The inside scoop on Jelly W-argh! *choke* Circulation: 191,782,612 Issue: 620 | 8th day of Storing, Y15
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Editorial


So many people have been wondering what the requirements were for receiving the avatar from the Spooky Food Eating Contest plevent. A lot of folks have been wondering if it's a glitch, since people who did less than them received the avatar. Please let us know, since everyone is so confused. Thank you. :) ~kayleighlovesjasper
Each prize had a factor. Some prizes, such as the avatar and Petpet, required a variety of factors from each portion of the event. Only if you met all of those factors would you receive the avatar or Petpet. We've checked many accounts (both from emails sent to support and username sampling from the Neoboards), and thus far we have not found one that was improperly awarded due to a glitch. The code is awarding the correct prizes.

So, we have a new daily and it's one aimed at Petpets! That's totally awesome, but I have a question. The news for it seemed to imply that Petpets might not come back, which we've seen before (like the Petpet Lab Ray and Turmy). This is obviously a bit of a concern for Neopians who either have expensive Petpets or, like me, super old ones with no intention of ever detaching them. Is that really the case? Can you lose your Petpet going in the catacombs? Thanks for answering. ~kristykimmy
You can rest assured that your Petpets will eventually wander back, once they've danced with Ghost Meepits, chewed on cultists' robes, or any other crazy adventure they experienced down there. :)

Trick or treat! *hands you an empty bag* My Neopets are sad. See, only ONE of them could participate in the event, but they ALL get to open trick-or-treat bags! I'm sad, too. Nobody gives candy to a fifty-something woman, and my kid doesn't need me to dress him up and hold his hand anymore. He's 6'4" now. Soooo... could you maybe, possibly, make an old lady and her 'pets happy next year and bring back trick-or-treating? Pleeeeeze? *big, sad Puppyblew eyes* ~prplecat
We didn't quite realise just how... passionate you guys were over Neopets trick-or-treating until we saw the aftermath on the boards / fan sites! A brief explanation: we wanted to do a small storyline event for Halloween-time this year, and so Saskia was replaced. Her trick-or-treating mechanic didn't really fit in with monster hunting, so we went with puzzle / event prizes as a replacement for candy / bags. Since y'all really like your trick-or-treat bags, we'll definitely attempt to squeeze in time for them next year (whether Saskia herself makes a return or not). x_X

In the last Editorial, you didn't capitalize snarkie's name. This made me very sad. I wanted to point that out, because I feel snarkie is worth the capital S. snarkie has rights. That is all. *gives snarkie a cupcake and skips away* ~midnight_rising
Her staff name is traditionally typed with a lower-case "s" because she thought it was cool 12 years ago. She no longer thinks of it that way, much like how many of us are now regretting naming our accounts after our obsessions from the previous decade.


I don't listen to the Backstreet Chias anymore, I swear.

I just noticed today that you went back and recoloured the Maraquan Krawk to look closer to the original! This is something I've been secretly wishing for and I can't believe it happened! Thanks so much for putting in the effort for these little changes when you guys have so much content to manage. Can we expect other little changes in the future? ~yukitora_exe
We're glad you guys noticed and appreciated the change! :) We agree that it looks much better now. We do our best to make little positive changes when we can.

Hi, TNT. I was wondering if "glitched item" Petpets can win the PPL award, or do you not select those as winners if they're entered? ~rythiel
Haha, no. Items that accidentally get briefly flagged incorrectly as Petpets are not eligible for the PPL prize. It's the Petpet Protection League, not the Glitched Item League!

