making new accounts is disabled and will forever be because livio and bmwsu married samoan girls and live on a polynesian atoll with no internet now

I've been getting really annoyed with Youtube lately. Several mini rants incoming

I upload random songs that can't be found on Youtube occasionally, one to make them easier to find for people, two to let anyone who finds said song download it with a media converter, and three for teh viewz. Idk why, but Youtube has taken upon itself to start providing entire discographies of artists on YT through agreements with their respective record labels. They're quick n dirty, obviously automated jobs though, the account name is always #"artist's name", and the videos usually have little to no views because I'm p sure YT hasn't widely announced this feature yet. Perhaps the most annoying aspect though, is that these uploads don't work on most media converters due to copyright hoohaa. I know everyone has their own views and ways of obtaining music, but I'm pretty sure most net-savvy people have given media converters a shot at least once. So while this may be cynical, to me it just comes off as Youtube trying to show they're making artist's discographies more widely available while at the same time covertly fighting media converters *takes off tin foil hat*. Anyways, its made my little hobby significantly more difficult. I mean, before they started doing this there was barely any music not available on Youtube. Mostly random B sides/compilation cuts, foreign tunes, or overly long songs.

The last of which segues into my next bone to pick with Youtube. In spite of my first complaint, I did recently upload 3 songs to YT that were previously not found on there. BUT, I was denied to publish one of the vids, a 24 minute song, until I verified my account. There's multiple things wrong with this. One, I've been a YT member for a little over 5 years now. They say they take spam and robots very seriously and that account verification is a way to fight it. Could they not just look at my account history, viewing habits, posting habits, liking habits, and my various Google-related escapades to determine I am in fact not a robot? Two, I'm not stranger to uploading long songs, 11 of the various songs I have uploaded in the past are over 10 minutes. Heck just last year I uploaded a 32 minute song. No problem with that, Youtube? K thx bai. Wasn't my account getting cleared to upload videos over 15 minutes 4 years ago enough of verification? Three, the only way to verify your account is by giving Youtube/Google your phone number. **** that. I'm not an anti authoritarian blackhat or something, I just try to avoid giving out my phone # to anything on the web at all costs. Could verification by email not suffice? Anyways, one online throwaway phone # later, problem solved I guess. Until they refuse to let me use YT unless I use my real name or something.

One last annoyance to boot, my Stone Free walkthrough has been blocked worldwide on copyright grounds. This is annoying cuz, firstmost the video went for probably almost a year untouched. Idk the exact date it was blocked (don't you think that's something you should notify me about, Youtube?), but I remember watching it earlier this year when procrastinating on an essay, so it can't have been that long. And of course, the song that was blocked was Stone Free by Jimi Hendrix, so there goes that fittingness.

I just have not been having much luck

You know what I've realized? Despite the increasing inactivity present on these forums, the length of each post has been gradually increasing, and for the most part, so has the quality of every post, mostly due to the increased length. So despite our now minimal number of posts, we still technically have the same "activity" as we used to, and now, it's much higher quality than it has ever been in the past. Nearly everyone writes walls of text for almost every post, so we have just as much to read as before, but it's all concentrated in a few high-quality posts instead of across 100 small posts that nobody will care about in five seconds.

Neopets actually replied to my support ticket about HATPC not working properly. However, it seemed to be an auto-generated or copy-pasted response:

I sent a ticket about it back in February
Looks like they're hard at work

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooool yeah right.

From what I understand Viacom sold neopets to some other company which promptly ran it into the ground way harder than Viacom ever did. A while ago they had a phase where they couldn't moderate anything for like a day or two, and the neoforums was total chaos. Pretty sure that their staff being unable to moderate led to a huge activity spike in their forums, maybe the site as a whole, as people from other sites got drawn in.

In case you're wondering, the reason why Livio's been so inactive is because he's been performing a long-term test on the interguild; He's hoping that by not being here to run the site, the Interguild will go through a similar activity spike.

Yeah, I don't go on NP often, but I check on Jellyneo to see what's happening occasionally. Some people believe the staff wasn't able to moderate the Neoboards, and others think there was literally just no one there to moderate them. Then like you said word traveled to 4chan, Tumblr, etc and things got ugly from there. Thankfully I wasn't on at all during those days.

