What is the true purpose of the "side account"?

[Scheming Angel]

So much fuss is made about not using multiple accounts to get around the rules that I can't help but wonder why multiple accounts are permitted at all. I understand what I've been told - pet storage, multiple guilds, extra galleries, and so forth but wouldn't it be far less complicated just to extend the limits of each account and allow only ONE per person? It doesn't seem impossible to allow 20 pets per account, up to 5 guild memberships, etc. Are they trying to inflate their numbers for advertisers? If so, I don't think that sets a very good example in "playing fair." I hope there's a logical explanation which I've missed, because I'd hate to think that a company this wealthy and powerful would tempt children to "cheat" and then punish them for it.

 

All I'm asking for is a little consistency in this policy. If they want to let people have 5 accounts, they should let everyone enjoy all the benefits of said accounts. If they feel that this kind of rampant enjoyment of their site would unbalance the universe, then they should change the "side account" policy. How hard would it be to ask at the sign-up page if this will be a secondary account and then simply disable all the features prohibited in multiple accounts? That way, there's no temptation and no accidents that get people's accounts frozen. It may not seem like a big deal to most adults, but children are very sensitive to stuff like that. I wouldn't mind the situation so much if they weren't preaching honesty and fair play on every corner of the site. To me, it smacks of hypocrisy because the only reason I can think that they would permit side accounts that looked just like regular ones is so that their membership stats look more impressive to advertisers.

 

Any thoughts?

[Kazedo]

I tend to agree that its silly you cant do the same stuff on your main account as you can with your side account. Most of the stuff from the daily things is 'junk' (compared to the value of most items in Neopets), and anything else you would 'gain' from them is stuff like an Avatar that wouldnt trade to your main account anyhow. Also, it doesnt really base on the # of ppl doing it, since -everyone- can do it per day, an extra spin or whatever it is shouldnt hurt neopia IMO.

 

The only reason I could see them -maybe- not allowing it, is that it can undervalue the items from those (which if you havent noticed are mostly 1-100np anyhow. :P).

 

My 2 cents.

[dragontatt]

How hard would it be to ask at the sign-up page if this will be a secondary account and then simply disable all the features prohibited in multiple accounts? That way, there's no temptation and no accidents that get people's accounts frozen.

 

I've thought from the very beginning of my time on Neo that a simple check-box asking 'Is this your primary account?' would be a brilliant idea. That way TNT could make the call of what you can and can't do on a second account...cause seriously, this 'you'd unbalance the game' nonsense is silly. The 'game' is completely unbalanced already, or else they wouldn't need giant money sinks like 'Save the Wheels.'

 

~dragontatt

[Scheming Angel]

Wouldn't there be fewer neglected pets if ALL the pets you're allowed to have were right there in your "Quick Reference"? How many side accounts have been created (meaning one more user name was rendered useless) and abandoned for months on end? At the very least, they should tighten up the length of time an account can be inactive. On the other hand, if all these extra accounts are needed for some reason, then why not let those who provide the numbers enjoy a little extra game play? I don't see how we're "cheating" each other by proceeding through the game at our own pace. The cool thing about fantasy worlds is that there's usually enough loot to go around. Terms like "inflation" are generally meaningless when food and weapons and stuff can be generated out of thin air.

 

Anyway, with all the limitations TNT slaps on our earning potential to keep us coming back and playing, the "five accounts" policy bugs me as being decidedly out of place. If nothing else, why tempt players (who are quite often immature children) with the motive AND ability to break the rules? I doubt they'll ever deflate their pie charts by heeding my advice, but I think this particular policy smacks of deceit and doesn't show a lot of respect for we, the players. Of course, I could just be oversensitive about it due to my impatient nature...

[Sakeru_Kyori]

I agree on this. It would be so much easier. I would seriously love to have more then the 4 pets we are allowed.

[antiaircraft]

If I may interject - from a technical standpoint this seems like a case where the implementation of a new system was delayed until switching from the old system became infeasible. It's possible that side accounts were a perfectly sufficient way to handle extra pets, etc. back when the site was fairly small and abuse could be easily handled, thus allowing the programmers to delay any plans to expand the capacity of a single account. By the time it became clear that side accounts were becoming cumbersome, the standard limits had probably already ended up hard-coded all over the site (meaning it would be a major pain to change them without stirring up a whole host of glitches), and the side account system itself would have been a well established concept in the rules and the game in general. As it stands now, any change to that system would be a major undertaking, and TNT's developers have a lot on their plate as it is.

