Monthly Q&A with TNT

February 15, 2024

The February 2024 AMA took place at 5pm NST on February 15, 2024.

The AMA was first announced on February 7th, about eight days in advance.

This AMA was dubbed "Faerie Friends Edition" and will feature not only Neopets CEO Dom Law as usual, but also unspecified other TNT members and "long-time Neopian friends." It will be moderated by Neopets YouTuber Kevin from KevinoGaming for the third month in a row.

Questions could be submitted in advance through a StrawPoll shared on Neopets social media. You may want to "View Results" before submitting; the only way to add support for other questions is to enter them exactly as an "Other" option. You can only submit one question!

How to Watch

The AMA was simulcasted on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter/X, Twitch, and Instagram. It remains available for viewing on all of these platforms except Twitch and Instagram:

Rewatch on YouTube »

Rewatch on Facebook »

Rewatch on Twitter/X »

Merch Giveaway

TNT announced that they will be giving away five Neopets: The Official Tarot Deck, Faerie Edition during the livestream. The details of the giveaway were revealed during the livestream, and involved commenting in the live chat with a story about Neofriends. TNT monitored the chat to choose the five winners.

Rare Item Code

TNT announced in advance that "ALL viewers who join live will receive an EXCLUSIVE unreleased prize." The code was revealed as FAERIEFRIENDS near the end of the livestream, redeemable at Grundo Warehouse until February 17th at 6pm NST.

Recap

Questions for Kat and Kelly

Kevin started by bringing in Kat from TikTok account tailorof2cities and her friend Kelly.

Introductions?

• Kat is the former runner of the ~Danpo UC value guide and currently a software developer.
• Kelly is an energy manager for a school district.

How did you meet?

• First met in a guild called Reverie.
• Later left and created a new guild called Exodus.
• Bonded over an April Fool's joke where they redid the guild layout.

How has your friendship expanded beyond Neopets?

• Met in person the first time this past summer at SDCC.

Share some heartwarming memories?

• Kelly: loves the guild community they have created online.
• Kat: having Kelly as secret santa within the guild; got 5 presents, including a crochet potato.

What's your favourite part of the game?

• Kat: Collecting avatars and stamps; participating in creative contests.
• Kelly: Collecting plushies; restocking.

Questions for TNT Goldfish in Bowl

Kevin then brought out TNT Goldfish in Bowl to discuss content design.

Introductions?

• Content designer for Neopets and editor for Neopian Times.

Explain more about your role as a content designer?

• Mainly focus on NC portion: wearable items, capsules, grams, etc.
• An example of recent work is this year's Sweetheart Grams.

Describe your process?

• Gave Giant Huggable Warf Fairground Prize as an example.
• Puts down written and sketched reference information.
• An artist creates a rough sketch for feedback.
• Once finalized, the artist creates a vectorized version.
• Goldfish in Bowl then uploads it to the site!

How do you approach fitting the Neopets aesthetic?

• Want to give a variety (for example, not just doing "pink stuff" for Valentines).
• Tried to do three different aesthetics for three different Sweetheart Grams.
• Relies on users for different item ideas and types of aesthetics.

Questions for TNT Luna

Kevin then brought out Community Coordinator TNT Luna for some miscellaneous updates.

Do you have spoilers for Valentines merch?

• Not really Valentine-related "unless you're a Jhudora/Illusen shipper."
• Luna shared some images of the Faerie Friends edition of the Tarot deck.

What is the story about international shipping?

• Andrews McMeel has said you can likely order through a local bookstore for free shipping.

What about the giveaway you promised?

• Five Tarot decks will be given away.
• To enter, viewers could share a memory about Neofriends in the live chats along with a way to contact you.
• TNT will monitor the chat and choose five winners!

What can you share about how this product came to life?

• Developed after work with Andrews McMeel on the cookbook.
• Artwork was done by Anthony Conley and Geekify's artists.

What's the difference between the Faerie deck and the original "Oracle" deck?

• The Faerie deck has more widespread distribution.
• The Faerie deck has the same artwork as the original deck.
• Oracle cards have golden edges, come in a velvet bag and a box, and are slightly larger.
• They also have different cover art and back card artwork.

