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Post by doctortomoe on Mar 9, 2015 2:30:53 GMT -5
It's kind of sad that Neopets last newspost is "Cancelled due to lack of interest"
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Post by Patjade on Mar 9, 2015 3:07:47 GMT -5
I suppose it depends. If it's replacing TNT with Jumpstart staff, it'll be rocky at first, but might get better. But, if it's downsizing, none of those positions will get filled again. They'll be eliminated entirely and nothing will replace it. If they're using JS staff, they will need to start stepping up. SoD's support was pretty good a couple of months ago, but lately, they've become as unresponsive as Neo's. But I'm not quite ready to give up on Neopets yet. Been with them since March 2000 (Yay, 15th anniversary!), seen a lot of changes, and I'm hopeful they will continue on. |
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Post by Geodude 🌻 on Mar 9, 2015 7:08:53 GMT -5
Maybe they will try that mobile thing. I realized I tend to hit a Neopets from my phone or tablet more than my computer but since I'm likely an outlier, the core site should stick around too. Given that Flash is slowly ailing technology (lack of or poor mobile support and more sites going to HTML5 implementations) any possibility of a mobile site would need to have a plan for the games.
I'm thinking too far ahead but I'm am assuming Jumpstart isn't going to tear up the whole thing yet.
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Post by Huntress on Mar 9, 2015 7:21:00 GMT -5
I wonder how independent the site actually is? As in, how much day-to-day maintenance does it require? Stuff like dailies and shops and flash games should be pretty trouble-free, whatever code they have just runs without anyone having to muck with it. The contests and the NC Mall and whatever plotstuff probably need more involvement.
What'm saying is, wouldn't some bulk of the site be able to exist on its own, kinda like Windows XP - without added support or updates, but with the existing stuff still functional? It'd take up server space, but not necessarily staff hours.
(All this is surprisingly difficult to discuss without immediately sliding into doom-and-gloom >>)
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Post by Geodude 🌻 on Mar 9, 2015 8:01:11 GMT -5
Most of the automated stuff is just a bunch of cron jobs (fancy term for scheduled task) run from the account Cronjobbia right? Obviously security patches and whatnot should be installed promptly, especially if they affect the part of the site dealing with financial transactions. In today's world, that could be more frequent than you think. (Also I hope they aren't running XP still, that's unsupported software.)
However, I do think something is most critically wrong when the site is not as responsive as it should be although I don't know what it could be without actually being there. Also when they push a new feature, they do have to stick around to make sure it didn't break anything else, or at least the part the site that the new feature is closely coupled to (I'm sure many of the site events write to a Neopoints or Inventory database table...although having a Neopoints table might be overkill...could be a user table.) One would always hope that the existing code is robust enough but you never know.
Still, day-to-day, it wouldn't be too much but you never know when things could go wrong. Computers and computer programs are subject to Murphy's Law - Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
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Post by Herdy on Mar 9, 2015 9:33:49 GMT -5
Basically, dailies will work fine (aside from the Daily Puzzle), but once anything breaks it is unlikely to get fixed in a timely manner (since the number of programmers kept on was /really/ small).
There'll be a backlog of things like the Daily Puzzle, Better Than You, and Mystery Pic - so as long as there's someone updating new features (the Jumpstart's social media person is still there, so they /may/ be able to manage small updates there) they will still work for a little while. But once they are gone, they are gone.
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Mar 9, 2015 12:33:06 GMT -5
So I was thinking of why would JumpStart suddenly do this. Surely they must know all they're doing is at best putting the site into stasis though, as Herdy pointed out, eventually things will stop if it involved human activity (Daily Puzzle, Better Than You, Mystery Pic) or may break and take a long time to/never be fixed. It'll cause stagnation and with little to no new content being made and stuff stopping/breaking down I think a large amount of users will leave, many who probably who buy NC and now feel the site isn't worth buying from anymore. So, with that in mind and assuming JumpStart knows this (which being a business they should, or hopefully someone explained this to them), why would they do something which would essentially doom the site? Obviously this has to do with money, everything has to do with money, but what about the money is JumpStart having an issue with. The only "answers" I could think of is this: The lag is effecting profits. Overall it's effecting everything. It takes a bit of time to load a page (and on bad days the page never loads), TNT themselves aren't able to put up much content, users are complaining, and all that combines into difficulty in players buying NC and getting new NC items to buy. With the site lagging this much and causing low NC purchasing, JumpStart may have decided they didn't want to pay all the staff they're paying and decided to temporarily downsize the Neopet staff to core people to work on removing the lag and once they do they'll slowly rehire new staff. Of course the problem with this, as JN's edited post mentions, is that the new staff probably won't know much about Neopet's lore and the staff who remain at best know the stuff that has been established in plots and events. And I doubt they'll be able to get back any member of the original content team as 1. they'd probably get a new job by the time the lag is fixed and 2. even if they are available they may be resistant to working with people who now have proven they'll lay off people on a whim. So as stated by the JN post, it won't be the same Neopets we know. That's the best case scenario I see, and its still pretty bleak. I have no idea what JS is thinking, I may be jumping the gun but it's only because JS is shooting themselves in the foot with it. Is really sounds like JS panicked and made a hasty decision. Like I can understand them laying off a majority of the content team if this was going for, but not the entire team (especially the ones who know about Neopets). Say, what's the law about job security? Surely many members of TNT have been working with Neopets long enough to have it, right? |
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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Mar 9, 2015 12:38:55 GMT -5
With TNT planning things months in advance, we'll probably get a few things such as remaining pet days and the prize for the Faerie Quest event. The Neopian Times, on the other hand, will probably be a write-off entirely, based on the little information that we have.
