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Should TNT bring back some of the retired avatars - discuss.


chubit

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We've all done it, looked through that list of avatars that we don't have but can no longer obtain.

We've thought "ohhh... It's not fair, my laptop was broken during that event!"

or "I had that avatar on an old account, but it got hacked..."

 

Or even just, "I really like that avatar, it looks really nice.. I wish there were some way to get it now.."

 

However, we've also said to ourselves, "It really means something that this avatar was exclusive to those people in this event, it was like a reward for what we did!"

 

Or perhaps "I have an older account, and I've proven my loyalty to neopets, it's nice that there's some avatars I have and newer accounts can't get"

 

 

So, what do you guys think? If TNT brought out a poll & you guys got to vote, what would you choose?

Are you on the fence? Do you think that just one or two avatars should come back (can you tell us specific examples) or all of them at one point?

Do you think that un-retiring avatars would make them less valuable? Does that matter?

 

Go ahead and discuss, I can't wait to hear what you think!

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I would like to see old avatars brought back for those who COULD have been around for them, if that makes sense. I really like that older accounts are privy to more features of the site, as it does reflect our commitment. If we were at least around when the avvie was available, I would love to see a way to unlock it! I hope that makes sense.

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I would like to see old avatars brought back for those who COULD have been around for them, if that makes sense. I really like that older accounts are privy to more features of the site, as it does reflect our commitment. If we were at least around when the avvie was available, I would love to see a way to unlock it! I hope that makes sense.

 

That totally make sense, I missed the negg collecting avatar because my laptop broke halfway through it & never got the avatar, so it's a nice reward for being around for it, but wouldn't take it away from being a loyalty perk.

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I've forgotten the password to older accounts or gotten accounts frozen. I remember getting the McDonalds/nova avatar. I wish I could still have the avatars I already did collect, but I think I have to agree that it's like a perk for loyalty

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Guest awkwardnormalcy

I don't know, I'm not huge into Avatar collecting so I don't feel especially strongly about this subject but I do feel like they should rerelease most of the retired Avies, not all at once, but in stages and only for limited time. Still make them a challenge to get of course, but in the current state of Neopets we need to get new members and keep them, and having this huge section of something very popular (avatar collecting) be unreachable for reasons out of the user's control isn't going to help with that.

 

I mean it's not like you can sell your Avatars, I mean if that were the case I understand why you wouldn't want them to be more easily attainable, but they are more for bragging rights than anything else if I understand it correctly.

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I don't know...I wouldn't even consider them all to be a sign of loyalty necessarily, considering someone could have signed up, played for like 6 months and gotten one of those avatars if they happened to be there at the right time. I've been playing basically since the site was launched and just used the site like a kid would - played games, bought toys for my pets, etc, not realizing there would be stuff that would only exist for so long and then be unavailable forever. Not that I knew how long I'd still be using the site anyway...

 

I'm still annoyed about some of the retired ones, because TNT froze me "for my own protection" and didn't respond to the multiple tickets I sent in for over a year and a half and I missed out on I think 3 of them.

 

I personally like the idea of some avatars being really rare or hard to get, but you could if you put in the work. That's loyalty, too. Or, if they were going to make them available for just a short window, they could do it more than once, on rare occasions, rather than just a few days then they're gone forever.

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Just like Blowupthesun, I too have been around for a little bit. 6-1/2 yrs. I could have had quite a few avatars during that time but I only got an acct because my son, who was 9 at the time, had one and got me to join too. I created a pet, and played some games. I mostly liked the word games like word poker, word pyramid, spell or starve, eliv thade, etc. I battled in the dome a little bit so I did get the battledome veteran trophy but I didn't collect avatars at all. I wasn't even sure how I did get the ones I got. After about 6 months or a year I stopped playing and played sporadically throughout the years. Obviously I played enough to keep my acct from being purged which was good. But it wasn't until the last year or so that I really got heavily into playing and really collecting avvies and game trophies, and participating in different events like the obelisk and festival of neggs. I couldn't really get into the altador cup but I was do neoquest II Insane at the time.

 

So, yes, I might like to have the chance to be able to unlock an avatar that was available at the time that I had my account, yet was oblivious to workings of neopets.

