passiflora

Aparently there is a trophy for most money lost by the Sloth invation tax. some guy holds the record with like 400k

So there is! There's a trophy for both Sloth Invasion and Tax Beast. Are those scores cumulative, or is that an amount of neopoints lost in one go? Yikes! =/

I've had the tax beast before, but I think he only took 10% and I didn't lose too many neopoints. I remember seeing a screenshot of someone losing almost 1 million to the tax beast because they were carrying so many NP at the time.

The worst RE I've had is being hit by boochi!

I believe in the concept of religion (or in some higher power, hence agnostic) for a number of reasons. How does one explain the phenomenon of consciousness and what happens to it when you die? How does one explain ghosts and demons (yes I believe on those). How does one explain time and space? :O Not to say that science is not doing it for me (I love science, especially evolution, but that is a different topic on it's own... Hmmm...), because I know some people use religion as a placeholder for science, but seriously, something out there has to be controlling everything.

I know this is a little off topic, but I think it's an interesting consideration. I don't believe in ghosts or demons and I don't have any detailed explanations to offer on consciousness or time and space, but I think it's okay to just acknowledge that we don't have all the answers (yet!).

Keep in mind that previously, people couldn't explain a lot of things that are no longer a mystery - they didn't know what bacteria was or how sickness is spread, they thought the heart was a furnace and that it spread spirits throughout the body, they thought the earth was flat, etc. People often came up with supernatural explanations for things they weren't able to understand at the time, but that didn't mean there wasn't a natural explanation for it!

And as a side note, I always have this encroaching thought in the deepest corridors of the backside of my brain: What if all the deities of all religions all communicate with each other and experiment to see which group will achieve a near utopian society, whether it be a lone religion or a team of religions? lolwat

Hahaha that's a crazy visual! :P The church I used to attend actually has a view that is kind of the opposite (or similar?!) to that:

We believe the Spirit of God is at work in many different faith communities.

For Christians, Jesus is the way we know God. Our understanding is nonetheless limited by human imagination. God is greater still and works in our world by a mysterious Spirit that knows no distinction at the doorway of a Christian chapel; Buddhist, Hindu, or Sikh temple; Aboriginal sweat lodge, Muslim mosque, or Jewish synagogue.

We work together with other Christian churches whenever possible, and among people of other religions in Canada and throughout the world on matters of justice, peace, and human dignity.

Today, difference is everywhere around us and, we believe, a great cause for celebration.

I think if everyone thought that way, this topic would never have existed! :O

Here's an interesting, if questionable, tidbit. A 2008 research paper called "Who plays, how much, and why? Debunking

the stereotypical gamer profile" by Williams, Yee and Caplan reports results of several surveys of people who played MMOs like EverQuest and World of Warcraft. (I think it applies to Neopets, since its also an MMO) In a nutshell, they report that about 80% of players are male and that older players spent more time playing the game. They also reported that the average player is in his late twenties to early 30s. Furthermore, Williams et al. determined three factors that affect how much time players are willing to commit to an online game: Sociability, Achievement and Immersion. Interestingly enough, the higher a game ranked in Sociability and Achievement, the more time people spent playing it, while the higher it ranked in Immersion, the less time they spent playing it.

 

I haven't fully read the paper, or examined it with the depth that it deserves, but it makes sense to me. Kids don't have the disposable income to spend in online game environments, college students don't have the time. I suspect that the mean age and gender of Neopets players was and is different from EQ and WoW, but generally speaking, the principles should be the same.

 

The authors don't offer an explanation for why older female players spend more time on the games, but I can see how studies like this one would help companies like Viacom target their audience. Maybe that's what's happening here. They're trading large quantities of new, free users (who each generate hits on small profit ads) for fewer players with bigger wallets (who generate direct sales of expansions AND profit generating ads).

On the wikipedia page for neopets it actually states that there are more female users, which is different compared to MMOs like EverQuest and WoW. I think overall, Neopets has more of a social networking aspect and is less 'action-packed'/violent compared to those games (to the best of my knowledge anyway, I've never played any other MMOs lol). You'd never run out of stuff to do on Neopets, but it is different!

I think your post still makes sense though - realistically, trying to retain older players with cash to spare is probably a good tactic!

