Who is featheralley neopets

Creative, well we just tried our best to have as much user input and user created contests as possible. The rest of the time it was just Adam and I having fun, basically playing with a huge community of players.

It really didnt seem like work most of the time, it was just our life. We thought about what to put on the site constantly. Some of our most interesting ideas came from talking on the drive to and from Vegas! How much truth is there to that, and how do you feel the changing focus of the site for a younger audience has affected how the site can fulfill this role?

Donna: Wow, no truth in that I am afraid. Neopets was designed to be a virtual pet site with a world you walked around. It wasnt designed with any demographic in mind, it was just whetever Adam and I thought was fun. The changing focus just meant that a lot of things that made the site unique had to be changed or removed.

It just alters what you can do, it isnt neccessarily a good or bad thing. I think it does put off a lot of potential players though. Hoteske: Err, the only question I can think of right now is how you feel about the change in the art. For example, an Aisha character in a plot or something would have more humanoid proportions rather than cat-like, even though your actual Aisha pet looks the about same as the original art.

Also, did you guys come up with the ideas and puzzles for the plots? They were sooooo difficult haha. Donna: Yes we loved the puzzles and plots! That was my favourite part to be honest. I had to storyboard and script all the plot comics which was good for a laugh as I used stick figures mostly. Shaydie: What was the supposed "school" that was supposed to be made in Neopia? For years I've been hearing about it but no details, except "maybe someday. Donna: Oh we had this plan to make it something you could choose to do with your pet.

There would be terms and various classes you could send your pet to. I think we were going to have some of the mini games like Maths Nightmare and reading books. Honestly I cant remember why it didnt happen. We probably didnt have the people to make it. That is why a lot of our big plans didnt materialise. I am pretty sure this was part of the list I gave Viacom when we left. What changes would you make, seeing how it is now?

Donna: The pound was one of the things on my list of unfinished business that I gave to viacom when I left. Trading is something that is a big part of the community and it should be made easier and safer for players to do it. I don't know of the current system has been updated, but the pound when we left wasnt really designed with trading in mind.

Having a secure trading pet area would be top of the list if it isnt there already. So people can list pets they want to trade and other people can put up offers. Also make it easier to find pets that are in the pound, sort by age, time in pound etc. Apologies if some of this is already implemented, I havent logged into neopets. I think pound chat is pretty much a pet trading post already. I am so sorry we implemented it that way.

The pound just wasnt designed for that. It was only created so people that had 3 Chias or any of the early pets, not hating Chias here could put one or two in the pound so they could create some of the new species.

I have so many memories of my sisters and I playing all the games and finding all the secrets. If you had to choose, which "world" in neopets would you want to live in? Donna: Mystery Island. Far away from Neopia Central, nice and sunny, no huge disasters or evil overlords. Oh and there was a huge statue of me there :.

You know, gobbling up the staff and all. Although you were the only one to survive Sacrificers. Donna: There was no collaboration, was this the Monoceraptor plot? Like a lot of the earlier stuff we probably didnt think it through enough to consider how everyone would feel if it was just one pet vs the boss. In hindsight we probably wouldnt have created just one Monoceraptor Claw My 15 month old is named Fyora thanks!

I just say it's from a video game! Is there anything I should tell her about her name when she's older? I can't remember where the name came from.

We were trying to think of names and it just popped into Adam's head. As a side note, Fyora was going to star in our movie plot but it never got made. I recall you were planning a game called Twin Skies, and also released a web game called Vikings Pirates Ninjas as well as a few Facebook games.

However, now it seems that all those games and the website are gone. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to the company? Is it closed for good? Are you ever planning to return to game development? Adam: I'll just chip in because Donna's on child duty. Twin Skies was postponed basically because it got too complicated, the project wasn't going according to plan and then the stock market crash of nearly wiped us out financially.

Really, really bad timing. We decided to pivot the company into making social games for Facebook, so after a few months of false starts we released VPN. Unfortunately it was built on a bit of a wonky PHP foundation and we had so many issues with it. Also - the target demographic was split. Facebook users expected one thing, and our VPN fans wanted another, and the game was sort of ripped in half as a result.

