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Neopian Nightmares


by aleu1986

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Everyone is afraid of something.

What is your worst nightmare? What is the worst thing you can imagine happening to the Neopets site, or the world of Neopia?

These are the questions I put to my fellow Neopets players, and in this article I present the answers.

Many worry about certain things never happening, others fear they`ll make some grave mistake, while still others fear that one day they will lose everything they worked so hard for. We all love Neopia and the Neopets site, and there are certain misfortunes we hope never to see befall either. Read on, and take some comfort in knowing that most of these will (probably) never happen.

Losing my account.

This was the one thing most people put in answer to my question of their worst Neopian nightmare. Many worried about losing their accounts through no fault of their own, and this is a highly understandable fear. Suddenly losing your account and never getting it back would be a true nightmare.

Key Quest never returning.

This game is sorely missed by many, and we keep the hope and faith that it will one day return. If not, many players will forever have lost a great source of both fun and entertainment as well as a steady income. TNT has stated on several occasions that they are working on bringing it back, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The world of Neopia would truly be a sad place without Key Quest. It`s already been gone quite some time, but we`d rather not make that permanent.

Spending millions of NP on the wrong item.

Imagine yourself as a stamp collector, and you have been saving for months, possibly even several years, to build up sufficient funds to buy a certain stamp for your album. The super shiny stamp collector avatar may be within your grasp, until you discover you`ve made a terrible mistake and purchased the wrong stamp! Now imagine that you`re never able to resell said stamp to regain your funds...

Similarly, some users had nightmarish visions about an item becoming retired on the day they could finally afford it, and all the available ones were snatched up, meaning they wouldn`t be able to get their hands on it afterall. Imagine spending all that time saving up, finally being so close and not getting what you wanted.

Another version of this is the nightmare of an expensive item you just bought becoming heavily deflated due to it being released through a daily, such as the Daily Puzzle.

Losing my gallery/collection.

Most of us own a gallery with a collection of items that we proudly show off, and many players have mass collections of a certain item that they spend months or years accumulating great numbers of in their SDB. Many users spend countless millions on their galleries, but regardless of their worth in NP, the collection of items in each gallery is the pride and joy of the owners. What a nightmare it would be to log on one day to find it all gone. Vanished without a trace. How horrible is the thought of having to start over, to save up once more and hunt down every last item of your precious collection. Just the thought of it is enough to make you want to cry.

The removal of contests and spotlights such as the Beauty Contest, Userlookup Spotlight, Poetry Contest, Gallery Spotlight, etc.

The contests and spotlights around the Neopets site, from the Art Gallery to the Storytelling Contest allow users to express themselves in various creative and artistic ways. In some cases the winning content is decided by the users, while others are judged by TNT. The removal of these would mean many people would lose a great creative outlet and a way to express their love for the Neopian world.

Negative random events having a permanent effect.

Random events that change your active Neopet`s colour have thankfully been removed from the site, but there are still several that have some sort of bad effect, such as items or NP being taken away, or your Neopet getting an illness.

Before the revamp of the Random Events, there was one saying "A huge spider spins her web on this page." Imagine if you got that RE, and it caused a huge, animated spider web to be plastered all over each Neopets page you visited, and it never went away. Playing games would be pretty much impossible, and reading stuff on the boards or in the NT would be quite challenging.

There is also one Random Event that features an earth quake, and causes your screen to shake for a few seconds. What if the screen didn`t stop shaking after you got that event? Think about trying to play Neopets with a constantly moving, shaking screen.

Or what about this "lovely" Random Event I`m sure you`ve seen before: "You get home from a long day at the employment centre to find that all of your Neopoints and items have been stolen, your Neopets are sick and your stocks have... *shudder* Oh thank Fyora! It was just a horrible, horrible dream."

Yeah, I think you understand what I`m getting at here. Imagine this RE having an actual effect.

Never a new plot.

We`ve had some great events over the last few years, such as the Spooky Foods Eating Contest, or the Desert Diplomacy. However, what many of us want and long for, yet fear we`ll never get again, is a new plot. To some, their worst Neopian Nightmare is never getting another proper, decent plot.

