean, I'm sure it's possible that Neopets can continue to exist exactly as it is right now, so long as they keep up with maintenance. But considering they've lost their content department, we're facing either no new content, or new content produced by an entirely different group of people. Though, considering how much TNT makes stuff in advance, it's quite possible we can be seeing new content for a couple months more before we really see what's happened. |
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Post by Breakingchains on Mar 8, 2015 19:27:59 GMT -5
Oh, I know. We are probably in for a lot of changes, as I acknowledged before, and that change is potentially going to be extreme. My point is that we just don't know yet what it's even going to look like, what is getting cut, whether replacements are on the way and for which people, etc.--jumping immediately to worst-case scenarios (such as the total death of the site) is really only going to stress us all out. Let's try to keep on an even keel until we have more information, is what I'm saying.
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Post by Shinko on Mar 8, 2015 19:31:43 GMT -5
Does anyone know what department Droplet works for? This would be kind of a sucky thing to happen to her when she should be able to concentrate on being happy about her baby. =\
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Post by Komori on Mar 8, 2015 19:41:11 GMT -5
Does anyone know what department Droplet works for? This would be kind of a sucky thing to happen to her when she should be able to concentrate on being happy about her baby. =\ Well, JN says they only kept some programmers, support, and monitors. She isn't a programmer, and we know she didn't have the power to unfreeze people so she probably isn't support. So unless she was also a monitor (unlikely?), I guess we can sort of guess what's happened. :< |
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Post by Shinko on Mar 8, 2015 19:43:18 GMT -5
Does anyone know what department Droplet works for? This would be kind of a sucky thing to happen to her when she should be able to concentrate on being happy about her baby. =\ Well, JN says they only kept some programmers, support, and monitors. She isn't a programmer, and we know she didn't have the power to unfreeze people so she probably isn't support. So unless she was also a monitor (unlikely?), I guess we can sort of guess what's happened. :< Log for the forum shows she was online earlier today... wonder if this fiasco is why, though she didn't actually post anything. I know it's unlikely but I really pray for the best. Being laid off is not what she needs with a new baby on the way. |
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Post by Geodude 🌻 on Mar 8, 2015 19:48:48 GMT -5
I would suspect she is part of Site Content so not affected at this time? They likely can't terminate her while she's on leave because that would be illegal. I can't speak for what'll happen afterwards.
I don't think JumpStart is a publicly traded company so they aren't obligated to tell us anything. That would make it especially difficult to determine what JumpStart's next move is. I guess here are some options that I could think of at least:
- Positions are filled either by re-hiring or assigning current JumpStart employees to work on the site. Site stays relatively the same.
- JumpStart purchased Neopets for their assets and would start making other games for multiple platforms featuring Neopians. Site's future may be uncertain here.
- JumpStart takes the site in a new direction that we don't know about yet. They may choose to rehire or absorb the positions into the company.
Idk, these are coming out of thin air so this may just be a shot in the dark. I don't want to pretend I know anything about the business world xD. I do know about the software world but that's not as pressing. You'll need a plan and some more staff like programmers/software engineers first.
Update: I wanted to pose a question to someone that actually has business acumen. Is it typical for a company to wait almost a year to do the restructuring thing after an acquisition?
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Post by doctortomoe on Mar 8, 2015 20:04:14 GMT -5
If we're thinking doom and gloom, I suppose Droplet's going on leave marked the end of the NT, since I doubt that's going to be replaced.
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If they do sadly decide to close the site I hope they at least get ULs working again so we can screenshot our trophies.