Will all goodie bags have the gloves inside them? The bag itself is pretty cute so I might just keep it unopened; we will see what other items are released with the other events this month. :)

Had to be rushed back to the hospital on Saturday, kept me overnight in emerg, then did emergency surgery on Sunday to remove the stint. Just as I had thought, my body WAS trying to reject it and even after I finished all the antibiotics, I had a massive infection in both of my kidneys that had NOT been present BEFORE the surgery. So...... I THINK I'm on the mend now, but I know there are still some unresolved issues.. I still have pain (though NOTHING like what it was after the first surgery), I'm ridiculously weak, and I'm having a really hard time adjusting to eating again, down another 2 for a total of 12 lbs. lost so far bringing me 135; I can't afford to lose anymore. But there hasn't been any more bleeding, my fever finally broke and I am no longer getting violently ill; ah, small blessings :D But, I went to choir for a 1/2 session last night, made it to a job interview today and I'm not feeling too badly, although admittedly each little excursion absolutely exhausted me and I had to nap when I got home.. Every day I feel a little stronger though, so I am in a more positive frame of mind :D See the specialist on Monday, so, maybe some answers?

Is there any sort of special diet they put you on after the surgeries, if you don't mind my asking? I'm studying dietetics at university right now and we will soon be learning about post-surgery in our clinical nutrition class, so it's very interesting to me! Your body needs extra energy when it's healing and it's not cool if you're losing a bunch of weight! D:

That sounds like a crazy ordeal to have gone though. :( I hope things start looking up from here!

Wow, I love those backgrounds! There's so many pet colours that they'll look good with! Zombie, ghost, halloween, wraith... oh my!

The apples are also super cute. I bob for apples every once in a while because I don't have the avatar yet, but I should really do it more often. :)

Since my account is only 8 months old, I only get one transfer in and one out a month. :sad02: I think I have like another year to go before I get two? I could be over-estimating that, but I know it's far off.

 

Anyways. I didn't know if they reset your transfers on the first day of the month or on the day that you did the transfer? I hope it's the former and not the latter.

I think you get one extra transfer for every two years of account age. I wish it was less! And transfers reset on the first day of the mont, don't worry. :)

It's reset at the beginning of every month, and there are people on the neoboards who are willing to do pound trades for Petpet avvies :) Some people purposefully give their pets BN and leave them basic so they wont get picked up by anybody else. Try Avatar Chat and you might be able to get all of them pretty quick! I think I got most of them in a day via pound :D

Hm, I didn't realize so many people did pound transfers! That would definitely be a quicker way to do it, but I think I'm too much of a scaredy cat for fear of losing the pets!

I can't get enough of wraith. This one isn't as detailed as some of the others, but still looks pretty fierce.

Love the cupcake too, I now want to make my own cupcakes that look like that. ^_^

Personally I think the PB is kind of cool, though I really wish TNT would finish all the current colours first before creating new ones.

I'm with you - there's so many other colours I'd rather see finished besides this one. I'm not too fond of it in the first place though; and I do like some of the newer paintbrushes that have clothing included with them. They're a little more versatile, I think. :)

Hm! I've seen people discussing the purge here but I never realize that people actually tracked it.

How do those boards work? Are they just lists of accounts that could potentially be purged, or will be purged for sure in x amount of time? I haven't been stalking any accounts for names I'd like, but maybe I should! :O

I didn't see any today, either. How sad that it was over so quickly! I hope at least a few people managed to catch one. :)

I also dress like a guy. So would I get fired for dressing like a guy outside of work?

Off hours you can wear anything you'd like and it's actually illegal for them to say you can't wear x when you aren't on the clock

Off the job, it doesn't matter what you wear. On the job, it really depends on the company and the nature of the work. All black or neutral colours are usually a safe bet. For one of my jobs I have to look professional ("business casual"), for another there is no dress code, and for yet another I'm required to wear jeans and high-visibility shirts. You'll just have to ask the buisness owner (or, start your own business and set your own dress code :P )!

Wouldn't it depend on the nature of the ticket?

I think they send a lot of automated or partly-automated responses, regardless of whether or not they can think of a solution. It's probably usually just troubleshooting tips or something similar that's related to the topic of the ticket, but doesn't address any specific details within your ticket.

Congratulations! You are one lucky duck!!!

