what HAPPENED to neopets?

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Larkspurlane
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what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Larkspurlane »

Wow.

I haven't been back on neo for long since a 4-5yr hiatus.

I've only just begun to notice that there's something "wrong" with the pets. Maybe I'm not very observant. I noticed the backgrounds and the cheesy items and hats and crap being layered on, but now I realize that most of the fun poses of various painted pets is gone?!

That SUCKS FACE!

This is probably a dead horse around here, I'm so sorry for beating it. But what the hell?! I'd been planning this nice little faerie lenny with a skree and now... the pretty lenny swooping tail pet lookup circle pic is non-existent? Now it like holds an invisible who-knows-what in its feathered "hand"??

I'm so disappointed. Of course (!!!!!) I only noticed this after spending a good chunk of my weekend painting myself an airy fairy pic of my was-soon-to-be-faerie lenny. POOP!!!

I found one pet that is still "unconverted" and that's Earthbaby, http://www.neopets.com/petlookup.phtml?pet=Earthbaby . How is this done? I want to do it too.

I'm so sorry for rehashing a topic that's probably been done to death, but DAMN. I'm sad and angry.

Also, I'm probably really dating myself here, but moving the obnoxious yellow sidebar to the top is PURE BLASPHEMY! :(
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Kamil »

Neopets decided, in their infinite wisdom, that what was most wanted amongst its players was the ability to dress their Neopets in bonnets and petticoats, so around April 15th or so of last year (I think . . . ) customization was inflicted upon the land, and lo, the site has not been the same since.

As for the uncustomized pet you saw, they came up with a very short of list of pets they allowed to be "grandfathered" - which means if you had one of those pets at that time, you could choose to keep it as is.

Unfortunately, if you haven't made one yet, you can't get one now, unless you find a pre-existing pet to adopt.

Neo now allows full on, one-for-one pet trading, so you might look up the Pound Board on the Neopets forum and see if you can find a uncustomized faerie Lenny on offer.

Your picture is perfectly lovely, I hope you can find a pet to go with it. Good luck.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Madge »

Yeah, finding a grandfathered faerie lenny on the pound boards is going to be very difficult, though, unless you have a draik or something you don't want.

You're more or less going to have to find someone offering one up for trade, and see what they want.

But it'll be your only way of getting one now.

And yeah, TNT fucked everything up.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by 23639377 »

Sorry for that but I'm sure you'll get one by trading. Find them on Neotrades.com or on Neoboards.
I'm one of the victims of the customization system too! It's impossible for me to get one now because I could never save up for a Draik to trade. I wanted a Faerie Pteri very much. :(
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Rainbow Daydreamer »

There've been a lot of changes over the last year and a bit, mostly to enable new features (such as the ability to put clothes and pretty trinkets on our pets). Unfortunately, that has resulted in some major alterations to some of the pet designs. I agree that the Faerie Lenny doesn't look as good now.

My suggestion is to try some of the longer-established adoption agencies. Some of them do still have so-called "UC" pets, and due to new ruling by TNT, they can't ask you for anything unreasonable if you're applying for them. Hopefully you'll be lucky.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Usul_Princess »

Heh, you poor thing. :)
I have to say, living in the Dark Ages about Neopets should make the blow slightly easier for you because we had an uproar about this (30+ long thread) on Doomsday.

http://neocolours.me.uk/forum/viewtopic ... ets+Layout

There isn't a real set definition of what's going on amongst the chaos, and angry users. The 'transformation' happened right in the middle of the afternoon when the site went down for maybe 2 1/2 hours. We lost next to everything about the original Neopets: Good artwork, all the emotion poses for unconverted pets (They're always happy now, even when you feed them gross food, they get sick, or pound them). The site layout is the most horrible thing I've seen in forever, and now looking back on it, I don't understand why it needed to be changed in the first place.

All this was thanks to Viacom. The original CEOs of Neopets sold their souls to Viacom in April of '07 for 175 million dollars. And...Viacom turned the site on it's head by trashing it's great artwork for pets with cookie-cutter poses (So you can dress them up like paper dolls with real cash money!) And did all of this 7 1/2 years after the creation date, so it was a shocker because it was so random with no warning at all. Now Neopets does nothing but shamelessly plug how many different ways you can spend real money on their site, and what do you get in return? A 1-dimensional drawn version of your pet in fashionable clothes that you paid cash for. Oh rapture. Viacom had Disneyworld in mind, and reset the age-group range from bored college kids, to children under 12.

