I realized after that I posted this in the comments and didn’t use the form. I am very sorry for the double posting mess. Just wanted a chance to ask
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Hey, Snarkie! *tosses some red vines*
What is your personal take on UCs?
Who’d decision was this? Why were certain pets only chosen from some colours that remained UC? Why not all Faeries, or Royals, for example?
Did TNT EVER have a plan of making them available, or did they try? Did they think they could sell a UC PB, or a potion in the Mall?
Coming from a lover of one single UC (I won’t reveal, because that will reveal me), I can’t fathom the feeling some may have gone through losing their hard-earned, painted pet for one that may not have been as extravagant as its UC form.
Please lighten the darkened places for us. And sorry for bombarding with a million questions right off the bat.
Having a lovely time browsing your site!
Hi!!! I’m pretty sure we’ve answered this in a few places over the years (it’s a common question) but it would be nice to have it here for reference so here you go. I’ll try to keep it short this time. ? Thanks for asking!
Personal take: UCs were a huge mistake and the bane of our existence. ?
Whose decision: Since I was in charge of content at the time, it was ultimately my decision after we all discussed for weeks and weeks about how to handle conversion. Feel free to blame me!
Choice for UC colour/combo options: We didn’t want *any* unconverted combos for a number of reason—the maintenance it would require on the back end over time, Customisation was the new direction and we didn’t want a ton of remnants, it would confuse newbies, etc.—but felt that there were certain combos that would be really harsh to convert so we came up with the limited UC option as a compromise. (And we felt we could keep up the maintenance on the dwindling number of them over a long period of time since they would eventually be painted, the owners would abandon their accounts and they’d be purged, etc.). There were many factors that went into which ones had the UC option, like how customised the art was, how expensive/difficult it was to get the combo, when the combo was released, how many we were allowing overall, etc. We had a bunch of checklists and went over every combo to decide if it got a UC option.
Sell UCs: It would have very likely made us a TON of money in the NC Mall, sure, but we always felt it was pretty dang unfair to take something away from everyone* and then sell back access to it. That reason alone prevented us from ever seriously considering it. (Plus, like I said, we didn’t want any UCs at all so adding back an option to create them didn’t really make sense anyway.)
I hope that answered all your questions!
* We saw Customisation as a huge benefit. It was a feature that had been *frequently* and *adamantly* requested since the dawn of the site. And added much more extravagance and uniqueness to your own Neopet than the static art of the old days. So we didn’t really see conversion as taking something away so much as giving something new and different… but still, some people did feel that way. And regardless, charging you for something you used to have didn’t seem right.