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Post by Patjade on Jul 26, 2015 20:05:32 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2015 20:19:14 GMT -5
The bit about whether Neopets might find "a renaissance under new management" made me laugh. It also made me sad.
That's how little faith I have in Jumpstart at this point. There will be a tombstone with the planet Neopia engraved on it if things keep going the way they're going.
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Post by Mail on Jul 26, 2015 20:35:06 GMT -5
Seen a lot of those articles written about the filters being down...and honestly majority of them just sound like they're written by people tasked to do it and not actually players themselves. :T Just personal opinion, but the amount of misinformation in (other) articles can make it pretty clear that some of these writers aren't part of the community and are honestly just writing about what they heard others say. As for the actual content of that specific article? I can agree that Neopet's traffic has declined and continues to do so over the years....honestly just one look at the neoboards is enough to prove that. I don't think there's much to comment on that since everyone knows it already. Just two things to pick about: The quote "How is an 8-year-old going to learn how to restock draik eggs?" is kind of...hilarious in its own way because I kind of doubt an 8 year old has enough reflexes, knowledge (if they're cheating with restocking programs) or so forth to actually be able to restock against older players and those that do use programs. And how many 8 year olds using the site are actually into that part of the game? I'm guessing few. At that age I was just kind of saving up for stuff and maybe buying them off of other players, but geeze...restocking at 8? I'd love to know if anyone actually played the site like that when they were that young. With that said, the answer to the question is "For a variety of reasons, they're not." Different aspects of the site appeal to different ages of users. But I do agree there is a bit of inaccessibility towards older players who are joining....but the site is making attempts to making earning np better and is attempting to combat inflation on certain items (forgotten shore, so forth). And secondly the quote "The message board meltdown was the culmination of long-building tension over the rapid monetization of the site to the detriment of the community. Neopets had unwittingly become a case study for the ways that ineffective community management can render immensely profitable websites obsolete." .....I think they're looking too far into it. Being on the boards myself and seeing those posts, I got the impression it was just tension over the strictness of the boards and modding themselves, not towards JS or the move or anything. In my opinion, you'd get the same result on any website aimed for kids that has strictness over their chat. Like if club penguin had their filters down you'd get a similar reaction from older players. It doesn't sound like it's anything "neo" specific to me and it's more of a reaction from sudden freedom on an otherwise strict chatting place. And of course, all the talk about it on sites like Tumblr prompted people to join just to post things of that nature on the boards. You could definitely see elements of that community's jokes that were posted on the neo boards (bee movie script). Yeah, I guess that's what I got to say on it. I'm surprised there are still articles on it actually. A lot of them just sound like "Hey remember this site from when you were a kid LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED!" type of articles...and people writing to be in the hype of it. Ahha whoops that got lengthy, sorry. I'm coming at this from a long time player and a business perspective, and it's pretty funny to see just the amount of (other) articles that honestly have no idea what they're talking about.
I'd much rather read an article about neo from the players themselves who know what's going on. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2015 20:48:05 GMT -5
You know, I think the Neoboard incident is less about people being "fed up" with moderation. It was basically idiots saying shocking things so they could get a negative reaction out of people. Judging by this article, it worked :/
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Post by Mail on Jul 26, 2015 21:00:45 GMT -5
You know, I think the Neoboard incident is less about people being "fed up" with moderation. It was basically idiots saying shocking things so they could get a negative reaction out of people. Judging by this article, it worked :/ I think that was definitely another factor! People coming in from other sites were just trolling the boards. |
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Post by PFA on Jul 26, 2015 22:30:22 GMT -5
The quote "How is an 8-year-old going to learn how to restock draik eggs?" is kind of...hilarious in its own way because I kind of doubt an 8 year old has enough reflexes, knowledge (if they're cheating with restocking programs) or so forth to actually be able to restock against older players and those that do use programs. And how many 8 year olds using the site are actually into that part of the game? I'm guessing few. At that age I was just kind of saving up for stuff and maybe buying them off of other players, but geeze...restocking at 8? I'd love to know if anyone actually played the site like that when they were that young. Now that I'm thinking on it, I'm pretty sure if you're under 13 you can't even buy from user shops without parental permission, much less restock, lol. Really though, I agree that the article didn't feel like it was written by an actual Neo player. It also didn't really feel like it said anything new or particularly shocking. Like, Neopets was/is commercialized and there was filter controversy, yeah, and? |
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Post by Shinko on Jul 26, 2015 22:51:02 GMT -5
Yeah I kind of agree, it made some valid points but they were... old points. Like, presenting the commercialization as if it is some deeply rooted, hidden scandal is hilarious in light of literally a billion other things going wrong they could be pointing out. They talk about the war plots as if they are unpopular and distract from the "main" focus of the site, caring for the neopets. Which is hilaaaaarious considering no, feeding the chias is really not the "main" focus for most players. Whoever wrote this article talked to a lot of detractors for the site, but not any players that I could see. And this is a massive oversight.