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I'm generally against re-releasing old avatars. While I get the frustration about not being able to try for them if you weren't a part of Neopets at the time (or just weren't aware), the point of the retired avatars is to commemorate an event. The avatars no longer have any purpose other than being another notch in your count if they are no longer tied to a specific solution. Looking forward, re-releasing retired avatars might lower site participation in events. A lot of people participate for themes, prizes, and an avatar. If the avatar will just be released later on, I imagine most of the avatar-collecting community won't bother to join in site events.

 

I've missed out on avatars, too, because I didn't do something on Neopets even though I had an account. Several years in a row I missed the negg faerie avatars because my family always went on vacation right in the middle of the quests and I'd have no internet to do them. Sure, it'd be nice to have those avatars, and to an extent it's unfair that outside circumstances affected my ability to earn them, but that's just it: I didn't earn them, so I don't get them.

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I'm generally against re-releasing old avatars. While I get the frustration about not being able to try for them if you weren't a part of Neopets at the time (or just weren't aware), the point of the retired avatars is to commemorate an event. The avatars no longer have any purpose other than being another notch in your count if they are no longer tied to a specific solution. Looking forward, re-releasing retired avatars might lower site participation in events. A lot of people participate for themes, prizes, and an avatar. If the avatar will just be released later on, I imagine most of the avatar-collecting community won't bother to join in site events.

 

I've missed out on avatars, too, because I didn't do something on Neopets even though I had an account. Several years in a row I missed the negg faerie avatars because my family always went on vacation right in the middle of the quests and I'd have no internet to do them. Sure, it'd be nice to have those avatars, and to an extent it's unfair that outside circumstances affected my ability to earn them, but that's just it: I didn't earn them, so I don't get them.

 

I do agree with you - I'm on the fence & sometimes I feel like having retired avatars staying retired will keep neopets & avatars how they should be: easy on the surface, but a LOT harder as soon as you commit to it.

 

However, I don't think the avatar collecting community wouldn't participate in new events if they "re-released" avatars like it works something like this: on the 5 year aniversary of it being originally attainable (or going retired) it's given a "memorial" where you can access it.

 

No one is going to not bother with an event because 5 years later they might be able to get it.

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I do agree with you - I'm on the fence & sometimes I feel like having retired avatars staying retired will keep neopets & avatars how they should be: easy on the surface, but a LOT harder as soon as you commit to it.

 

However, I don't think the avatar collecting community wouldn't participate in new events if they "re-released" avatars like it works something like this: on the 5 year aniversary of it being originally attainable (or going retired) it's given a "memorial" where you can access it.

 

No one is going to not bother with an event because 5 years later they might be able to get it.

 

I'll use the Altador Cup as an example ^_^ That avatar is re-released every year and yes, there are people who participate every year, but others who simply don't bother. Part of it is already having the avatar, part of it is already having the theme and no promise of a good prize shop. If TNT were to release a new Altador Cup avatar every year rather than re-releasing the old one (e.g. how they had a new Negg Faerie one each year), I think participation would be much higher. No judgment to people that simply join a team and don't play though, I'm one of them xD

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I'm on the fence on this one...but I'm leaning towards keeping retired ones retired. As an avid avatar collector I would love to have access to older, retired avatars. But when I think about the ones that I have that can't be gotten again (like SFC) then I want to keep them unobtainable. I put the time and effort into the events and am proud of the avatars I got, so I would hope they wouldn't be released again. Tough call.

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Every avatar I ever wanted is retired. But, it's not fair if TNT releases avatars again. What about the effort the people got the avatar the first time? Like, I just don't find it fair, but I would really appreciate it if TNT does that.

 

They should do a raffle of instead of pets, any avatars of any kind :P

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Does anyone else find this topic slightly ironic with the rerelease of the "neopocalypse" avatar?

 

Personally I think what hrtbrk said sums it up pretty well. I love collecting avatars. Would I like to have them all? Yes. Do I get a pang of jealousy when I see someone with one that I know I can't have because it's retired? Yes.

 

But that's what makes it fun...if everyone could have every single avatar that was ever released, there wouldn't really be a point to them...it's nice to have "special" ones in your collection (even if you never plan on using them)

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As Brianna said, part of the fun of the avats is being there when it was released and/or working hard for it. If you weren't there for it, it looses something about it.

