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Stop Worrying, Neopets Is Not Ending
Posted by Clutch,
29 June 2015
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1778 views
neopets, apocalypse, neoboards and 6 more...
Oh boy, there is a lot of talk around the web lately that Neopets will not last much longer... Will it?
First, let's examine when this talk all began. The first time I noticed the increasingly pessimistic view of Neopia's future was around the time that most of TNT was sacked. I looked on the Neoboards, and saw that player morale after said firings was at an all time low. People were predicting the end days, quoting Mayan prophecies of certain doom, saying their final goodbyes to Neofriends, and taking screenshot after screenshot of their beloved pixelated creatures. Jellyneo even posted about it on their site, claiming to have an "inside source", who in all likeliness was probably as reliable as Neoleaks. Jellyneo droned on and on about Neopia's bleak future, and one staff member for their site even went as far as to say: "Dave thinks it will end, so it will probably end". Look, I don't know who the f*ck Dave thinks he is, but how the f*ck does he know if it's dying? Oh, and don't forget about Herdy. He was acting as if he was a prophet from the Lord, telling us that the end is nigh. Well, f*ck you too, Herdy, and your stupid Altador Cup fetish. Seriously, this guy goes into way much detail about the AC, and spends way too much time thinking about it. Funny thing is, he's wrong so often, he may as well be Neopia's own Skip Bayless.
Of course, then there was all the duping glitches. Neopia was in ruins, because, you know, we never got through shit like that before. I think any veteran players can recall back in 2004 or so, there was a similar glitch resulting in the duplication of multiple expensive items. 11 years later, we are still logging on to the site. People that predicted that this would cause the end of Neopia were wrong, as most "end of the world" predictors are. Does anyone remember the whole Year 2K thing involving the mass suicide because they thought they were going to die anyway? Yeah, we're still here.
People will often cite multiple other things as heralds of the apocalypse, such as broken features, users leaving in hordes, and the overall deterioration of things such as the Neoboards, Shopping/Trading/Auctioning, and the lackluster art jobs that have been released, especially recently, with the Staff Tournament prizes. First of all, I'd like to point out that most of those "broken features" have since been fixed. I can count maybe two major things that have yet to be repaired: the online users bar, and various games. Also, when people say that users are leaving in hordes, I have found no evidence of this. Alexa.com is a website that measures traffic on other websites and gives an analytics report based on those numbers. Neopets is the 6,138th most popular website in the world, at the time of writing. It's the 1,447th most popular website in the United States. These numbers are interesting, because, first of all, it shows that there has been an influx of users on Neopets recently, given it's world wide ranking. Second of all, it shows that Neopets is still more popular than millions of other sites around the world. Does that sound like a site that's dying to you? Also, if you look at the time spent on the site per user, it clocks in at about 30 minutes a day. That's very, very good, and that's why Neopets has in the past been described as a "sticky site". Again, it doesn't look like they are dying. Sure, it's harder to sell items. But I attribute that to the fact that Neopets is still recovering from a period of constant downtime, in which a lot of players DID leave. The art, I have no answer for. My guess is the people they hired from India (I'm guessing they outsourced) still do not know how to fully utilize the capabilities of the technology they have in place. Either that, or the technology just isn't that good to begin with.
Jumpstart is trying to revitalize a company that was going down the wayside. They have actually increased the site's visitors, and are working to push Neopia to other places, like your tablet or smartphone. Unlike Viacom, Jumpstart does seem to realize that Internet gaming is not what it used to be. Many websites are making or have already made the transition to portable technology. Jumpstart is trying to get Neopets on that ship, even though it really should have set sail a long time before Jumpstart ever came along. When David Lord says he won't close down the site, I believe him. He has made it clear that he and Jumpstart are trying to run a business. He has made moves that many businesses have chosen to do the past few years, like: outsourcing jobs to India or other foreign countries, firing/laying off people that aren't necessarily important to the business itself, or trying to bring the company down new roads.
Firing TNT may not have gone over well with some users, but it was necessary. It's an "out with the old, in with the new" type of policy. By getting rid of TNT, he is bringing in people with fresh ideas, and new things to bring to the site. The old TNT failed constantly to improve the many things wrong with the site, yet, when JS took over, we started to see things fixed. By eliminating staff that either weren't good at their jobs or just not necessary, Jumpstart is saving money and ushering in a new era of Neopets. He saw the potential, figured out who was and wasn't necessary to keep the site running, and got rid of the rest. It's really not all that complicated.
Jumpstart may not look all that competent at the moment, but given the fact that they have only had the site completely to themselves for three or four months now, it's not a surprise. I expect them to continue learning from their mistakes, just like any normal human being, and I think that four or five months down the road from now we will start to see some real improvement in multiple areas of the site. We're already witnessing the site rising, albeit slowly. It's only a matter of time before it rises to it's former glory, not dies. If anything, Neopet's future is looking brighter than it was a year ago. So please, before you start saying Neopets is a dying site, try to look at the facts that would normally accompany such a statement. Neopets is not dead, far from it. With a stronger advertising push to promote even more users to come to the site, and the fixation of multiple areas that are problematic at the moment, Neopets should continue to see growth. It's a business, and Jumpstart's finally starting to treat it like one. Neopets wasn't going to last under Viacom's standard "meh" policy, but with Jumpstart consistently trying to get it right and revitalize it, it just might have a chance at a major comeback.
