Trophies That We Actually Regret!

Inspired by the ironic notion of actually REGRETTING one's trophies, I thought I'd write this article! Most Neopians are eager to accrue as many trophies as possible. Yet there are also those motley players who actually REGRET the trophies they own!

Here are some of the reasons why we might regret some of our trophies! To gather this list, I canvassed the Neoboards for the opinions of my fellow players. They posted many interesting opinions about the trophies that they own, as well as reasons why they regretted some of them!

I hope this list makes you smile, and maybe addresses some of your own regrets as well!

I am currently irritated by the fact that I own 93 Neopian Times trophies. I really want to surpass the number 100, and until then, I squint at my 93 trophies with a little bit of disappointment and horror. I'm not the only neurotic player who needs to beat the number 100! There are plenty of Storytelling and Poetry entrants who are trying to beat the number 100 as well. I had to laugh at the fact that we're all so ambitious and nerdy. I'm also delighted by the fact that our goals are totally possible! It's only the talented, gifted people who have this weird predilection with getting 100 trophies, and it was fun to meet so many of them on the Neoboards!

Many players are irritated by their bronze and silver trophies! I've met so many, many players who are determined to get as many gold game trophies as possible, and I must admit, I'm always really envious of their gaming skills! I happen to be atrocious at games, so whenever I come across players who rue their bronze Snow Roller trophies and play the game over and over again to get gold, I gape at them and wish them much luck!

Many players admitted that they regret getting low-ranked trophies for the past few plots. The sting was especially bad for those players who admitted that they had lots of free time during those plots, but failed to log in and participate every day because they were too lazy to commit to the plot. They had amazing battle pets, for example, but only played 4 battles against the plots' opponents, while other players with worse battle pets played 5,000 battles and got the top trophies as a result. After I spoke to these players, I privately swore to participate fully in every future plot, and I have these players to thank for it!

Many people feel remorseful about a trophy that they really have no control over, the Altador Cup trophy. Even if they won 14,000 games, they're stung by the fact that their team placed 6th, granting them a trophy that's less magnificent than the 1st place trophy. As someone who once won a grueling 4,009 games in the Altador Cup, and still got a paltry-looking Participant medal, I totally understood their pain!

The Pyramid Bonus trophy is notorious amongst players, because it's so difficult to win a gold trophy in that game. (You need to beat the game 3 times in a row.) Almost everyone has the bronze trophy, which you earn by winning the game once. For those of us who are neurotic about all of their trophies being gold, like those gamers I mentioned earlier, the Pyramid Bonus gold trophy is a tantalizing thing that sometimes seems more like a myth than an actual trophy! In the meantime, we have to suffer the ignominy of owning the bronze trophy, even after playing the game 200+ times!

Many people regret earning trophies for certain Spotlights, because TNT created avatars for them later on! For instance, the Site Spotlight avatar was created, but we're not sure if it will be backwards compatible and be awarded to every player who ever won the Site Spotlight and got a shiny gold trophy on their lookup. These players now wish they'd held back on submitting their entries, and won their trophies after the avatar was created, because winning the Site Spotlight twice is an almost unheard of thing!

Many people regret owning certain trophies because they represent games that no longer exist. One player said that she has 3 Lenny Conundrum trophies, but never really paid attention to them until Lenny Conundrum was removed from the site. Now she wishes that she'd participated in that contest more times, so that she'd have lots of sparkling and retired gold LC trophies for her user lookup. As someone who won a gold LC trophy for herself, long ago, I had to nod and agree that having as many retired trophies as possible is a tantalizing thing, and that we all regret not participating earlier or more times! (I would have loved to win once at Caption Contest before it was taken off the site, for instance, or win a second Neopian Adventure trophy before it was discontinued.)

One player posted something interesting. She said that she used to enter her 4 pets in the Beauty Contest, but wishes she had focused on just one pet instead. Now her 4 pets have between 3 and 7 BC trophies each, but if she'd focused on just one pet, that one pet would have earned 20 trophies. For now, she only makes BC entries for her Blumaroo, because she wants to view his pet lookup and exult over the shiny, numerous trophies. Only a BCer would regret the trophies he or she owns, and wish that they all belonged to one pet!

Another player posted that she wished she'd picked a different pet for the Neopian Book Award and Booktastic Book Award. Now she has a super-intelligent pet to be proud of, but her actual favorite pet is her battle pet, and the pet she loves the most. She wishes she'd read all of those books to her battle pet instead, so she could consolidate 2 pets into 1, and have an extra pet space on her main account to boot.

One player mentioned something that I forgot existed. She regretted getting her Angry Tax Beast trophy, because it reminds her of the 250,000 NP that he "swindled" out of her in a random event. Her post made me laugh, even though I was also sympathetic about her loss. 250,000 NP is a lot of NP to lose! And I'm glad she had a sense of humor about it!

And the biggest reason why we might own trophies that we actually regret? When we're starting over on new accounts! The bittersweet part of starting over with a new main account is that with every new trophy you earn, you won't be adding it to your old trophy count! One player that I spoke to admitted that she regretted self-freezing her main account and creating a new one, because she'd earned so many trophies and retired avatars on her older account, and now every trophy she earns on her new account is a bittersweet victory because it can't be added to her old trophy count. I bit my lip with sympathy when she posted, and assured her that her new account looked good enough already, even though it only had 4 trophies!

I have to be open about something. Although this article is all about trophies that we regret, there were a lot of people on my threads who declared that they were proud of their trophies no matter what, even if they weren't the top trophies, or particularly rare! It was nice to meet people who asserted that every trophy they owned was precious and valued. For every person who regretted their trophies, there were 5 more who loved theirs, even though my threads specifically asked for only the regrettable ones. I thought this was inspiring, since I love all of my trophies as well, and didn't want to say so for fear of scaring off the people who regret theirs!

This was a really interesting article to write! It's so ironic that we players kill ourselves to earn certain trophies, and are still disappointed with the results! Talking to all of you on the Neoboards really made me smile, and it was fun to discover that we're all neurotic in the same ways!

Thanks for reading this article, my fellow Neopians! Stay tuned for future articles from yours truly, and have a stupendous week!