"Now you too, (with you're parent's credit cards) can have everything your pet desired in our new Neopets Mall!"

As far as wanting to have your pets change back to the way they were (be "Unconverted) Neo did not give us a choice about which ones they decided to keep unconverted, and which ones would be changed against our will. This forum is mostly afloat because of the other various topics, because I would say 1/5 of the users on Neocolours quit instantly or self-froze themselves because we literally were in tears about it. Most people had at least 1/2 of their pets slaughtered in the redraw. I think all grey pets, all plushie pets, and whatever the site considered "popular" pets, got the option to stay unconverted. In short, don't put your heart back into that website. Quite a few of us have become extremely pessimistic and jaded about Neo altogether.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Officer 1BDI »

That thread brings back horrible memories. :( And I came out relatively lucky in the whole deal.

Larkspurlane, that's a beautiful picture. Maybe if you get a converted Faerie Lenny you can just post it over your pet's lookup to block out the awful redraw?
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Larkspurlane
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Larkspurlane »

Major barf you guys!! Now that I've kind of clued in that there's something up, I've looked at the pics of different colors that I used to like right here at Neocolours, and woe is upon me.

:( here is a list of things that make me cry: faerie pteri, faerie ixi, faerie peophin (!! no!!!), maraquan draik (I used to own the pet called Lumos before I was iced & quit... the pose was so cool). The royals, ack, I'm not even going to look after I saw someone's royal male kougra.

Well boo hiss. I think of my pets as animals w/ a personality and my last concern is clothing. I guess jewelry is interesting but I'd take the old pics back over that any day.

Thanks for the explanations as to what happened. I agree, I'm glad I was out of the neopets loop for this long, cuz I think *I* would definitely have been in tears over some of these. Putting so much effort in terms of time and creativity into designing a character for your pet and then having it this maimed must have been freakin' heartbreaking.

So now basically my new goal in neolife is to get a jazzed-up draik so's I can trade it for an unconverted faerie lenny that may or may not exist and may or may not be named dickwad_69neo. Arg!! I think I'll just ditch neolife altogether.

Sorry for bringing this back up for you Officer1 :( I'm really shocked and I didn't even own a special pet at the time this was done. Jeez. Unbelievable.

I'll read the uproar thread just to get a taste of it, usul_princess... I just looked at it and the first post echoes my sentiments exactly: "MY EYES BURN... I AM SO CONFUSED."

Now I'm super embarrassed cuz I'm so out of the loop :@ I'll try to lurk more before posting like a turd next time.

You know, with their whole emphasis on real-world money...um... does it make me a twat to say I'd pay the 7$/month premium fee just to get unconverted pets back?! And not for like a dumbass coconut-crotch mask or whatever they're selling at the "mall".

Edit: I just re-read your post Kamil... did I understand this correctly -- pet TRADING? I thought you guys' idea about the draik for the lenny was just in the sense of like swapping... but in a non-serious and certainly not-sanctioned-by-neopets kind of way. Didn't the pound always say that pets aren't just objects etc etc kind of deal? Like they aren't items, and that's kind of the point?!

..............

There are no words.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Officer 1BDI »

Larkspurlane wrote:Edit: I just re-read your post Kamil... did I understand this correctly -- pet TRADING? I thought you guys' idea about the draik for the lenny was just in the sense of like swapping... but in a non-serious and certainly not-sanctioned-by-neopets kind of way. Didn't the pound always say that pets aren't just objects etc etc kind of deal? Like they aren't items, and that's kind of the point?!

..............

There are no words.
It's a recent feature that TNT implemented when they reopened the pound (they closed it shortly after customization first hit the site, and then left it closed for almost a year X( ). Now you can use the trade feature once a month to safely move a pet to a side account (yay!), or to safely transfer a pet to another user (...yay?), and vice-versa. There's still the potential for getting scammed, and I don't know how TNT deals with those situations, but the short of it is that trading pets is allowed for the moment.
Sorry for bringing this back up for you Officer1 :( I'm really shocked and I didn't even own a special pet at the time this was done. Jeez. Unbelievable.
Oh, no, it's fine. I've gotten almost all of my pets to a state of tolerance now, and I'm actually using the customization system to the benefit of my pets. I've gotten back into target zapping because of it; it's just now I'm aiming for paint brush clothes instead of colors. :P
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by bonecrivain »

The saddest part of customization, for me, is going back through that 46 page thread and seeing how many wonderful NC folk have stopped frequenting this forum as a result of the new Neopets. I pop back into my main account once every few months to do part of a mini-plot or pick up some sort of freebie. But most of my pets are gone, and I don't have any lingering attachment to those that are remaining. I guess I should see about adopting out some of them.