 

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[jesse_rocket]

How many side accounts have been created (meaning one more user name was rendered useless) and abandoned for months on end? At the very least, they should tighten up the length of time an account can be inactive.

 

While I agree with most of your points here, this one I don't, although I can see your reasoning. One of the wonderful things about Neopets is that you can drop it and pick it up as you see fit. My account is nearly 10 years old, and I would say that at least half of that time, I've been inactive. But whenever I come back, my pets are there waiting for me, a little hungrier than before but none the worse for wear, and all my stuff is there, and it's great. When I mention to friends who used to play, they'll be like "oh I'm sure my pets are dead now" and I explain that they don't die, and they're all "oh, yay then!".

I think knowing that everything a player worked for isn't going to just go away if they find something else to concentrate on is important too, and a very clever way of retaining users in the long-term. It's like saying "by all means, concentrate on your cheerleading/humanitarian work in Africa/career as a stockbroker, we'll be here when you get back" and I dig that. :D

 

However, you are quite right about their policy for side accounts being somewhat lacking. Long long ago when I first started playing, I created one or two sides for the purpose of having some extra pets that I thought I wanted at the time, and there they are still, languishing and neglected. Frankly, I don't care about them. All they contain are plain, basic pets, and no interesting items, because dude, I'm not even "allowed" to get free omelette on them, let alone anything else I could use to gussy them up a bit, unless I sent it over from my main. And why would I do that, since they're just an extra thing to remember to take care of? I can't even put the pets themselves up for adoption, because it's FORBIDDEN to make money on sides, and abandoning costs money. It's all really quite senseless. There's so much grey-area regarding what you can and cannot do on side accounts, it really would be much much better to be able to designate them as Official main/side accounts, and go from there.

[Spritzie]

How hard would it be to ask at the sign-up page if this will be a secondary account and then simply disable all the features prohibited in multiple accounts? That way, there's no temptation and no accidents that get people's accounts frozen.

 

I would love this idea, but then again, someone can easily say it's not a secondary account, and then be free to break the rules. Maybe they'll get caught, maybe they won't.

 

I tend to agree that its silly you cant do the same stuff on your main account as you can with your side account. Most of the stuff from the daily things is 'junk' (compared to the value of most items in Neopets), and anything else you would 'gain' from them is stuff like an Avatar that wouldnt trade to your main account anyhow. Also, it doesnt really base on the # of ppl doing it, since -everyone- can do it per day, an extra spin or whatever it is shouldnt hurt neopia IMO.

 

It's not just about stopping people from doing the dailies. You aren't allowed to play games either. See, I make 60-70k most days, from games. Now if I could do that on my sides... even just saying 1 side, that's an extra 60-70k a day. If I could do it on all 4 sides, that's an extra 240-280k a day. Which makes it unfair.

[Devil's Angel]

Oh man, do I ever agree on this! I got wrongfully frozen at one point because I was using a few of my old side accounts as foster homes. I would pound surf and pick up the painted pets in there and then find a GOOD owner for them, not someone that wanted them because they were painted. And TNT froze me for it because what I was doing was transfering NPs from my main to my sides to pound surf and they saw it as earning NPs on sides and froze me. It ticked me off.

[CAV of Gang Green]

Here are my complete thoughts on side accounts:

 

Side accounts are completely pointless. It wouldn't kill TNT to allow 5 pets on your main account. I fail to see the point of making a side when you can't play games, do dailies, or ANYTHING that Neopets is really about. All you can do on a side account is sit and stare at your pets, and when all you want is 5 pets (like me), that means you created a whole new account just to look at ONE pet. I've asked TNT about this, and gave suggestions, and I have yet to recieve a PM back. I understand that they don't want to allow 5+ pets on one account, but it helps deal with people that complain about how side accounts are useless. I for one am one of those people.

 

And that's what I have to say.

 

It's not just about stopping people from doing the dailies. You aren't allowed to play games either.

 

And that makes it even worse. Basically, you can't do crap on your side account, so you made an account for no reason. Aren't MOST websites against that kind of thing?

