Note: all the events I'm about to talk about occurred in the Portuguese version of the site. I'm still on my quest to find any Portuguese/Brazilian folks from that time that might remember these things and find out if we were besties during those years.
I don't remember exactly the year when everything started for me.
I had a friend living in US for a few years and she used to send me some magazines about skating/surfing/bicycling that weren't sold in Portugal - I was a radical teen lol. This was before 2000, because I stopped with those sports before my 18 birthday which was in 2004 and by then I think I already had an account.
Anyway, in one of those magazines there was an ad about Neopets. It got me curious so I did my research for several months. I never thought about creating an account, I was just (still am) very curious. After learning everything about it -there wasn't much to learn by then anyway- I forgot about it for a couple of years. When I moved from my parents house I found those magazines and the ad, it was when I decided to create an account. Like I said, I don't remember the exact year but I remember a lot of things from the first 2000 years -and the more I think about it, the more I've been remember, it's weird- so, contrary to what I believed a couple of year ago I was already a Neo player before 2005 which was when I thought I started playing.
ANYWAAAY, I remember a lot of stuff from that time, the weird Pets, the even more weird items we used to have. That wine lol!
Because I did an exhaustive research on the site I knew a lot of stuff other newbies like me didn't know so I used to hang in the Help Chat. Nothing major happened to me until 2007, I only played mindless games, and chat in the HC but never made any real friend. In 2005 that changed, a lot of Brazilian newbies registered and they all went to HC of course, I made friendships with some, created a guild and we were the only constant group that had always a topic in the HC active at all times. We helped people with their doubts/quests/whatever. And when Altador Plot was released (May 2006, I think - I remember being really close to my b-day -April, I just don't remember if it was before or after). TNT opened the Hall of Heores and the whole thing started like a ball of fire in a gas station lol people were very excited with that stuff (newbies eh ).
By that time we had a few Portuguese TNT members (neoboards monitors only -we never talked with anyone else beside the folks that were in charge of keep board a nice place!) talking to us on a daily basis on our topics. I admit we were little cunts. We had TNT on our side and we were such bitches to new people. There used to be tons of flame topics back then, with my group always in the middle of the drama lol. We used to called ourselves "Family", it was even the name of our Guild, and that didn't go well with some folks because "families" weren't allowed in Neopets - wtf right?- and we got tons of friendly "warnings" from our TNT acquaintances, but we never had any problems with it. We were as cool as any Neopets player can be. I had tons of avatar items, so I started making weekly topics in the AC to lend them. I got scammed a few times, and always had my items/NP returned as soon as I contacted those same TNT acquaintances, because of that TNT started to return other scammed items to other folks. It were some really nice years, probably the best ones I spent on the site. I made lots of friends. From the neoboards to MSN it was a little hop. We started to chat with each other more in the messenger than in the neoboards but we still had our guild chats and AC lends.
2007 came and all went to shit. Apparently having TNT members as our friends outside Neopets was a bad bad bad idea, especially when we have the bad luck of attracting psycho assholes willing to engage in a relationship just to fuck tons of players. So, some stupid girl fell for one of those fucktards monitors and when they started making plans to meet each other outside the virtual world - she even already had bought a plane ticket to Brazil, for fuck's sake - the bastard decided to end everything by icing her account and everyone that talked to her more or less frequently. We never had official numbers, because the original (American) TNT never respond to our mails, but we did the math ourselves. Almost every Portuguese/Brazilian player that used the neoboards by that time had their accounts frozen with the "cheat" excuse. Later that day, after most of us creating other accounts and started to swarm the boards with topics asking what was going on, TNT bastards said to us that everyone was caught cheating. Oh man, if I could I would have killed someone lol. Rage everywhere. Threats to sue the site came from every member, whatever. The next day TNT forbidden chats - people were no longer authorized to create topics just to talk, unless it was related to the respective forum. When we didn't abide to that despot rule, we were iced again.
That was the first time I semi-quit Neopets. Not after sending a mail the the US TNT, explaining everything, with proofs (every single one of the conversation exchanged with the fucktard on MSN, no shame - I think I'm glad I'm obsessive enough to keep record of the silliest things). Fucktard got fired, neoboards got to its original state, and PT Neopets was reduced to a few hundreds of players, when before it used to have 30k online daily. Yeah. Shit happens but who cares about it now? I don't, but it was cool back then.
Since then I never returned to the neoboards. I lost contact with the friends I made there because ultimately, the core of our group thought it was my stupid moves that got them iced unfairly. But I'm a bitch so I don't care about it. *shrugs*
After that I continue to play and got frozen a few more times with the same excuse as always - cheating. But honestly, I didn't know there were cheats, or cheating communities.
In 2008, and after being iced... again. And after seeing all the money I'd spent with NC and Premium I decided that was it, I would never again give money to those idiots.
After a bit of search about cheating sites, I found Codex. I made an account here. I don't have idea what username/email I used it, but it was the first time I actually cheated, after being iced for that reason.
After that, I found another site that sold stuff. I don't remember the exact name, all I know it had "Dubloon" in its name. I bought 10M, and the Ghostker battle set (Sword, Shiled, Bomb). Twice. I still have them and the account I used to do the transaction is still unscathed - eat that dick, fucktard TNT member! .
Then life happened. Work, man, kids, all that jazz. It was a big semi-hiatus from the site (semi because I used to still log in from time to time to check on things, AB a bit) until I return to Codex and made this account 3 years ago because my obsessions with write down everything didn't save me from losing the data access to my old account. I've been cheating like crazy, even more than those times after the last time I was iced and never got caught for it. Until now. Let's hope it stays like that so I can continue to give back to this community part of the joy it gives me every day.
Damn. It took me more than 1 hour to write part of my Neo soul in this tl;dr crap. Handle with care, pls. And ignore any error/misspelled word. I doesn't know ingrish.