Here's a weird one that I really would like to see answered somewhere at some point in time. Every once in a while I come across a player's shop where all of the items that are currently worthless in the Neopian market are priced at 99,999 NPs. Now, my question is: is this reportable? I never do, because I don't want to clog up the system and I don't think it's really hurting anyone. I mean, to me, if someone buys from said shop, then they're either really nice or really new to the site. I was thinking about it more, however, because I don't know if this would be viewed as a form of scamming or not. Please remove my username if this gets in. Thank you. ~username removed
Only if they're actively attempting to trick people into purchasing the items. Examples include having backgrounds that try to disguise the prices, holding "flash sales" in the hopes that people will be too hurried to double check their purchases, or requiring a person to make a purchase of the items to access "special perks".

Um... we know that Scarlet the Yurble was a female, but what is the monster supposed to be? ~tanis969
It's male. Yes, Scarlet appeared to be female, but we know the monster is a shapeshifter, so it could look however it wanted to. :) Anyway, the monster was designed first, and we actually had no plans to assign a gender at all (it really wasn't needed for the storyline and we had male and female contestants, any one of whom could have ended up being the monster). HOWEVER, the artist who drew the SUPER SECRET EPILOGUE image just happened to draw the mom without horns, thus immediately assigning a male gender to the monster everyone had been chasing the whole time, since he happened to also have horns.

Tell me, TNT. Did Hanso and Brynn have a kid? I spotted a blue Kougra with Hanso's hair at the Spooky Food Eating Contest... hmmm. ~knapping
Hahaha, no. Sorry to burst your Brynso bubble. The hairstyle has just been extremely popular in Neopia since Hanso's brilliant triumph over Xandra.


Try not to get distracted by Corbin's amazing hair.

Yeah, like I am feeling a bit spoiled here... a new theme, a matching avatar, Neopoints, and lots of items! However, since it was a plot / plevent, am I missing a shiny, monstrous trophy? Is there any chance of getting one to top up our User Lookups even more? *drools* ~nesskesside3
Nope. It was just a small storyline event for Halloween-time. There were no world-changing occurrences or big competition, so there's no need to prove "I helped save the world" or show off mad skillz... thus, no trophy. :)

Tell Dragona I named an Axew after her in my Pokemon Y game. ~jdb1984
Dragona is honoured, and would like you to know that she has named a Skitty "jdb1984" after you. Proof.

Okay, TNT. Many people were paying close attention to the scores at the eating contest. Those who say that the scores were rigged, going up by certain amounts, believe that "Scarlet" was going to win and become a monster NO MATTER WHAT! Personally, I disagree. URL sifters have come across images, each fully rendered, of EACH CONTESTANT winning and transforming. While it is possible to substitute the correct winner in, the fact remains that there was a fully-rendered image of each contestant winning. I believe that this is a sign that you did NOT rig the contest, seeing as I know that every unnecessary drawing increases the chance of your artists revolting... but am I wrong? Were those drawings only there to confuse us and make us THINK that it was fair? Do tell, TNT. Put the conspiracy theories to rest and say I am right... or prove me wrong, and say that Scarlet was always going to win. I await your answer, TNT. I hope my faith is not misplaced. ~just_meow_kitty
Your faith is not misplaced! If we absolutely needed something to happen because we want the story to go a specific direction, we wouldn't leave it to chance or fake a choice when there really was none. If we leave something up to you guys, it's because we really want you to decide the outcome! (We, therefore, need to plan for every possible result of that.) That's why savvy players found multiple images of the winner transforming. Art takes a long time, and we don't produce more than we need, but we did have to prepare for any of the contestants winning.

As far as the scores go, they did go up by certain amounts on a bit of a schedule, but it was because we had to ensure that the final number of eaten foods for each contestant never went over 99 for the simple reason that it would have broken the page layout. :) We used a back-end algorithm that did a bunch of fancy math and determined who was in the lead based on real data coming in from the cheering / booing. It then increased the food counters appropriately as needed, trying to make it so that they wouldn't get too high before time ran out.

Can you guys please end this Editorial with a picture of a Happy Slorg Mug? It's so... happy. ~butterfly7672
Please enjoy a moment of pure happiness as you gaze upon this quality mug.


Happy feelings increased by 26%


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