[Sakurabelle]

It would be amazing to have more than 4 pets on one account as well as multiple galleries. *pokes AA's post* Unfortunately that really isn't likely considering all the changes TNT would have to make to allow that now that the site is the size that it is. I mean, think about the movie theatre. It only has spaces for four pets' pictures. What other graphics would need to change to allow for multiple pets? Think of all the coding that would have to be redone and then we would be suffering from random glitches for years as they found everything and fixed it! It's a nice dream, but I don't think it will ever happen.

[jesse_rocket]

Here are my complete thoughts on side accounts:

 

Side accounts are completely pointless. It wouldn't kill TNT to allow 5 pets on your main account. I fail to see the point of making a side when you can't play games, do dailies, or ANYTHING that Neopets is really about. All you can do on a side account is sit and stare at your pets, and when all you want is 5 pets (like me), that means you created a whole new account just to look at ONE pet. I've asked TNT about this, and gave suggestions, and I have yet to recieve a PM back. I understand that they don't want to allow 5+ pets on one account, but it helps deal with people that complain about how side accounts are useless. I for one am one of those people.

 

And that's what I have to say.

 

 

 

And that makes it even worse. Basically, you can't do crap on your side account, so you made an account for no reason. Aren't MOST websites against that kind of thing?

 

^ this ^

 

And then Scheming Angel's original point, about how it's just this massive temptation all the time to DO SOMETHING about how useless the side-accounts are, particularly when it's trusted to be self-policed, and the punishment for transgressions is so harsh, getting all your accounts frozen, and sometimes those of your friends/family if they've been using the same computer, and with virtually no chance of them listening if you try to explain yourself...It's lame, so says I.

 

Of course, "AA"'s point about how it would be completely infeasible to actually change the system is quite right. It's just a shame they're so inflexible about the whole thing.

[Scheming Angel]

It's not just about stopping people from doing the dailies. You aren't allowed to play games either. See, I make 60-70k most days, from games. Now if I could do that on my sides... even just saying 1 side, that's an extra 60-70k a day. If I could do it on all 4 sides, that's an extra 240-280k a day. Which makes it unfair.

 

How is it unfair if everyone has the same opportunity? What's wrong with people being able to earn more NP than they can right now? I don't understand all this insistence that profitability is synonymous with cheating.

[marchigiano]

How is it unfair if everyone has the same opportunity? What's wrong with people being able to earn more NP than they can right now? I don't understand all this insistence that profitability is synonymous with cheating.

 

I fully agree with this. If everyone could use a side account to play more games and earn more NP, then everyone would have the exact same advantage. If you chose to have only one account to use and play games on, that's strictly a personal setback.

[jesse_rocket]

So I'm going do some Devil's Advocate-ing here, since while I don't agree with the side accounts policy, I can see a little of the reasoning behind it, with regards to the claims of unbalancing of the game.

 

To use Spritzie's quote as an example, simply because it includes numbers -

 

It's not just about stopping people from doing the dailies. You aren't allowed to play games either. See, I make 60-70k most days, from games. Now if I could do that on my sides... even just saying 1 side, that's an extra 60-70k a day. If I could do it on all 4 sides, that's an extra 240-280k a day.

 

Right now, Spritzie's earnings cap per day is 60-70k, which is a decent amount (more than I make from games, certainly!). A few weeks of saving this money, and all but the rarest, most stupidly expensive items can be hers, which is great. If a player with equal skill and more time than her (we'll call them Player b) did this, and on 4 additional accounts (and within the rules, in this hypothetical scenario), they'd be multi-millionaires in the same space of time, and would ACTUALLY be able to buy anything their little hearts desired. Which is fine enough, they've worked for it. But then comes a point where they've already bought "everything" they want.

 

For me, a million neopoints is a vast amount of money, give me a month or two of plodding along and I'll be there, but I'll have to think very carefully on what I spend it on.

But let's suppose Player B has grown tired of their well-earned shiny things, and thinks "dude, I'm doing all this stuff every day, my pets are great, I could go out and get a job! OR, this could be my job!" and takes to selling those Neopoints and super rare items, for real money.

Player C (they're like me, but with less regard for the rules) is all like "Hey, I have $5, I could have a million Neopoints RIGHT NOW! Make it two million! And while I'm here, I'll have a Plushie Paint Brush! I don't even have to bother playing anything anymore!" and so it goes.

