I saw someone on the boards talking about maxing out yooyuball on their side accounts on one day, and then main on another day. While playing for the same team. Isn't this cheating? ~ username removed
It absolutely is, and any side accounts we find participating in the Altador Cup will be frozen. It's the same as any other game or event, it earns Neopoints/items and you can't do that on a side account!

So day 1 of the Altador Cup came to a close and yet the brackets don't make much sense (they rarely do). Krawk Island sweeps Altador, but Altador is in 1st and Krawk Island is 2nd. Kiko Lake sweeps Haunted Woods, but Kiko Lake is last and Haunted Woods is 5th. Lost Desert sweeps Darigan Citadel, but Lost Desert is 4th behind Mystery Island and Shenkuu who effectively tied. Does winning even matter? ~ chipperjones10810
Hi, so the bracket standings update periodically, which means what you see there won't always be 100% the same as the schedule/results page seems, but at the end of day 1, Krawk Island was ahead of Altador and Kiko Lake was ahead of Haunted Woods. Winning absolutely does matter, and since there seems to be a lot of confusion (and from what we've seen, false assumptions), about how the bracket system works, let me clear it up a bit for ya.

So, you have your daily match up, you play your games and submit your scores for your team. At the end of the day, we take all of those scores for each game for all of the teams, and normalize them based on the amount of people participating (essentially, we weight it so that if Team 1 has 1000 people and Team 2 only has 100, but they both sent roughly the same quality/amount scores per person, they'll come out even). This gives you a score for each game, which determines whether you won or lost each match. We translate this into a nice number for the results page (like when you see Team 1 beat Team 2 in Shootout Showdown 4-5, its where the 4-5 comes from), but on our end it’s actually a nice long decimal. So when 2 teams won all their games with 5 points, and they aren't tied, that's why.

So, once we have all your individual game scores from that day, we have a formula that equates it into one total score for the day (it's a little more complex than simply adding them up, but it doesn't do anything crazy, perform best in your bracket and you'll have the top number, easy. That total score determines where you rank in your brackets. Now, here's where people seem to think things are off and they aren't. Once we have that total score for that one day, your daily game scores go away, we do not look at them again. So, if you have an awesome day on day 1, good for your team, but it does not help your daily match-ups on day 2.

On day 2, we do the same deal all over again, only now your daily total score gets added to yesterdays, to come up with an updated bracket ranking. This repeats until the end of the round, when after the last day you get your final bracket ranking, and your points for your position in the bracket. Then, as with the daily game scores, we never look at that number again. It completely resets for the first day of bracket 2 (this is one of the areas we made tweaks to behind the scenes this year, it was already doing this essentially, we just optimized it a bit to make sure it was working exactly as we wanted). So, even if you win by a landslide in round 1, it has absolutely no effect at all on round 2. None. Even a little bit. And, with how the brackets are set up to work, you earn the least amount of points for winning round 1, so if you fall after round 1, or begin to pick up steam in round 2, you can completely change your final standings by continuing to play well.

Hopefully that helps you guys understand what's going on a bit. And one final myth I want to bust while we're on the subject – sending the minimum score in each game the maximum number of times can and does actually hurt your team. Yes, sending more scores is better than sending none, but it can actually make it much harder for your team to win if all that's being sent is the minimum score. With all that said, best of luck to all teams, and may the best team win!

Hey there CQ! A few issues ago you mentioned the no-romance rule, and I do agree that it's probably for the best, but am a little disappointed as such a huge romantic myself. That being said, I'm sure there are other users who have considered the idea without knowing the rule, and I wondered what would happen if they went through with it. I'm sure a lot of people just see it as a good story telling element. Would they get a warning? ~ a_cockatiel_a
Well, it depends on what you mean exactly. If they used it on the boards, or on a petpage, then yes they could receive a warning. If you mean in a contest entry, like the Neopian Times, then no! You receive a simple, this content is against the rules, rejection neomail letting you know!

Hi Country Queen! Recently I walked past the Money Tree and I saw that the whole page was filled with the same items, donated by the same person. I refreshed a couple of times but I did not see any other items. I later found out that people sometimes donate about 100 of the same items, which I find a bit frustrating because they clog the money tree and you cannot find the other items that people donated. Are there any specific rules about the amount of identical items you can donate? (Please leave out my username)
Hi, there are no rules about how many of one item you can donate to the Money Tree. Things like this happen quite often as people clean out their safety deposit boxes or inventories and find they have a lot of one item that they just don't need anymore. It'll clear out eventually, and if you're looking for something more specific, the shop wizard might be the way to go!

Hey CQ! *offers a lemonade-flavored Ice Pop* I have been working on my gallery for a while and it has grown over 1000 items collected! I have planned to submit my gallery in the gallery spotlight, and I was suggested that If I made it viewing-friendly, I might have my chances to win. Turns out, every time I try to rank my items, I get glitched with having repeating numbers on the bottom of my page. So my gallery looks neat in color scheme on the top and a large mess on the bottom. Also I cant remove items, or can't move the bottom repeated number items. I sent a ticket and was informed it's a glitch everyone has right now affecting those over 900 items in the gallery. My question is, will this affect my chances in the gallery spotlight? Should I just remove the ranking and let it be how it will show? Remove my username if it makes it in the editorial, please? Thank you!
*sips lemonade* ahhh, yes, now what was your question? Oh gallery, yes. So, we are aware of the ranking issues, so that will not affect your chances of winning the spotlight, we'll know that you intended the rest to be ranked nicely like the top, and won't punish you for having too many items that you've collected! As for this issue in general, we have a fix in place, but with everything else going on lately we haven't been able to finish testing and preparing to go live. We'll get it out to you soon, I promise!

Hi CQ! Is there a reason the Storytelling Contest hasn't been updated in the past two weeks? I have been waiting for a new contest to try and enter in, but no new one has come around. Thank you, and please remove my username.
Hi! Sometimes we choose not to run the contest over a shortened week (we were out Friday and Monday last weekend). It will be back on Monday, don't you worry!

Need more help?
If you have a question that you think should be answered, click here and you can use our submission form. The most common/bizarre questions will appear here next week.