Reuters: Neopets Team becoming Neostudios?

[MarchingDuck]

Is it me? Or is neopets starting to bow down to consumerism?

as is the way of the interwebs.

Personally I dont much like the idea, but I have also been with neopets for over 8 years (if you count my 1st account). I remember hwen it was small. 1 world and barely any people. The only paintbrushes were for the basic colours the pets come in.

alots changed since then.

I just fear neopets growing into some internet trend like myspace or facebook (not to bash either site...but they're "trendy" right now).

I just miss the quiet times on neopets.

[Pudding]

I took that article to mean that the same team was going to develop new sites like Neopets, not new worlds within Neopets. I'm a bit interested to see what they'll come up with from scratch now, if that's the case. There's a lot of outdated stuff on Neopets, and it might be fun to play on a Neopets-like site that's completely new.

Of course, I could have misread it or my optimism might be completely misplaced.

[Hydrangea]

PoE, I think you're right. TNT is an experienced group of people who are really good at what they do. It would make sense for the higher-ups to use that pool of talent to develop new projects. How will the use of staff to do other things impact Neopets? I think we've already seen it to some degree as a result of work being done for customization. In particular, the News used to be interesting but now it's mostly about new items and the same old weekly contests.

[Dustin]

But the articles say Neopets will be renamed NeoStudios.

[Hydrangea]

To clarify the speculation: The Viacom entity called Neopets would be renamed Neostudios. Neopets, the website, would still exist and be one of several virtual world sites produced by Neostudios.

[mazil]

I'm vaguely excited and optimistic about what it might mean

Having just gotten into World of Warcraft ... I've realised just how much potential there is in online virtual worlds, in terms of new and fun and exciting things. I love Neopets, but I do feel like they've been scrambling to catch up in the past few years. When they first started, PHP sites were the rage, they were the thing to do. It was a relatively cool new thing to have your own such-and-such, and your own items and money, etc. Now, however, Neopets is only just starting to get into Flash for things other than games, brushing the surface of AJAX, etc. And it doesn't compare to MMORPGs and other online worlds, for interaction and adventure.

The fundamental idea of Neopets has always been to have fun interacting and customising your pet. Over the years, we've complained that there isn't enough interaction (and not very much customisation) - when you feed a pet, there's just a static image of them saying "Yum"; when you play games, they're just standing to the side; etc.

I'm ready for the next step, I think. I'd be ecstatic if they brought out some downloadable game that let you immerse yourself in Neopia more, and interact with your pets more So yeah, I'm kinda optimistic.