 

Anyway, my rambling point is - I don't think these rules are in place to stop, for instance, me, getting two omelettes a day. I do think they're there in an attempt to make those who do real-world trading easier to track down. And, as you've said, inflate their numbers :/

[selusa]

I do think they're there in an attempt to make those who do real-world trading easier to track down. And, as you've said, inflate their numbers :/

 

I was going to make a comment on how it seems a bit ridiculous for people to pay real-life money for something on a virtual pet website, but then I remembered with horror the NC Mall. You make a good point, and even if Player B's scheme seems a little extravagant for a website such as Neopets, I wouldn't put it past anyone.

 

That being said, I doubt too many people would think of, or enact, a plan like that (unless I'm just being naive), and it seems a bit unbalanced to have it against the rules for those millions of side accounts to earn money just because a handful of people might turn it into a Evil Genius Moneymaking Scheme.

[jesse_rocket]

Oh I know of at least one site that offers these services. A lot of "black market" trading goes on out there. One of the rarer items they offer costs nearly US$2000.

 

I had a friend who worked for a well-known MMORPG, it was his job to track down sellers of currency from that game, on eBay and on their own sites, and have them shut down. ANY site or game that offers some sort of currency and trade has thriving outside markets for unscrupulous people to get an unfair advantage, and for people to make a quick buck. And these aren't small operations, it goes deeper than one person playing Fashion Fever on a few accounts a day. One operation my friend came up against while doing this job, was basically a sweatshop in China, because the servers were able to track and boot bots, they just had a room full of people whose job it was all day to trek back and forth, mining or cutting wood or whatever, blocking legitimate players, and then having the gold or supplies gathered sold on real world trading sites from there.

[selusa]

Oh I know of at least one site that offers these services.

 

Yeah, I've heard of them too, but I think the only game I've come across to have them was WoW, because I know that game just makes people go nuts. Are these sites for all virtual gaming sites, or are there some exclusively for Neopets?

 

That's kind of a terrifying thought, though, that there are actual sweatshop-esque places devoted to that stuff. You'd think people had something better to do, but alas.

[jesse_rocket]

Yeah, I've heard of them too, but I think the only game I've come across to have them was WoW, because I know that game just makes people go nuts. Are these sites for all virtual gaming sites, or are there some exclusively for Neopets?

 

That's kind of a terrifying thought, though, that there are actual sweatshop-esque places devoted to that stuff. You'd think people had something better to do, but alas.

 

Yeah, the one I'm thinking of is Neopets-specific, and it's by a long shot not the only one out there. It's not a small problem TNT has to face with these sites :(

[Midookami]

One of the rarer items they offer costs nearly US$2000.

 

...What? XD That's more than my rent. For neo?

 

I've read an article about such sweatshops, and apparently some people really like their "job" since they get to earn money while playing a game that they like.

 

But neo should just let people have more than 4 pets, have multiple gallery, whatever in our primary account. Even if they say that side accounts are not allowed to earn NP, there are ways to get around that, and serious cheaters will make multiple accounts anyway... It's just a hassle to go back and forth between different accounts just to see your pets.

 

Weren't you allowed to collect jelly and omelettes from sides, too, as long as you weren't selling them for profit? I think activities done to feed your pet (like soup kitchen) were okay even from sides.

[Annie]

I have a cousin in China who does that for a living XD. I don't know about the sweatshops part, but he gets paid to play video games for people. I'm pretty sure it's not neopets though. Apparently he gets paid pretty well, so I'm going to assume the account owners spend a lot of real money on these things.

[selusa]

he gets paid to play video games for people.

 

That'd be a cushy job. I wonder how someone goes about getting something like that. Maybe they just had to put it on their resume? "Qualifications: Played Halo and CoD every single day for the entirety of my high school career."

[CAV of Gang Green]

There is a clan in Modern Warfare 2 that is very elite. They pay their members to play multiplayer matches, so only the best of the best get in.

 

But that's off topic.

[Spritzie]

Guys, we're getting pretty far off topic here. The discussion needs to stay on the topic of the use of side accounts.

[CAV of Gang Green]

Spritzie, there really isn't much to say about side accounts. Nobody likes them, nobody wants to just stare at their pet and not be able to play games. Done.