I don't really think Jumpstart (the people who bought it from Viacom) ran it into the ground, I mean it was already dead and buried p much by the time it was in their hands. Basically their biggest mistakes thus far have been a.) firing all the old staff and b.) not being much different from when Viacom owned it; they promised a bunch of changes when they took over, did most of those happen? NOPE. From the beginning of their tenure, even before they fired the whole staff, weird glitches n' stuff have been a lot more frequent, and lately security issues seem to be a big problem too. The Neoboard crisis wasn't just heinous and offensive ****, tons of cookiegrabbers and computer-unfriendly stuff too. I don't think JS has flat out wrecked the site-- yet, but I definitely don't trust them running it, and I'm rather baffled as to why they bought it in the first place.

I certainly think Jumpstart will be the final owners of Neopets, however. I don't know if the eventual end will be 1 year down the road or 5, but I can't see any sane entity buying it from JS in the future. Or if it is somehow sold, it'll be stripped for parts and turned into a glorified Facebook app or something. And I don't know specifics, but I'd imagine it HAS to be losing them money. If the only money they make is from premium memberships (which may be broken IIRC), Neocash, and ad revenue, and their influx of new members is at zero besides returning players/side accounts (hmm... that sounds familiar), and they still have to keep the servers running and create new content (only new items and colors at this point), they must either be barely making a profit, gradually losing $ over time, or losing it like crazy.

As I recall Viacom slowly but surely ran neopets into the ground, whereas Jumpstart took no time and basically got it over as soon as possible.

I'd like to know how the purchase worked out for Viacom, though. Neopets was definitely worth a lot more money back when they bought it, than when they sold it. I'm curious how much Neopets had devalued under them.

I'd have to imagine significant devaluation? Customization/Neocash were introduced early in Viacom's ownership, and afterwards the site essentially remained (and still has) unchanged for almost a decade. I'm sure customization/NC generates some cash and NP probably would've shut down by now had they not been introduced. But despite it being owned by a company like Viacom, Neopets managed to completely fall out of the public eye during Viacom's tenure, likewise there's been no Neopets merchandise to help bring in extra cash. There was one plushie line tied in with Keyquest in 2007/8, and an attempt at a TCG revival, but obviously neither took off. Neopets ain't getting any action figures, plushies, trading card games, random accessories, and McDonalds toylines any time soon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopets#History_and_background

This is interesting. in general reading the page from there onwards is interesting.

also see
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=neopets+statistics+2002-2015

interesting in the 'stickiness' part - at first they were the most sticky site with each child playing on average 117 minutes a week. in 2008, that became 2h45m a MONTH.

117m a week -> 465~m a month = 7h45 min a month. crappity crap...

damn you shos, i was gonna post the wolframalpha link

that being said, something intredasting is this - the stock of viacom: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=viacom+statistics+2002-2015

their stock was more than twice as high when viacom sold neopets compared to when they bought it, since then theyve only dropped and the fall has been heavy

obviously this is all related to neopets!

Interguild has had no posts for five days, I think it's time for us to shut down and provide a link to somewhere on another site (like facebook) where we could continue to gather, those of us who feel the need to do so.

Yeah, the interguild certainly has become pretty dead recently. Maybe school is starting back up? Ultimately, though, whatever happens is up to Livio; he's the one running the site after all. If he's okay with keeping it up and running, no point in shutting it down just because it's inactive.

It's been progressively becoming more dead for several years, and has only tumbled even further the longer the site has been up. People do still post replies to discussions which are sparked, so it may simply be that no one is bothering to start any discussions.

on second thought it's basically an archive and I love archives so nevermind on shutting down

did you just post the same things in both random chat and the chatbox

yes

I think one of the main reasons that there isn't much activity anymore is because it's impossible to make a new account, so no new members can join.

I'm sure this has something to do with it.

HINT. HINT. LIVIO.

Also, I have returned from Skyrim Norway! I think the picture I took that I like best has got to be of Norangsfjorden, near Øye. Link here.

Although I do really like this picture which I took after reaching the top of Galdhøpiggen.

those are some sick mountains

holy hell that looks amazing

* Darvince puts Norway much higher on to-go-to list

Whoa those are some pretty sweet pictures.

Regarding new accounts, I emailed Livio maybe like a month ago, suggesting he re-enable account creation. He agreed, but I guess never got around to it. If you want him to get around to it, I would recommend emailing him rather than complaining about it on here, since he comes on here so rarely and could pretty easily miss your post even if he were to come on here

i just got a notification on facebook saying that it's livio's birthday today, so i'm gonna trust it. happy birthday livio!!

is this the place to post this? i forgot how the interguild functions man

*sigh* four days since I last checked and only two new posts...

wow x amount of time since i last logged in and only one post about inactivity