Sunday, April 02, 2006

Call me a skinflint, miser or cheapo nenek, but I have developed a serious aversion towards the Neopets site ever since they started this system that charged users neopoints (NP) for loading pages from their site. Get *free* omelette, pay 10NP; get *free* tombola dip, pay 10NP; get *free* uncertain blessing at Coltzan's Shrine, pay 10NP; you get the idea. Even reloading a previously visited page costs NP. Ridiculous!

There's this complex argument that inflation has gone so high, items have become unaffordable for the casual user, so they need a system that will remove NP from the economy to reduce this runaway inflation. Well, I am a casual user and with this system in place I don't even earn enough interest in my fixed deposit to cover what I usually do on the site in the first place -- which is to get *free* stuff!

Neopets says this system will reduce bandwidth usage on their ever popular site. It certainly has. I don't want to darken their doors again, even if I never feed my Wocky again.

I know it's just virtual money that's being drained, but in order to keep visiting Neopets I have to play the games just to earn NP so I can afford to keep visiting the site. That's not virtual time being wasted, it's MY time.

Sorry, Neopets. It's been fun, but if this system remains in place, it's adios amigo!

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