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Post by doctortomoe on Jul 27, 2015 4:56:47 GMT -5
The first thing I noticed when reading it is when they refer to Adam and Donna as from the U.K. I thought they were Welsh?
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Post by Herdy on Jul 27, 2015 5:35:56 GMT -5
Wales is part of the UK  and only Adam is Welsh, Donna was from the midlands I think. The article seems to place most of neopets' troubles at the door of sponsor games, which is more than a little inaccurate. Even in the old days when they were common neopets had a significant output of other things, they were never the meat of produce. And certainly, in the last 5 years of serious decline, sponsor games have been the one thing that's practically disappeared. The problem to my eyes has been chronic mismanagement which prevented TNT under Viacom from having resources spent where they were needed and for a number of years used outsourcing for major projects (curtailed by the end of viacom's ownership, but by then the damage was done). And of course, under JS, a lack of resources in general. |
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Post by Huntress on Jul 27, 2015 6:47:09 GMT -5
The article seems to place most of neopets' troubles at the door of sponsor games, which is more than a little inaccurate. Even in the old days when they were common neopets had a significant output of other things, they were never the meat of produce. And certainly, in the last 5 years of serious decline, sponsor games have been the one thing that's practically disappeared. Yeah, hm, wouldn't sponsor games on the site be a good sign, what with showing that the site has sponsors and therefore money? I remember sponsor games being all over the place maybe 5-10 years ago, and they essentially existed alongside the rest of the games and other output, and I rather liked some of them because they provided variety. Overall reads like a tasked article, yep. I'm not even sure what the task or objective was. |
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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on Jul 27, 2015 7:39:12 GMT -5
If one was a critic or newcomer to the site (mainly critics), then yeah, I can see where these people are coming from because they aren't visitors/players to the site, so they don't know about the behind the scenes activity and politics going on, but they need something to pounce on. Unfortunately, the commercialization of the site (and the poor economy, to a lesser extent) just happens to be the next best thing as it was visible (but known for a long time).
However, if one was an actual player, then no. Having been on the site ourselves, we can see where the problems lie. 'Abandoned' site projects like the New Battledome and Neohomes and cancelled projects like Treasure Keepers, among other issues, all point to upper management (be it Viacom or Jumpstart) as they're the ones who make the long term decisions to the site, as Herdy alluded to. The lack of creativity/innovation is also hampering the site, to a certain extent. Most sites now can be played on smartphones, however, Neo isn't one of them, meaning that it is missing out on a lot of potential (and no, I don't mean just Ghoul Catchers). There probably is a reason why Neo proved to be popular back then because it was ahead of its time, but now seems to have fallen behind and lagging.
The article isn't exactly an insult to the players, but it doesn't go beyond the visible surface and what is already known.
