Neopets vs other sites?Review Of Marapets
There seem to be a trend with comparing Neopets to other sites lately..Iīve been on that site for over 9 years now, lurking, playing, observing..But the last 2 years Iīve actually become utterly bored, annoyed and actually a tad irritated at Neopets..Not at the site, the users or anything like that, but the lack of accountability and the fact that you cannot for your life make sure that their staff is adressing a glitch or even bothering when something is clearly wrecking havoc. Itīs like itīs 200 miles between the users on the site and the staff. The only time the users can ask questions is through their so-called "newspaper", an in-game produced thing with members filing stories, comics and so on..There they have an editorial where users are supposedly able to turn with questions and then they get to hope that they get an answer.
Thing is, the editorial looks the same, week after week. Nothing but small questions about what faeries come from, whatīs their favourite pet, is this or that allowed and so on.. The asking about rules and situations, yes, I can understand that..But of all important questions there are, they never choose to answer something that actually helps the people playing. If a pet for example looses their clothes (items attached through the pet through so called painting, an act where a magical paintbrush gives the pet a new appearance) through a glitch on the site, the player is left to fix it by him or herself. Now, Paint brush clothes can, while theyīre expensive, be replaced.. But then we have "special" colours that are obtained through something called The secret Laboratory. THOSE clothes canīt be replaced.Thing is, without the clothes the pet looks just regular, all that painting or zapping, as itīs called when the laboratory causes the colour-change, all has been for naught.The player has to then either choose to repaint his or her pet to another colour or keep zapping and hope for the best, unless thereīs a helpful person willing to aid with missing clothes or other items.
There are other glitches as well, not to mention the now half-insane language filter which censors words as it sees fit (since when is the word "back" in the meaning "mail me back" been a bad word?) and then thereīs the moderators that sometimes go out on warning/suspension-sprees.. A friend of mine got warned because she had mentioned that she needed to leave the board so she could eat breakfast.
The "no real world topics"-rule is also insane..While I understand that some topics shouldnīt be brought up, I also understand that if someone wants to talk to their friends about the weather or something, itīs no biggie.. The rule also donīt seem to cover things like Nickelodeon-characters, shows, incidents in shows and similar. Iīd rather see the site write better rules on the topic, or be consistent..As it is now, no one really knows what is what, since one person gets a warning while another donīt for the same apparent breaking of rules.
This confusion is also a ground for the growing rudeness generally seen on some boards. I would like to point out though that some people seem to think that other people are rude because they wonīt give away one of those magic paint brushes or items of a high value for free so itīs a question of interpretation there.. As it is now, they have a "no namecalling" rule, which the more opportunist members of the community has chosen to interpret as "itīs against the rules to point out to me that Iīm begging, because youīre then calling me a beggar, and thatīs namecalling..So give me my stuff now!"
Iīm still on that site, but I keep to myself, my friends, my pets, I follow some events that show up annually and thatīs it..The general atmosphere on the site isnīt inviting to interact with other people more than necessary anymore.
Another quick notice is that the adverts have increased to an obscene amount since 2007. Some parts have a hard time loading now, with areas made over to be little animated hamlets or similar together with annoying banners and adverts loading all over the place. You can get rid of them with firefox, but if youīre stuck, like me, on the IE8..Then youīre bound to get problems.
But all isnīt bad..There are a few bright lights among the users..Itīs too bad that they feel they have to do the work that the site moderators and staff actually could and should do instead of them.
-reply by Meep
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