Are you now going to leave the current quest open and wait to use the first one, then complete the quest? Or are you going to be forced to forfeit the first reward? I feel like this has somehow been answered already but I don't know much about how FFQs work. :*

Yes, they are valuable. They go for around 1,400,000! I have no clue why. They aren't really cute petpets or anything. So it may be hard to sell for that price. I'm unsure.

They must be pretty rare!

I'm kind of disappointed now that I used my other "grabs" for junk instead. I would have forgone my money tree items for the day in the hopes of catching one of those little guys! Do they usually just stick around for one day?

On a related kvetch, i have new information to add to my observation that was locked just now. Since my post was just locked rather than being moved to the correct thread, and since my new information is related to the original post, where do i put the new information? If i add it to the correct thread, it won't make sense. If i repeat the original to make it make sense, it'll get deleted or locked or sent a bag of fire ants in the mail (that's a joke kids, hoping to lighten it up). What do i do? Why is this so hard?

I'm not a mod so I don't know for sure, but I'm fairly certain that you can just make a post in the other thread which contains your original message & new information. (I've seen people do similar things, especially for advertising or adoption threads.) Your scamander post was very interesting and would definitely add to the discussion! :O

Today while I was at the money tree, it would randomly load with a bunch of scamanders, but when I clicked on one it said it had wriggled away (screenshots below)!

I've never seen that happen before, and it doesn't seem to coincide with any calendar event or anything??? Silly TNT.

It also appeared to have counted towards my item 'quota' - I've been picking up junk items from the tree for the rubbish avatar, but I clicked two scamanders and only ended up being able to take 8 items. :O

I hope all the Canadians of TDN enjoyed their long weekend. ^_^ Did you do anything to celebrate?

I had two delicious turkey dinners and ate a lot of junk food today while watching football. The entire weekend was a most spectacular display of gluttony on my part. :laughingsmiley: I was very thankful to spend time with my family, and as a student living away from home it's also nice to bring back some leftovers so I can eat well for the next few days.

For other TDN members, join in: What are you thankful for?! :)

I put it down to the youth of today looking for more thrill seeking actitvies :-P

I haven't read the entire thread, but I think it boils down to this more than TNT's customer service. Websites always lose members, and it really depends on how well you are able to replenish members. I've never seen Neopets advertise anywhere, and with all the other websites and technology available to kids these days, I can't see how they'd be attracting many new players.

It seems to me that a large amount of neopets user-base is now older members who joined when they were kids. When I joined (probably ~age 10), my family would have still had dialup or just recently switched to high speed, and in my limited scope of experience the internet wasn't that "big" - I didn't know what social networking was, I didn't know forums existed, I didn't know of any other online games, etc. - I just knew that all my friends liked this thing called "Neopets." If my 10-year-old self was transported forward to today, I probably never would have joined, and maybe never even heard of it.

... What the heck is the benefit of this "policy" anyway?

 

Only opening one door seems to be a giant safety issue on so many levels. Whoever okay'd that has the dumb.

Maybe it has to do with efficiency - our buses are enter-only through the front door and exit-only through the back (unless you have accessibility issues, then you can go out the front). But then again, handicap/priority seating is at the front of the bus right near the driver. Sounds like the system Karina is dealing with isn't so efficient. :(

Karina - I hope everything gets sorted out quickly for you so you don't have to be stressed about a lawsuit. Hopefully other people that have been having problems start to speak up, too. In the meantime, wishing you a speedy recovery!

Like others have said, it can be really neat in terms of customization. However, it's infuriating that it's an RE, and also kind of annoying when it's one of the colours released on a pet day, since there's so many other nice ones. :(

I usually open a window and it goes something like this...

1. Type 'fa', hit Enter (Facebook)

2. Cmd + t

3. Type 'red', hit Enter (Reddit)

4. Cmd + t

5. Type 'paw', hit Enter (university thing similar to blackboard)

6. Cmd + t

7. Type 'tdn', hit Enter (TDN)

8. Browse each in whatever order I see fit. :P

Haha seems like TDN is full of INFJs. :P

• You have slight preference of Introversion over Extraversion (22%)
  
• You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (50%)
  
• You have slight preference of Feeling over Thinking (12%)
  
• You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (44%)
  

I got a Nerkmid in a RE and finally got the Alien Ashia avatar. Super lucky because I'd been thinking about buying a Nerkmid for some time now so I could get it out of the way!