On a happier note, your painting is very pretty indeed. It makes me miss the days when I was constantly on the lookout for potential pretty art for my pets.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Rainbow Daydreamer »


Edit: I just re-read your post Kamil... did I understand this correctly -- pet TRADING? I thought you guys' idea about the draik for the lenny was just in the sense of like swapping... but in a non-serious and certainly not-sanctioned-by-neopets kind of way. Didn't the pound always say that pets aren't just objects etc etc kind of deal? Like they aren't items, and that's kind of the point?!

..............

There are no words.

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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Usul_Princess »

Larkspurlane wrote: So now basically my new goal in neolife is to get a jazzed-up draik so's I can trade it for an unconverted faerie lenny that may or may not exist and may or may not be named dickwad_69neo.
OT:That line gave me a big laugh! I also went through that long thread too, and some of those lines in there are so funny, I'm thinking of putting a few in my latest quote. Tragedy ironically brings out the humor in people:

Caz: "They're not even sad anymore on the disown page. 'You're disowning me?! Yippee!!' "

strange_infatuation: "I don't know, maybe I'm just being spoiled, but it would be real nice, if my Lupe had a head."

shadowgem: "No, I do not want to see how my Neopet is doing on every fucking page I visit. That's why we have a QuickRef page - so I can check on my pets. I'm sure that Patty Pixelpants will be JUST FINE in the 3 seconds it takes for me to go from one page to another."

*********

Yes. They're allowing pet slave-trade. People have mixed feelings about it. Most people hate the idea of trading their pets because it's easy to put a "worth" on a particular pet. UC pets are obviously the most sought after, and people do claim about how their pet means nothing to them because they went Pound surfing and yoinked it out the pound just to participate on that dreaded board. Neo is implying in a way that they'll allow this site to go to hell because if they were to revert back to 1.0 Art, it would mean less money in their pockets for paper-doll pets. They know damn well that no idiot would choose a converted pet over a UC one just because you can dress it up. Pet slave-trading is another bad reminder about how this site has lost "heart". They used to care about making quality plots. (The last plot we had was very half-assed because it was unfinished, and released the day after Neopets 2.0, to get us to shut up about messing up our pets.) They used to put serious effort into expensive colors, and they actually used to take POLLS on occasion (like the Kougra revamp) to see/care what the users think.

My advice is not to get roped into the idea of trading up your pet. You will hate that board. Some people have success stories of getting their dream pet. But others get scammed all the time. At this rate they may as well make a pet trading post. Pets are now cheapened to be items.

Your artwork is fantastic though. Neocolours has a soft-spot for people who can draw (Unconverted) pets.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Huggles »

I like the idea of trading pets. But as others have mentioned, there's still no guarantee that once a person sends a pet to transfer, the other won't take it and run. Essentially, trading amongst your own accounts and trusted friends is great, while trading on the neoboards and elsewhere is practically the same as it's always been, except there's no chance of a random third-party pound surfer picking up the pet.

As far as I know, Neo's biggest problem is still paint brush inflation. If it didn't cost you months of your life to paint a pet, then it'd probably end up like Subeta. Excluding the cost of extra pet slots, it's fairly simple to save up for any pet and color combination you want or find them in the pound. On the whole, the difference in quality between colorfils and redraws isn't as drastic as it was on Neo. So, I personally don't see the same attitude towards unpainted or plain pets. Plus, it's still very small by comparison and finding a decent name without numbers or underscores isn't hard either. I've lost a lot of interest in Subeta for other reasons, but that's still one of the main differences that draws players to it.

Oh, and that's a fantastic pic, by the way. Those are still two of my favorite creatures.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Wingsrising »

Uh... Speaking as someone who was very, very upset about the whole Neopets 2.0 thing when it originally happened:

Deep breaths. Trading pets isn't "slave trade" and this isn't a "tragedy".

Sure, it sucks. I believe them when they say that pets wearing clothes was the most-requested feature on the site, but it should have been optional. It pissed me off that it wasn't and it sill pisses me off if I think about it hard enough. (Aside: I also suspect that the preservation of classic neohomes occurred in part because of the negative reaction to Neopets 2.0.)

But no actual living creature (as opposed to pixel creatures) were injured or killed in the transition.
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Re: what HAPPENED to neopets?

Post by Huggles »

I dunno. I might have killed some of the bacteria in my mouth by brushing my teeth the night it happened. Maybe.
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