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Post by Geodude 🌻 on Jul 27, 2015 8:05:38 GMT -5
Every time I log into Neo, I feel like I'm taking a step back into the turn of the century to talk to today and tomorrow's NeoFriends. I load up a Flash game and remember that this used to be awesome technology, but now it's just a gaping security hole. I run through the list of dailies like clockwork and more recently, click the one that's in your face and junks up the user experience of the site. Then I hit the Neoboards and stay there, no longer interested in the rest of the site. I no longer even attempt to make NPs...not until it becomes fun again. The site's getting old, but the possibilities are still endless. Someone at JS might have the innovative spirit... (or maybe nobody does and the site eventually descends into the depths of online purgatory...aka The Internet Archive). I'd trust active player criticism more although the article points out at a very general level some of the problems like the issues with site glitches. I only wish that Adam and Donna made enough money to buy Neopets back.  How much is the site worth anyway? 500k? 1M? 2M? 5M? (USD of course xD) Then there's the operating costs... |
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Post by Patjade on Jul 27, 2015 8:10:20 GMT -5
I don't think sponsor games was the problem, but rather taking the economy directly to the wallets of the players; i.e. NeoCash.
I don't begrudge Neopets (or their overlords) trying to raise some money to help support and improve the site, but it started out innocuous and steadily crept into almost every aspect, and the money coming in didn't seem to go into improving the site, but rather into more things that needed real money.
I guess it reached a point where Viacom decided it the income wasn't worth the server space and effort to keep it as it was, and perhaps JS was looking for something that was venerable to bring older people into their websites. It's hard to say, but I think JS feels that instead of buying a cash cow, they ended up with a white elephant.
They have trimmed what they can to try and keep the bilges working and the SS Neopets afloat, but there also seems there are no new sponsors lining up (aside from the Google ads) to advertise or back new (or even slightly used) games. We have had one game ported in from Petpet Park, one new sponsored link (School of Dragons), and now one new daily.
I am patient, but I am going to be honest here. I used that last sale to spend as much NC I had on some fortune cookies (Lab Ray and Faerie Quest), and I don't intend to get any more NC. That gives JumpStaff a couple of months to see if they can turn this around.
It's been a year since they acquired Neopets and 8 months since they ported over the data. I can appreciate adapting the current code to fit in the new server parameters, but one would think they'd have programmers able to do a debug, patch, and rewrite and get more of the site working than they have now. It doesn't help when Neopets moved from a Cadillac server farm to something the size of a VW bug in comparison, but they either need to step up and add the resources and talent to resurrect, or better yet, update Neopets to something this side of 2010. Flash is a dying program that's buggy, unsupported on important platforms, and a major security risk.
If JS doesn't understand this and make an effort to address it, Neopets is going to go the way of CP/M, OS/2 (O/S), FORTRAN, COBOL (languages), PAK, or ARJ (compression formats). Look them up. Each was popular for their time, but without constant tweaking, updating and modernizing, they fell by the wayside and history.
However UNIX (including variants) (O/S), BASIC, C (Programming languages), ZIP, and RAR (Compression formats)are still around because they were tended to and updated.
So, which way will Neopets go?
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Post by Geodude 🌻 on Jul 27, 2015 8:20:38 GMT -5
If you are a researcher, you'll still find programs written Fortran xD. Finding the Fortran programmer who wrote said program is a different story.
Without any updates to the core site though and without any commitment to innovation, I feel like Neopets is stuck in that time period when Web 2.0 (think MySpace, Xanga, and early YouTube) was starting to become a thing.
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Post by Chao on Jul 27, 2015 12:32:59 GMT -5
I personally liked the sponsor games. I understand the need to make money from the site and ads are a huge part of it. And with the sponsor games, I got the ads in a fun way which even got me NP.
I was more annoyed when banner ads began to hog everything and made loading any part of Neo take way too long. I was okay with them being at the top and the bottom, even with an ad appearing before a flash game started, but then they were added on all sides... Plus the ads were not as strictly monitored as the boards. I may be old enough to be legally allowed to watch all kinds of ads, but that doesn't mean I want to. And with a kids-friendly site, I certainly don't want to see ads I felt so inappropriate for the site, that I actually contacted Neo about it (including screenshots). Yes, they offer premium to get rid of the ads, but seriously, it's annoying. Which has certainly reduced the time I spend on Neopets. I'm still active, but not as much as I used to.
The glitches and lags since JS bought Neo certainly haven't helped reignite my interest.
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and only Adam is Welsh, Donna was from the midlands I think.
How much is the site worth anyway? 500k? 1M? 2M? 5M? (USD of course xD) Then there's the operating costs...