We refocused our efforts and launched Island Paradise which was a success. Unfortunately we stupidly got in with a really bad bunch of people, hired a new CEO, brought on new management. Really bad decisions were made, and Donna and myself went along with it because we believed these new guys had the experience to make the company succeed. A year later we had failed to raise investment, the company ran out of money, and we had to shut down the games.

The sad thing is that we couldn't tell our players what was going on for fear of being sued by our investors and management. So we ran away from America, and decided to start a family. Yes, we're working on a new game now, but it's a verrryyy slow process! Donna: Ogrin, its just horrible. I think possibly disco or split, when done badly they look particularly awful.

Ummy: 1. What do you think is the most important skill to have when working on a site like Neopets? Personality wise I would say a sense of humour and a thick skin. Things you worked on will go live and people will inevitably hate it and be very vocal about it.

You can't let that upset you. Actual skill-wise. It is changing a lot now. It really depends where you want to be in the company. Hopefully far. I think they need a bit of a kick up the backside as all the ones I have seen recently are just doing stuff based off the Neopets formula but with a small twist.

I dont think they are dead by any means, but I think that something different needs to come along. Do it, go ahead put something live. Dont be afraid to do something different. DOnt stress about squeezing money from people straight away. If you have a good product, you can work out how to make money later. Ok Neopets is a bad example of that, but we wanted to make it subscription and focus on content.

Since that plot never came to be, can you give me some insight on the lore that was going to be? Wayyy back in the day, you guys had volunteer monitors. Users who were chosen to help monitor the neoboards and what-not. What was the reasoning behind ending that? We wanted an alien race for the Space Station but he drew it. Ooh that is a question earlier on no idea how to link to previous comments. Adam needs to answer that as I cant remember.

I will bug him when he gets back with food. He has gone out to get takeaway so I can sit and answer more questions. Ummy: What happened with the Neopets Movie? I heard that it had a title, and a movie was mentioned on the Jelly Blobs of DOOM game page, but beyond that it never went anywhere.

I always thought a movie would've been amazing, and I was sad when nothing about it ever surfaced. Adam: Well Donna and myself spent weeks working on ideas, wrote it up in a document, gave it to the Neopets management who promptly filed it under R for Rubbish. PandaBearVoid: I was wondering, what went into the creation of the pet species? Where did you get the inspiration for the names, designs, colours etc.

Donna: Haha. It really varied. The first few pets were really easy to come up with. We didnt have an existing fan base so we could just do what we wanted.

Didnt have to consider if the new design was too similar to something we already had etc. The latter pets were a real headache. I think that was why we didn't add a new pet unless we had a land or major storyline to go along with it at the end.

Adam and I hate naming things. It always has been the bane of our life. Our 2nd kid was 5 weeks old before he had a name! The names come from all over. I don't know why, the lyrics are "I am a murderer, Aisha, etc" doesn't really fit with cute cat-like creature when you think of it. Colours either came from an idea Adam and I had, or something one of the artists drew and looked good.

Noonsa: You mentioned that there were lots of things you and Adam wanted to do with Neopets, but never had time. What was one of the coolest things you wanted to do but had to shelve, and why?

Finally have a chance to complain to you- I was really disappointed when my Brucey stopped being photorealistic! Donna: Haha the old Bruce was amazing.

Blame the legal department. The old Mynci was our friend Chris Mellish who was notorious for spilling his cider, bet nobody can remember that Neopet :. This was back in before Telltale made those games cool again. We almost convinced the suits it was a good idea, but then it got canned. We also wanted to make the site more multiplayer, starting with baby steps like multiplayer flash games, but with the goal of actually doing the virtual world we originally set out to make.

That also got canned. Donna: Hmm that is a tough one. There are some paint brush colours that look great in certain combos but not so great on some pets. I'ld have to go with Green I think. BoredGoat: So Dec Neopets came to us as they wanted to do something on Facebook.

We didnt want to make the Neopets FB game, we thought it was a very bad idea. In fact I cannot stress how much we really did not want to do it. It was only after weeks and weeks of being tag teamed by our senior management that we faltered.

They convinced us it was the best thing to do for our company. So, yes it was our fault for a hiring them and b listening to them. Adam and I agreed to make the game with the understanding that it wouldnt be your standard simple FB click, stars, spam friends thing. It would be something designed to grow slowly and last for years. It would not be an overnight success, it would take months and months of updates to start seeing real growth.