First, let's examine when this talk all began. The first time I noticed the increasingly pessimistic view of Neopia's future was around the time that most of TNT was sacked. I looked on the Neoboards, and saw that player morale after said firings was at an all time low. People were predicting the end days, quoting Mayan prophecies of certain doom, saying their final goodbyes to Neofriends, and taking screenshot after screenshot of their beloved pixelated creatures. Jellyneo even posted about it on their site, claiming to have an "inside source", who in all likeliness was probably as reliable as Neoleaks. Jellyneo droned on and on about Neopia's bleak future, and one staff member for their site even went as far as to say: "Dave thinks it will end, so it will probably end". Look, I don't know who the f*ck Dave thinks he is, but how the f*ck does he know if it's dying? Oh, and don't forget about Herdy. He was acting as if he was a prophet from the Lord, telling us that the end is nigh. Well, f*ck you too, Herdy, and your stupid Altador Cup fetish. Seriously, this guy goes into way much detail about the AC, and spends way too much time thinking about it. Funny thing is, he's wrong so often, he may as well be Neopia's own Skip Bayless.
Of course, then there was all the duping glitches. Neopia was in ruins, because, you know, we never got through shit like that before. I think any veteran players can recall back in 2004 or so, there was a similar glitch resulting in the duplication of multiple expensive items. 11 years later, we are still logging on to the site. People that predicted that this would cause the end of Neopia were wrong, as most "end of the world" predictors are. Does anyone remember the whole Year 2K thing involving the mass suicide because they thought they were going to die anyway? Yeah, we're still here.
People will often cite multiple other things as heralds of the apocalypse, such as broken features, users leaving in hordes, and the overall deterioration of things such as the Neoboards, Shopping/Trading/Auctioning, and the lackluster art jobs that have been released, especially recently, with the Staff Tournament prizes. First of all, I'd like to point out that most of those "broken features" have since been fixed. I can count maybe two major things that have yet to be repaired: the online users bar, and various games. Also, when people say that users are leaving in hordes, I have found no evidence of this. Alexa.com is a website that measures traffic on other websites and gives an analytics report based on those numbers. Neopets is the 6,138th most popular website in the world, at the time of writing. It's the 1,447th most popular website in the United States. These numbers are interesting, because, first of all, it shows that there has been an influx of users on Neopets recently, given it's world wide ranking. Second of all, it shows that Neopets is still more popular than millions of other sites around the world. Does that sound like a site that's dying to you? Also, if you look at the time spent on the site per user, it clocks in at about 30 minutes a day. That's very, very good, and that's why Neopets has in the past been described as a "sticky site". Again, it doesn't look like they are dying. Sure, it's harder to sell items. But I attribute that to the fact that Neopets is still recovering from a period of constant downtime, in which a lot of players DID leave. The art, I have no answer for. My guess is the people they hired from India (I'm guessing they outsourced) still do not know how to fully utilize the capabilities of the technology they have in place. Either that, or the technology just isn't that good to begin with.
Jumpstart is trying to revitalize a company that was going down the wayside. They have actually increased the site's visitors, and are working to push Neopia to other places, like your tablet or smartphone. Unlike Viacom, Jumpstart does seem to realize that Internet gaming is not what it used to be. Many websites are making or have already made the transition to portable technology. Jumpstart is trying to get Neopets on that ship, even though it really should have set sail a long time before Jumpstart ever came along. When David Lord says he won't close down the site, I believe him. He has made it clear that he and Jumpstart are trying to run a business. He has made moves that many businesses have chosen to do the past few years, like: outsourcing jobs to India or other foreign countries, firing/laying off people that aren't necessarily important to the business itself, or trying to bring the company down new roads.
Firing TNT may not have gone over well with some users, but it was necessary. It's an "out with the old, in with the new" type of policy. By getting rid of TNT, he is bringing in people with fresh ideas, and new things to bring to the site. The old TNT failed constantly to improve the many things wrong with the site, yet, when JS took over, we started to see things fixed. By eliminating staff that either weren't good at their jobs or just not necessary, Jumpstart is saving money and ushering in a new era of Neopets. He saw the potential, figured out who was and wasn't necessary to keep the site running, and got rid of the rest. It's really not all that complicated.
Jumpstart may not look all that competent at the moment, but given the fact that they have only had the site completely to themselves for three or four months now, it's not a surprise. I expect them to continue learning from their mistakes, just like any normal human being, and I think that four or five months down the road from now we will start to see some real improvement in multiple areas of the site. We're already witnessing the site rising, albeit slowly. It's only a matter of time before it rises to it's former glory, not dies. If anything, Neopet's future is looking brighter than it was a year ago. So please, before you start saying Neopets is a dying site, try to look at the facts that would normally accompany such a statement. Neopets is not dead, far from it. With a stronger advertising push to promote even more users to come to the site, and the fixation of multiple areas that are problematic at the moment, Neopets should continue to see growth. It's a business, and Jumpstart's finally starting to treat it like one. Neopets wasn't going to last under Viacom's standard "meh" policy, but with Jumpstart consistently trying to get it right and revitalize it, it just might have a chance at a major comeback.
