 A Window to the Future
by grape_luvver
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Ah, the year 20. Not so far off as it seems, but not too close either. When we
think of the year 20, we find ourselves asking a variety of questions. What will
the state of the future be? How many sides will Neopia have? Will our stocks be
up, or down? Will they still exist? What happens when our pets become (gulp!)
teenagers? Will Adam have grey hair? Will he have hair?? Some of those
questions I'm afraid I can't answer. However, I can hope to give somewhat of an
insight on what things will look like about fifteen years from now.
"Dailies"
Its how we start our day, so let's go ahead and start our look at future days
with this particular aspect of Neopian life. People will still do their "daily
duties" first thing in the morning, as they do now. However, unless they get
up at sometime around two o'clock AM, they won't be close to done by lunchtime.
There will be enough "Wheel of ____"s around to outfit a giant choo-choo train.
That might even be the basis of a certain mystery plot. There will be at least
five different people to whom you can say nonsense phrases composed of pretty
much random words and hope to be rewarded for it.
The Deserted Fairground, home of a good deal of once-daily, or once-every-few-hours
activities, will cover three different maps. They will be categorized into simple,
sensible groups, such as "expensive games you play but don't win," "semi-expensive
games that you push a button on and don't win," and "overpriced shops and silly
flash game." People will still not see that maybe, just maybe, this place was
deserted for a reason.
Pets
Your Neopets will be close to adulthood, or, perhaps, will already be adults.
This will mean that they will no longer be willing to eat Ga-Ga-Grub, for one
thing. The grooming parlour will become a lot more popular, and a range of deodorant
items will be introduced.
There will also not only be a wide range of new individual Neopets, but new
species of Neopets as well. There will be Pets that look somewhat like Kangaroos,
Deer, Zebras, Rhinocerouses (Rhinoceri?), Armadillos, Llamas, and maybe even
Jackalopes. Naturally, by then, each letter will be represented by at least
one species.
Your Pet will be able to own, of course, a pet of its own, a Petpet. These
Petpets, in turn, will still be able to have Petpetpets to play with. But in
the future, it will go onward. Your Pet's pet's pet will have a pet of its own,
a Petpetpetpet. It will continue until around Petpetpetpetpetpetpetpetiloveasparaguspetpetpets.
These particular Pet(... )s will have names such as Green Pixel, Red Pixel,
and Blue Pixel. Each level will have its own range of paint brushes, and a secret
lab ray to get zapped by. They will, naturally, prompt the creation of a PPPL,
PPPPL, PPPPPL, and so forth.
Jelly World
... will still not exist.
Avatars
We all love 'em. Avatars will abound; there will be at least one to fit anybody's
personality. People who enjoy hunting for avatars will be in a state of absolute
joy. The average player will have about 351,345,186.2 or so secret avatars.
By their first week most newbies will have at least a thousand. The really serious
avatar collectors will be going on a billion.
A user will decide one day to make a venture into the Lost Desert. This user
will be immediately greeted by a message saying, "Congratualtions! You are now
eligible to use 'I Visited the Lost Desert on the 21st Day of Gathering, Year
20' as an Avatar on the Neoboards!" Ignoring this message, having seen at least
a hundred thousand like it, (s)he will proceed to play a game of Swarm, and
play rather poorly, recording a score of 35. "Congratulations!" a new window
opening on the screen will say, "You are now eligible to use 'I Scored 35 on
Swarm!' as an Avatar on the Neoboards!" The aforementioned user's day will continue
in such a manner.
This will be all good and well, until you want to actually pick an avatar from
your drop-down list. You will beg for that needle and haystack.
Wars
Wars, on Neopets, are actually pretty neat. They give you a great chance to
sharpen and use your Neopets' fighting skills, work towards a goal, and earn
cool trophies and prizes without actually hurting anybody else's Pet. In the
future, these fun events, already increasing in frequency, will happen much,
much more often. The NeoPoll on the front page will have as one of its questions,
"Which war was the best one this week?" There will be at least five choices
every time. There will still be financial geniuses who wait to buy there codestones,
weapons, etc. until after wartime. These people's Pets, unfortunately, will
never see the inside of the Battledome.
The Test Your Strength Jackpot
Will be 158,371,390,192,648,127,200 Neopoints and counting.
Yes, the future will have changed somewhat. A good deal of these changes will
be for the better. For instance, by necessity they will make a whole lot of
optimists. But there will also be constants, plenty of things that will be the
same then as they are now. To list a few:
Lennies will still be the least popular pets,
The Meepits will still be invading,
Adam, hair matters aside, will still love asparagus,
grape_luvver will still be your favorite author,
The omelette-loving residents of Tyrannia will still live in dread of a series
of snowy days,
We'll still only be allowed four pets. Adam will still have five, and we'll
still whine about it in the editorials.
We'll still be waiting to see dear old Doctor Sloth again,
Mika and Carassa will still be bringing down items out of that gigantic attic
of theirs, and...
There'll still be the year 40 to look forward to.
I hope I've been able to provide a bit of a look into what the future generally
looks like for Neopia. I can't make any guarantees as to how correct my predictions
will be, but I think most of them are pretty sound. One day, we'll know. And,
for anyone who happens to be reading this in the archives from sometime in the
future, can you mail me, and tell me what it's like?
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