Neopets GM said she was totally on board for this. We hired a lot of people to make the game and spent a lot of money upfront on servers to run the game.

Yes this was also stupid, but we were being assured by people on all sides that this was totally fine. Viacom wanted the game launched ASAP so we agreed to do a cut down version with the understanding that the other features would be added over time.

Initial version of game goes live, a couple of months of minor updates go by. As expected the playerbase was building slowly. Neopets GM decides to can game as not performing as they expected. I had to lay off over 80 people, who hadnt done anything wrong just a few weeks before Christmas.

Never felt worse in my entire life. Company was in debt as we had bought all these now useless servers and paid a lot of people's salaries for months of development time. Game over for Meteor. Donna: Originally I think Eyrie was one of the winners of a contest that Adam and I ran where the players could design the next Neopets. This didnt go down too well with the legal department when they got bought on so it was changed to something that our artists drew.

HarleyQ: Do Neopets not have brains? On every transparent pet you can see their organs I would say that should be a Zombie Paint Brush, not Transparent only they aren't allowed to use the word Zombie for some silly reason. In that case it would make sense that they don't have brains as Zombies eat brains so in theory to become a zombie your brain should have been eaten. I guess it depends which school of zombie-making you follow though, you could just be bitten and then turn.

In that case yes they should still have brains. Donna: Yes we have thought about it. Got a bit burnt with the whole Facebook thing so needed a break. Only trouble is the gaming industry has been infiltrated by marketing types masquerading as people who actually care about games and content. So the answer is yes, we have thought about it, but it would have to be on our terms, making a virtual world that we love, not what is currently popular. To say I am working on it is bending the truth a bit as I have no free time due to our kids really.

I will get back into it though How was it made? And also in regards to the Darigan Sword of Death the main plot prize given in the Darigan vs.

Meridell war , did it really do 70 icons? Or does it just do the measly 4 earth icons some claim? And lastly, what is the coolest most special item ever made in your opinion? Thanks for reading! Donna: Sorry I honestly can't remember about the sword's damage. Coolest, most special item, hmm Meepits are pretty cool and special. I know technically its a Petpet not an item though.

I don't think the ingredients for whatever it was going to be were done in time, so I just left it. Regardless of what anyone else says I always found them rather funny and adorable. Donna: It was drawn by one of our artists and we just thought it was too cute. Anything that cute has to be hiding something. I think they are the evil geniuses that secretly run Neopia. I think you said before that you felt it was the right thing to do - but is that really the case?

And also do you have any upcoming projects? Donna: I think the sale and the stuff that happened after the sale could have been handled better by both us and Viacom. We really didnt feel like they were at all interested in what we had planned for the site. They didnt actually try to stop us leaving or even contact us at any time after we left to get our feedback on anything.

That seemed really strange for us. We didnt leave on bad terms or anything. We just said we wanted to leave and they said OK. Yes we have a new project, but its a long way from being launched or anything. It has the working title Moglings and we have a reddit for it.

Donna: I loved the live chat feature we had in the very first few months. That was awesome, although it would have turned into a monitoring nightmare. Sadly we didnt really know how to set it up to handle that many people at one time and it just kept blowing up. We had to take it down after just a few months. Some questions for jumping off points: What was your involvement with it?

What was the idea for the game when it was first conceived? How does the end product compare to the original concept? Reading some of your responses, it seems like you always imagined Neopets to be a sort of 3D world like a combination of Pokemon and Runescape and other games in that vein. Would you support another Neopets video game coming out, or do you feel that there's no need for it if your original idea for the site was implemented?

Donna: We were super excited at first. Originally it was meant to be a PS1 game, but it took so long to get the deal figured out that it was changed to a PS2 game. That was great as it meant better graphics and more people were likely to play it. We came up with the story, the characters and the names. Games have to fall into one category only and cross genre games just wouldnt work. The game concept just got chipped away a lot so it would fit neatly into one of their little boxes. We had approval over the art, but we had to work within certain contraints.

There were limited changes we could make and we never directly spoke to any of the art team. I think it was all handled overseas. The game play we didnt get that much say over. For all we know Sony could have had a game that was canned that they just wanted to reskin.

