Archives Questions

Unused Art/Characters

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So there’s now a mobile game for Neopets called Legends and Letters, which has a gacha element using Neopets characters to build a team. For the most part, it uses existing art for established characters that we’ve seen before, like Battledome poses and TCG art. Some previously unused characters have also shown up, like that Lutari Island Ogrin (now called Thogrin):
https://bookofages.jellyneo.net/characters/7814/

However, a couple of other characters have shown up with art we’ve either not seen before, or entirely new characters. I assume most are from canned/cut down features, and I was wondering if you had any insight on them? The first is the Pirate Supporter:

https://bookofages.jellyneo.net/characters/7816/

He appears with other pirates from the Curse of Maraqua plot, but he was never a challenger. I assume he was a cut challenger? Does that mean there were entire waves cut from Curse of Maraqua? (And, I guess, given CoM’s mechanics that would mean another 5 cut challengers exist?)

They’ve also released a character that appears to be a coloured version of Gladstone from the Seekers:

https://bookofages.jellyneo.net/characters/6001/

Does that mean all of the characters that appeared in the Obelisk trailers had full art drawn? Or was Gladstone also a cut challenger? Were there others?

Finally, there’s new art for Captain Bloodhook, the Eyrie that was thought blown up by Hannah in the Neopedia (new art shown far right here):

https://bookofages.jellyneo.net/assets/imgs/events/pages/legends-and-letters_pirates.png

He was thought dead after that, but does this art mean there were plans for him in some cancelled feature as well? Or was he another of the possible cut CoM challengers?

Thanks for any answers you can give!

Close/Ranged Attack in the battlepedia

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Hi Snarkie. I was hoping you could shed some light on a battledome mystery.

The onsite battlepedia designates each weapon as either “Close Attack” or “Ranged Attack”. Very few weapons have the Ranged Attack designation, but it was recently discovered that these Ranged Attack weapons don’t follow normal weapon order when used in battle. Rather than switching boxes when you submit your move, a Ranged Attack weapon will always take the first box (and thus take effect first) when used with a normal weapon.

By far the most notable consequence of this interaction is that pets can no longer stack the heals from Wand of the Dark Faerie and Illusens Staff (because WoDF will always heal first). Even though the Ranged Attack designation has existed since the old dome, this priority-hopping behaviour only started happening after the revamp.

Do you have any insight into what Ranged Attack meant in the old dome, or how it’s connected to weapon priority in the new dome? Did the IStaff/WoDF combo ever come up in team discussions as being overpowered, or is it just coincidental that the heal-stacking got nerfed by this new mechanic?

This mystery has been bugging me for a long time, so any info you can share would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Altador Cup

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Did you anticipate how important the Altador Cup would become to so many of the players? With teams keeping their team boards going year round, and the amazing influx of players mid-May waiting for sign-ups to start, it has evolved into a major part of neopian life. For the staff tournament, did staff members actually play at all? Or was there another method of assigning scores? Oh, and if you talk to Dragona soon, please let her know how much it always meant to us TMers when she came on our board to cheer us on!

Neopets going down almost daily

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Hi Snarkie,

Do you have any insight or ideas as to why Neopets has been going down so often? It often stops working in the evenings for 1-2+ hours at a time. I think TNT said during Comicon they are working on it but didn’t give any specifics. It’s a little concerning that it happens so frequently and with no warning. Just wondering if they could be performing maintenance or working on something else.

AC questions

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Hi Snarkie, thanks for your work on Neopets! I’ve been a part of the site since 2000 and it’s crazy to think how much it’s impacted my life as I’ve basically grown up with it.

The Altador Cup is by far my favorite event, it keeps me and many others coming back to the site. I love the competition and as a very non-athletic person in real life it makes me truly feel like I can personally make a difference (the AC counts as e-sports, right? :P)

I had a few questions regarding some comments you made in your Reddit AMA:

1. You said that “at one point, it was really hard to keep track of winners because we had to do a lot of stuff manually to tally, so we moved to a different algorithm that did a lot of that automatically”. When you say some things were tallied manually, does that mean that someone actually had to stay up until midnight NST to calculate results? I’m curious anything you’re allowed to reveal about the previous scoring system.

2. You said that “early on in the first year, we were finding that freeloaders were having a small impact even though we didn’t want them to, so we changed the algorithm on the fly”. How are “freeloaders” defined in this context – users who weren’t playing _at all_, or users who were _playing some, but not very much_?

3. Related to this – there was a good bit of controversy generated by an Editorial (http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.phtml?section=editorial&issue=735) which claimed that sending minimum scores could possibly hurt your team. We were always told by TNT in the past that “you can’t hurt your team, only help it”. Can you speak to whether someone could actually _hurt_ their team’s performance, or is it simply a matter of “helping less” vs “helping more”? It’s obvious that minimum scores are “less helpful” than better scores, but this issue has created a lot of arguments and conflict.

4. I saw in the AMA you are still friends with Breik, who was always Meridell’s representative. Did he ever find out about my Meridell fight song and national anthem? (http://www.neopets.com/~Mega2000)

What Happened to Avatars?

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In the early 2000s, there seemed to be a large avatar-collecting community on the site. Avatars were released quite frequently, and the community would immediately rally together to figure out solutions and collect as many as they could. But starting around 2006, avatar releases slowed down significantly. Gradually falling from multiple releases per week, to maybe one or two each year.

It struck me as an odd decision, as I would expect avatars to provide a relatively high level of player engagement and teamwork with minimal development time. The change also took place around the time achievement systems started gaining popularity (such as on Steam or Xbox 360), which are fairly similar and seem to have withstood the test of time.

Collecting avatars was always important to me, and losing the constant flow of them was the main reason I ended up leaving the site for many years, so I’ve just always wondered what happened or if it was even a conscious decision.

The Darkest Faerie and 2 grundo questions

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Recently I started playing The Darkest Faerie for Ps2 and despite the bugs I have loved it. I loved the lore included in it and I’d like to know your view on this plot. I’d love to know any info about the development of this story if there’s any, as well as what things you liked and disliked and which characters you like the most from it.
When I started playing neopets like 13 years ago I never understood the faerie statue underwater XD
But she is an interesting character that has been tied to several plots too. Were there any future plans for the city of Altador and the Betrayer after the Altador Plot (like a continuation I mean)? Do you know if there was a name designated for her or if we were meant to learn her name eventually?

Ooooh also two other questions: Your favourite grundo colours? I’m zapping for robot, I love this colour with and without casket :3 Do you know how the glitched grundos came to be? The ones with their colour being “unknown” and coming with all paint brush clothing upon creation? Thank you for reading n.n/

Magma Pool

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Asking one more question about hidden stuff, but it seemed that there was a way to become well versed in Moltara culture and have permanent access to the Magma Pool. Do you happen to remember how to do that? As far as I know, no one really knows the requirements and I would love to be able to actually unlock as many site features as I can. Any insight into this one? Thanks so much!

Neoquest 1/2

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I saw that there maybe plan to reset long standing HST when the transition to HTML 5 happens. Will this include the fastest times for neoquest and neoquest? Most of the tables are either long or frozen. Getting anywhere near some of those times are no longer possible as well.