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Post by Duke Pikachu on Mar 9, 2015 13:07:19 GMT -5
With TNT planning things months in advance, we'll probably get a few things such as remaining pet days and the prize for the Faerie Quest event. The Neopian Times, on the other hand, will probably be a write-off entirely, based on the little information that we have. If the Neopian Times isn't coming back I may just post all the stories I have about done somewhere on this forum so at least someone could read it. May also post a few articles I did have so those don't go to waste either. Though concerning the NT at this point I'm just concerned about Droplet's situation. Did she also get laid off? |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2015 13:20:53 GMT -5
With TNT planning things months in advance, we'll probably get a few things such as remaining pet days and the prize for the Faerie Quest event. The Neopian Times, on the other hand, will probably be a write-off entirely, based on the little information that we have. If the Neopian Times isn't coming back I may just post all the stories I have about done somewhere on this forum so at least someone could read it. May also post a few articles I did have so those don't go to waste either. Though concerning the NT at this point I'm just concerned about Droplet's situation. Did she also get laid off? Droplet's just gonna come back from maternity leave like  |
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Post by Herdy on Mar 9, 2015 13:27:42 GMT -5
At this point I don't think Droplet /technically/ can be sacked, since she's on leave. But when that leave comes to an end, pretty sure she will be  And, even if for some reason Jumpstart decided Droplet was the single most valuable employee to keep - she won't be doing the NT. There are plenty of other higher priority things she'd be working on. No matter which way you cut this, the NT is now finished. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2015 13:30:29 GMT -5
At this point I don't think Droplet /technically/ can be sacked, since she's on leave. But when that leave comes to an end, pretty sure she will be And, even if for some reason Jumpstart decided Droplet was the single most valuable employee to keep - she won't be doing the NT. There are plenty of other higher priority things she'd be working on. No matter which way you cut this, the NT is now finished. So where do we go from here as a forum, you think? Should me make our own NT? Or at least webcomic paper thing? |
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Post by June Scarlet on Mar 9, 2015 13:58:21 GMT -5
Well, I mean, at least make an unofficial NT to publish the stuff that wasn't published officially. I have one comic held over, and one that's almost ready to be submitted. Not to mention a sketchbook filled with ideas. There's series that are only halfway done. There's some stuff that at least needs to be wrapped up.
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Post by Breakingchains on Mar 9, 2015 14:20:34 GMT -5
You guys, perhaps we should be writing Jumpstart about this. Not the layoffs, but the future of the site in general, I mean. They have a support e-mail for feedback as well as a snail mail address. I'm in the middle of writing an e-mail regarding the importance of the NT and creative competitions to the core user base. They said at the beginning that they were interested in Neo for its the older/long-time fans--that's us, so if there's any truth to that, we need to be offering feedback. (...Calm feedback.) |
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Post by Shinko on Mar 9, 2015 14:33:54 GMT -5
Fun fact, in case anyone's curious- this morning Jumpstart's Facebook page was flooded with questions from neo users about the future of the site and the layoffs. Those questions are apparently being summarily deleted. Not really surprising, but not terribly promising.
Though, and this is hilarious, according to one commenter the reason Jumpstart is giving for deleting the questions is that their page is supposed to be kid friendly... but little kids that the Jumpstart games normally appeal to shouldn't be on Facebook. COPPA is a thing. (I know it's flouted all the time, but the law is still there and it makes no sense for Jumpstart to cite it as their reason for deleting neopets questions from their facebook page).
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And, even if for some reason Jumpstart decided Droplet was the single most valuable employee to keep - she won't be doing the NT. There are plenty of other higher priority things she'd be working on.