Tell us about NeoPass?

• Will let Dom speak more about it later. "I don't want these on the Jellyneo pages incriminating me."
• There will be a dropdown with your main and side accounts to switch between them super easily.
• TNT Luna used to use a side account to stage conversations with herself on the Neoboards. NeoPass would've made that much easier!

Questions for TNT Dom

Finally, Kevin brought out TNT Dom to answer some of the most popularly requested questions.

What is the current status on the "NeoPass"?

• NeoPass is a new all-in-one portal for players to not only switch between accounts, but also connect logins for various Neopets apps.
• A "single sign-on" experience that should be more secure.
• Will be useful for the relaunch of Island Builders, for example.
• Currently in a soft launch phase. Received over 10,000 applications to participate in testing!
• Will also be useful for awarding prizes from one Neopets app (such as Island Builders) to a different one (such as the main site).
• May also include payment systems in the future.

Is there a chance of getting more pet slots soon?

• "We're definitely working into that," especially after the release of Pet Styles causing users to want more pets.
• Will likely wait until after NeoPass and a database purge are completed.

With the release of UCs, is there any chance we could get a few fixes for the Battledome?

• "Definitely...one of our major priorities."
• Will be focusing on Battledome bug fixes. Have relied on community ambassadors for distilling some of this.
• Also "trying to improve the overall quality of life" for the Battledome.
• Considering reworking some prize drop rates.
• "Won't be a short term fix. It will be a long-term kind of part of the game."

Why are players getting frozen for using a VPN?

• "I think there's a lot of misinformation and rumors circulating on the internet. We never freeze users for using VPN or mobile data."
• VPNs are completely allowed.
• However, sometimes players get inadvertently frozen as a result of using the same IP at some time as a confirmed cheater.
• "There's always some human error." If you got frozen by mistake, please submit an appeal ticket!
• For accounts that remain frozen, TNT is very confident of illegitimate activity, despite what those players may be saying on social media.

How can the community trust you with NeoPass when a hacker has been leaking your user data on Reddit for several years now?

• NeoPass was introduced for exactly this reason, to improve overall site security.
• NeoPass will meet industry standards (Dom mentions ISO 27001 and SOC Type 2).
• As mentioned last month, TNT has hired a security firm that has implemented many security upgrades. Much hacking activity has been stopped since.

When will the Daily Quest prizes be rotated?

• The team has been studying the economic impact.
• The weekly prizes will change "pretty soon."
• Overall, want to control inflation and don't want users to have to spend years of saving to obtain something!
• At the same time, always concerned about ensuring overall game balance.
• The age of Neopets creates unique challenges in this regard.

Most players still prefer buying NC prepaid cards from resellers rather than buying NC on the website. What are your thoughts and will this change in the future?

• "This will change in the future. We do prefer all our users to purchase directly through our website," but understand that the experience of NC buying on the site is buggy and difficult.
• TNT is looking at upgrading their payment processor to help with this.
• Dom says that more users currently buy NC through the site than from prepaid cards.
• As a bit of context, prepaid cards exist for historical reasons in countries where credit cards were not common.
• "At the end of the day, if you want to support Neopets, actually buying directly on the website benefits us a lot more than buying through prepaid cards."
• Want to make sure buying NC on the site gives the best deal and the best experience.

A lot of people have had issues with the payment processing on the website, redeeming NC. Is this going to be addressed any time soon?

• TNT is "very aware" of the situation.
• The payment processor had downtime in late January, leading to some delays in delivering NC.
• Also had to address a few glitches with the Neopets site.
• Dom claims that everything should now be working smoothly.

How well did the re-introduction of NC Pet Styles do?

• "January has been the best month for us since the leadership change" in July 2023 and "probably the best month in the past 5 years."

Anything else to share?

• Island Builders will be renamed to Tales of Dacardia, a reference to the scrapped Tales of Neopia project.
• Tales of Dacardia relaunch will be alongside the launch of NeoPass.

This page was written by Kenny and last updated on July 21, 2024.