Neopets, the beloved digital pet sport from the 2000s that featured Flash video games and an enormous omelette, is beneath new administration—they usually’re seeking to reinvigorate the world of Neopia. On July 18, the newly fashioned World of Neopia, Inc. printed a prolonged weblog put up beneath the byline “The Neopets Workforce” (TNT) detailing the way forward for the franchise, from the abandonment of metaverse and NFT plans to the updating of the famously damaged Flash video games.
The way forward for Neopets
Due to over $4 million in funding secured from buyers, TNT wrote that “for the primary time in over a decade, [the team is] outfitted to make significant modifications in pursuit of a Neopian renaissance.” These modifications embody discovering a repair for the Adobe Flash drawback, as the EOL of Flash in December 2020 successfully orphaned a whole lot of hundreds of Flash-based video games. “We’ve got begun exploring the usage of Ruffle [a Flash player emulator] to resolve the problems brought on by the tip of Flash in hopes of dashing up the method of bringing performance again to our beloved video games,” the weblog put up learn.
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However fixing Flash-based video games isn’t all of the crew plans to do. It additionally “took a protracted, arduous take a look at neighborhood suggestions on Neopets Metaverse” and NFTs, two current initiatives which Neopets followers virtually uniformly hated. “It shortly turned clear that the sport simply didn’t line up with the whole lot that made Neopets…nicely…Neopets,” the crew wrote. As an alternative, the crew is abandoning that enterprise (thank god), and focusing as a substitute on an upcoming cellular sport known as World of Neopets, “a social life-simulation sport through which you reside your splendid Neopian life from the angle of a Neopet.”
Within the upcoming sport (which doesn’t have a launch date but), you’ll have the ability to embellish a house, play mini-games, acquire Neopets, and discover “iconic Neopian lands in 3D.” The devs promised that World of Neopets won’t simply be a rebranding of the maligned Neopets Metaverse. “There aren’t any NFTs in World of Neopets, and the sport is NOT constructed on a crypto mannequin,” they wrote. Blessings!
There will even be alternatives for Neopets followers to develop into “model ambassadors.“
The beloved, traditional Neopets web site will stay, with TNT promising “nice issues on the horizon for the traditional digital pet web site that began all of it.” And a brand-new web site will launch on July 20 as a “one-stop store for all model bulletins, hyperlinks to our totally different video games and merchandise, a repository of Neopets articles and associated hyperlinks, and anything Neopian you possibly can consider!”
The “new period” of Neopets promised by the crew is feasible, thanks largely, to the model not falling beneath the administration of JumpStart Video games, which the crew mentioned “struggled to seek out success for Neopets” earlier than shutting down on June 30 of this yr.
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Now, the crew is led by Dominic Legislation, described as a Neopets superfan who pushed JumpStart Video games mum or dad firm NetDragon to maintain the model alive within the wake of JumpStart’s shutdown. “A administration buyout deal was struck” that allowed the 2 Neopets groups to “mix forces and develop into an unbiased firm” that’s “free from the company baggage that existed prior to now.” Weirdly although, Legislation’s most up-to-date job title on LinkedIn is Chief Metaverse Officer at Neopets.
I actually am prepared for Neopets’ triumphant return, sans NFTs and crypto trash. Are you?