It certainly seemed that way at times. They didnt seem that concerned about making a Neopets game, more just making an OK game that would do OK sales-wise. The experience was definitely eye opening, but I dont think the game was really as good as it could have been.

I woudl support a Neopets video game if it added something that you couldnt get from the site, or took something you could do on the site and made it radically better.

I've always wondered - why are the images for the rotten omelette and the cheese omelette the same, and not this? It's my favourite vegetable and I have some cooking on the stove as I type :. Donna: I think the omelette may just be an oversight. It was probably a case of us using the normal image until the proper one was drawn, but we never replaced it. We dont have asparagus that much anymore, maybe once a week.

I think Adam's favourite is wrapped in proscuitto with parmesan on top, then baked in the oven. I like it steamed personally, but that is because I look at the amazing gratinee version and just see a bajillion calories. While they were at the age they were taking spelling tests with these words on them, no less.

Sorry if you got into trouble with the tests. It wasnt really an intentional thing at first, it was just how we wrote as we were British. Later on, it was just funny to mess with people though :p. Do you think all pets should have been converted, leaving no UCs?

Or are you glad they still exist? And what are the copyright measures for that anyway? TNT claim that they can't create new ones because of copyright rules, and that's why they won't give us an option to make new UC pets. Donna: I think the UC pets are better and I think that the conversion could have been handled in a much better way personally. As far as I can tell the whole reason to change them was just to make money through micropayment clothing sales in the mall, I dont see why you would risk annoying your entire user base to implement something that the site wasnt really made for.

A better solution may have been to reboot Neopets in a different format. Using unity maybe? Then you could offer far more customisation options, and you arent just changing the look of the pet, but you are letting people get other benefits like being about to move around in a virtual world, actually see your pet fighting in the battledome etc.

If people wanted to have that, then they could move to the new Neopets, otherwise they can stay with the old site.

Obviously things would have to be thought through more carefully than I am doing now. You would have to offer existing players something to make them want to move over although letting them start with a level pet wouldnt make sense, but I am sure a solution could have been found. UCs just sound like something they would like to automatically update, but can't due to database limitations, which is why some still exist.

I wouldnt think that they have any way to make a Neopet be an UC so I wouldnt bank on that UC paint brush coming out just yet. I could be wrong, but it doesnt sound like an option they would have to hand. I dont see how there is any difference in copyright of a UC or a new look Neopet. That just sounds like fluff to make people stop asking about them. Everyone voted for an awesome looking Llama, and then we got this weird looking thing.

No disrespect to gnorbus that looks wrong , but I'm still bitter I didn't get what I voted for. Donna: I dont really remember that too clearly. I remember having a public vote, but I dont know why that one was used if it wasnt the winner.

TraderVaderHater: What is your thought s on users not being able to send the word "peanuts" or really a majority of safe, normal everyday words in Neomail due to the very strict filters?

Donna: Ahaha peanuts? Thats amazing! Well Adam and I did start it, in fact I was the one that made Adam change hot tub to swamp, bikini to cardigan on the forums. No idea if that still happens anymore, but I got so sick of "hot blah blah blah sitting in a hot tub wearing a bikini".

I'm more a fan of switching potentially bad words rather than banning people from talking though. There are some that need to be banned, but there really is no reason to block non-offensive words. There are so many sophisticated ways to do filters now, the peanuts thing just sounds like laziness to me. If so, please tell us more :O.

Are they still locked away in your old unaccessible accounts or what? Donna: 1 I think the Magic Key was part of a plot line, or it may have been one of the early items we created when we didnt know what we were doing. Donna: 3 Oh gosh, we were really excited about it at the time. I wrote it up and sent it to Viacom to use after we went.

I can't remember it. That is terrible. I'll have to talk to Adam about it once the grandparents have cleared out of our house and see if we can remember it.

We came up with it in if that is any excuse for being so forgetful Unless the Neostaff decided it wasnt fair and deleted them, although I doubt that. Donna: I honestly don't know much about the implementation so I can't really speak much about that. Looking back, Neopets just shouldnt have been a micropayment game. It would have been much better to go free to play with optional subscription and focus on content. Adding more functionality like a world you could walk around with your pets the original design for Neopets , live chat, multiplayer games etc.