 

It's also interesting how you brought up the Neopocalypse avatar. I think it should have stayed retired. Moving servers is not a Neopcalypse.

 

Like many people have said, do I look at the retired avatras in awe and wish I could have them? You bet! But they have them because they were there and worked for it. I wasn't. It's like earning a trophy. You earned it because you did something at a specific time. There are memories with it. Handing it off to someone who wasn't there and didn't participate is just giving them something pretty to look at.

 

What I would like to be able to do is to move avatars from accounts. I was here for Atlas of the Ancients, Moltra, the 4th AC, the different Negg Festival avatars and so on. But they're on a frozen account. So I would have loved to be able to move those avatars over to this account.

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Does anyone else find this topic slightly ironic with the rerelease of the "neopocalypse" avatar?

 

Personally I think what hrtbrk said sums it up pretty well. I love collecting avatars. Would I like to have them all? Yes. Do I get a pang of jealousy when I see someone with one that I know I can't have because it's retired? Yes.

 

But that's what makes it fun...if everyone could have every single avatar that was ever released, there wouldn't really be a point to them...it's nice to have "special" ones in your collection (even if you never plan on using them)

 

/laughs.

I do! I feel like I have magic prophetic abilities!

(quickly makes post about finding a PDE in my SDB when I get back into my account)

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i like it when avatars are special, but i also don't see a problem with every once in a (long) while, they re-release something. it doesn't hurt me when someone else gets something i already have. as long as they don't overdo it and re-release an old avatar every other month, i'm perfectly happy sharing the wealth. after all, they already re-release retired stamps in auctions, and while those aren't free, the frequency of their release is quite reasonable in order to help bridge the very large gap between old and new accounts while still keeping these items/avatars special.

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i like it when avatars are special, but i also don't see a problem with every once in a (long) while, they re-release something. it doesn't hurt me when someone else gets something i already have. as long as they don't overdo it and re-release an old avatar every other month, i'm perfectly happy sharing the wealth. after all, they already re-release retired stamps in auctions, and while those aren't free, the frequency of their release is quite reasonable in order to help bridge the very large gap between old and new accounts while still keeping these items/avatars special.

 

I think when I started this thread that's the kind of re-release I was thinking of. I don't think they should over-saturate the access to old avatars, but like the old stamps (like you said) there's a mechanism to re-introduce some of the older ones.

 

Man, between my post about petpet park just before the downtime announcement and now this thread... we're becoming too strong! haha :P

 

I know! It's probably because we live & breathe the site, we can kinda' "feel" what TNT must be thinking.

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If TNT were to bring back retired avatars, would there be things you had to do in order to get them?

I think there would be.

 

TNT learned from the Coincidence that the majority of the people don't like it when they are just handing out rare avatars.

So if they're brought back, there would most likely be something you would have to do in order to get the avatars.

Would they bring back the plot that the plot avatars came from? How do you think it would work?

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I'm not an avatar collector, mostly because I can't get the old, retired ones & that sort of puts me off it a bit. Also, I wasn't always aware of the events going on at the time to be able to put in that effort to get the avatars, so that sort of upsets me & puts me off it, as well. So I've really just never put in the effort to get any other avatars, because I didn't think there was a point, since I can't at least work towards getting all of them, even if it took a very long time to get one, or it was really hard. Personally, I think the new people that may join neopets may think it's pointless too, and could possibly put them off trying events & stuff where avatars can be earned, because, at this point... what is the point? Obviously, it makes sense for the people who were able to be there for the old events and who worked very hard to get their avatars to do the events, to make sure they don't miss any. But, the newer people might back off, because they may not think it's worth it. Just my pov :)

 

I've been on neopets pretty much since the site started. Obviously, not with this account, but close enough lol, I think I'm almost at 10 years or something like that with this one. However, regardless of what I said above, I would not agree with TNT bringing back those avatars that are retired. The people who were around for it and put in the work to get their avatars might just quit neopets altogether, and that wouldn't be good.

 

I think this is a lose - lose scenario. Either way, someone is going to be upset about it. (That's why I just don't join in, if I happen to get an avatar .... yay!! lol)

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