New neopets layout

[shaelyn76]

I don't even know where to start. sigh.... I feel that they did way too much at once. The new layout is actually not too terribly bad once you get used to navigating it. I still think it is clunky and cluttered and way too kiddy in color scheme, but it could be worse. The gamesroom revamp was atrocious and still makes me shun it completely for fear of going blind.

The pets. I had pretty much gone on hiatus from Neo for various reasons about two months ago. I logged on every now and again to check on my pets and maybe do some dailies for shits and grins. When I saw what they had done to my pets my gut reaction was to self freeze and never return to the abomination they had become. I've been playing for a little over 2 years and I fell in love with the pets and the games. They have since ruined both for me. The stupid pose with the upheld fist is just stupid looking. I don't want my pets to wear clothes and I sure as hell don't want them to be able to hold things. I don't care for anthro versions of pets as the idea is kinda creepy in my opinion. In real life I laugh at and ridicule those who dress their pets. Animals were not intended to wear clothes...that's why they have fur (or in reptiles cases why they live in climates to keep them alive). One of my pets escaped the mandatory change. My Plushie Shoyru who I got through a FFQ a few months back was blessedly left alone. My Christmas Ixi now looks like a bobblehead and my Xweetok and Yurble(both unpainted as of yet)look like they are shaking their fists at me and their new painted poses look ugly to a point where I no longer want to paint either of them anything. I haven't had the guts to check my side account yet for fear that I actually will self freeze it and waste all that time and energy on its gallery and pets. I got off easy compared to some owners though and for that I am thankful, but still angry.

If they had done the layout change and left our pets alone I could have dealt with it and probably wouldn't have even cared all that much as it is just navigation. When they went and changed the heart and soul of the site by such drastic measures in some cases, I feel they might as well have just created a whole new site instead as this is not neopets anymore...not the neopets I came to love and enjoy at least.

On a slight tangent, I had become more and more disgruntled by the dumbing down of the site that seemed to be happening at an alarming rate. I understand that they want to be a family site, but it was becoming more and more an under 12 year old site. I'm an adult whose kids play on the site and the kiddy aspects were getting to be too much for me. The look and the feel of the site were getting stupidly childish. The filters were getting more ridiculous by the day and the forums were a waste of space for anyone who actually needed help of wanted to talk using real words. When my 9 year old said to me, "Mom, I think I'm getting too old for Neopets cause it looks like it is made for kindergarteners now." you know the site is catering too much to a specific demographic. The revamp in some ways seems to follow that pattern of "kiddyfying" the site, but in other ways seems to make the site more difficult for pre-readers to use(less pictures to navigate by and more actual reading). I feel that if Neopets has decided to go after the pre-teen/tween and grade school demographic only they should be more consistent about it with this latest layout and such.

I for now have left my accounts intact and will see how things go over the next few months before taking any drastic action. I did cancel my Premium service. I know it is a drop in the bucket to TNT and frankly even if 5000 members quit over the changes they wouldn't care one iota, but I felt that I just couldn't in good conscience continue to support the site monetarily when they so obviously don't care about the users at all who keep their site #1 among petsites and buy all their crap with real life money.

I'm not happy at all with the changes, but I'm not nearly as invested in Neopets as I once was so i am not as upset as some others about it. I still say it sucks though and will never recommend Neopets to anyone ever again.

[Pickles]

I don't mind the new layout. And I don't mind many of the pets--a lot of them are freaking lovely, and thankfully my favorite pets (darigan aisha, grey gelert, plushie techo) were left untouched.

The only thing that really bothers me, is that every pet created hereafter is automatically given the new art. I have empty side accounts that I was planning on filling, and now I have no idea what to fill them with. Is there any site that has lots of pictures of pets with the new art? I don't want to go through the trouble of creating a pet and painting it, only to find out it is hideous. I'm uh, rather picky when it comes to pet art. ^^;