Donna: Neopets game or just in general? In real life, my all time favourite game is probably tied between Gauntlet Dark Legacy and Dungeon Keeper. My least favourite is probably the Star Wars game where you had to master and then forget all the skills in the vague hopes of becoming a Jedi.

I can't remember the title now, but it was awful. Any majoy life developments or times where it shaped major life decisions? Donna: The best thing was being able to do what we wanted creatively and put it live straight away. I can't say how rewarding it was to have an idea one weekend and then have it on the site by Monday afternoon. Just seeing how everyone reacted to our crazy thoughts was an unforgettable experience and I am very grateful that I have been able to do that. We didnt go on holiday or take a break during our time making Neopets.

We would go back to England to visit our families but we were still updating the site, managing everyone's to do lists and giving feedback constantly. Looking back we must have been the worst kids ever for our parents. Hadn't seen us in months and we barely see them even when we are in the UK Neopets was the reason we moved to the states in If we hadnt done that, we wouldnt have found our two awesome cats who we still have by the way , met all the people we did or had any of the crazy adventures we have had.

ThBurninator: How old were you guys when you started everything up if you don't mind me asking? Donna: Well we almost called our daughter Hannah Lisha was a bit too goody goody for my liking :.

If so, what's your favourite item? Donna: Do we have any cool Neopets merchandise I am a terrible hoarder. We actually just gave a lot of the plushies to a children's charity and threw out a whole ton of other stuff as it is probably ridiculous how much we kept.

I know Ollie is still working with you, but just curious if you still occasionally talk to some others. Donna: We were in touch with a lot of the ex-TNTers, but not so much anymore. Its really just Ollie and a couple of the database guys now. Its just hard to stay in touch when you live so far away. Adam: I like the first 'fake pet one', especially Chyonko. Also Nick Neopia was pretty funny as we were working with Sony at the time and they totally fell for it.

They phoned us up and begged us not to do such a massive change to the site mid-way through creating the PS2 game.

Donna: One of the early fan encounters I remember was in a toy shop in Santa Monica. This lady came up to Adam and I and was quite annoyed. Apparently her account had been frozen and she had driven across the country to confront Adam about it. After venting for a bit she reached into her handbag to pull something out. Adam was totally petrified she had a gun. Fortunately it was just a piece of paper with her username on it.

Still cracks me up to think about it. It all turned out ok. They had a computer in the toy shop and Adam unfroze her account there and then. I would say was the peak.

It was pretty insane then. The beer was Neorona, but then the legal dept found it and freaked out. Donna: Favourite game I did answer earlier, but I am too much of a reddit newbie to know how to link to it. As far as bad guys go, it may be predictable but I woudl have to say Dr Sloth. He is the one we have had the most fun with.

And more importantly - if you do, what's your least favourite change? Donna: I haven't I am afraid. This topic has been edited by a member of staff. Please be mindful of the anonymity of others. Just as it is inappropriate to mention users specifically in conversation on the neoboards, it is also inappropriate here. Please check your user inbox to see if you have been contacted regarding this topic. Please contact. Neopets General Chat Existing user?

Followers 0. Who Is the Most Famous Neopian? Posted 30 January - AM What makes you say she is banned? Nvm I just searched it.. How much ABing do you think I'd have to do to get close to their net worth?

Posted 30 January - AM Heard about this a little while back, it was one of those freezings for your own safety situation.

Posted 30 January - AM I bet it was someone just trying to hi-jack the account, by logging in repeatedly with the wrong password. Her user lookup had a whole robinhood themed page and it was all decked out. She fancy! Hobo Mr. Hobo 8, posts. You chat with her on neomail? So she's your neofriend? What happens if you get iced? Posted 30 January - PM You chat with her on neomail? She used to have public neomails. I used to buy a few items from her around that time. What happened was the account was compromised, posted foreign links on the neoboards, then was frozen for posting illicit links.

Posted 30 January - PM TNT knows featheralley wouldnt spam the site, its prolly a precaution until she gains control of the acct. Posted 30 January - PM TNT knows featheralley wouldnt spam the site, its prolly a precaution until she gains control of the acct Regardless, the very reason posted in her frozen message was for illicit links.

Edited by Dreww, 30 January - PM. Posted 30 January - PM Bryan?