Another name purge never happening.

Imagine waiting for years for that perfect, wonderful name to purge (be deleted from the database, meaning it would be available for creation anew) so you`d be able to create your dream Neopet with that name.. and then finding out it will never happen.

Weird customization glitch.

What if the customisation feature had a weird glitch that randomized your pets outfits and they were stuck like that forever, meaning you had to look at their mismatched clothing and bizarre outfits every day without the ability to change anything. A fashion catastrophe is someone`s worst nightmare.

The April Fool`s jokes/pranks becoming real, permanent site features.

Remember the NeoBuddy joke in 2008? You`d get annoying pop-ups featuring Bug Eye McGee, and when you clicked them away, increasingly larger pop-ups of McGee would appear featuring angry remarks. What if you had to deal with looking at his ugly face every single day?

On the 1st of April 2007, the Battledome was "closed," and all the shops selling weapons or defence magic were out of business, and the BD chat was gone. Even the Hidden Tower in Faerieland was affected by this joke. If the Battledome and all that goes with it were truly to be removed from the site, it would devastate a large part of the Neopian community, not just the serious battlers.

Perhaps one of the worst April Fools jokes to imagine as a permanent addition to the site, is NeoCharge/NeoTax. This was the subject of the prank in 2006 where you had to pay for page refreshes. The max you could accumulate was 50k (50,000 Nps) at which point you had to pay your bill. Failure to do so would result in support staff taking the necessary action to compensate for the debt, such as your Neopets being put up for adoption, or having them returned to their basic colour if they were painted, or items being removed from your account. (As this was an April Fools prank, you weren`t able to actually pay).

On the day the NeoCharge joke was active, a yellow box featuring an annoyingly chipper red Scorchio would hover on each page you visited, detailing the cost of viewing said page and your total charge. Fully aware that this was an April Fools joke, people on the Neoboards were purposefully racking up impressive bills on their NeoCharges, just to see how high it would go!

Just think of NeoCharge/NeoTax becoming real, a permanent feature on the site. Having to pay hard-earned NP for simply browsing the site, and having your pets paint jobs reversed if you didn`t pay your bill on time? Now that`s a nightmare.

We love TNT`s April Fool`s jokes, but as fun as they are, we`re cool with only being able to enjoy them for a single day. We certainly wouldn`t want them around all the time.

My friends quitting Neopets, or the chat boards being completely dead.

Many users that have been around Neopia for years, have made great friends that they`ve very close to, and even if you don`t have many good friends on Neopets, we`re all part of a large, wonderful community of people that help each other. For many, their worst fear is that their friends will no longer be playing Neopets, and as many people choose to leave the site for different reasons (such as growing bored of it or thinking themselves too old or mature for this game) this is a highly understandable fear. Even if you still had your beloved Neopets, favourite games and precious items, it wouldn`t be nearly as fun to log onto the Neopets site if you knew no friends would be there to welcome you, or to offer help, kindness and encouragement. Similarly it would feel very empty if the boards were dead and inactive and you never got any replies to topics you posted. Thank goodness our community is alive and kicking, and you can always count on getting your Quest Help from your friendly fellow users.

The Neopian Times closing for new submissions.

One of my personal worst Neopian nightmares is the beloved newspaper closing its doors and the editor permanently leaving the building. It`s horrible just to imagine never getting the chance to submit more writing/comics, or get more chances at earning the two beautiful avatars.

Neopets shutting down altogether.

Finally, the worst and most horrible nightmare of all is the Neopets site itself shutting down and going offline forever. When responding to my thread, several people brought this up as their biggest fear, that Neopets would one day be gone without any warning or explanation.

One user mentioned that their worst nightmare was Neopets shutting down and her still having unspent NeoCash. I`m sure the Neopets site will be around for many years to come – more than enough time for you all to spend tons of NC, make plenty of new friends and create/adopt countless new Neopets.

 
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