Neopets today announced two upcoming events across September.

On September 15th the Annual Chocolate Ball will be held.

New features are being promised for the Chocolate Ball.

As well as this the Faerie Festival will be held on September 20th with New features to be released.

A “post-faerie festival event” has been announced to happen thereafter as well..

There has been speculation of a new plot being released and there has been hints of this featuring  a popular Faerie.. maybe this is it?

What’re your thoughts? Are you looking forward to a new site plot?

Update 4:43pm: Today Neopets has also been experiencing downtime across the site. First reported downtime was around 6am NST. From there it appears to have been rolling online and offline 404 errors since.
Neopets addressed this at 8am NST on their social media accounts:

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Today Neopets has issued an update on the Data Breach that occurred at the start of August.

This has been sent to users via an Email newsletter as well as shared across social media accounts.

The main point to take away is the below, what data was actually accessed and the period it appears it was accessed:

“After our investigation, we have determined that for past and present Neopets players, affected information may include the data provided when registering for or playing Neopets, including name, email address, username, date of birth, gender, IP address, Neopets PIN, hashed password, as well as data about a player’s pet, game play, and other information provided to Neopets.  For players that played prior to 2015, the information also could have included non-hashed, but inactive, passwords. This information appears to have been accessed and potentially downloaded between January 3-February 5, 2021, or July 16-19, 2022.  

We do not store users’ government issued identification numbers, bank account information, or payment card information.”

I’m terms of what Neopets are now doing to prevent this from happening again.. well we all know the saga surrounding the current Stack Patch Captcha screens which are essentially banning Neopians… However more info is below:

“What We Are Doing

Neopets is committed to safeguarding our players’ personal information. As part of our ongoing commitment to the safety and privacy of the Neopets’ player information in our care, we have reset players’ passwords and are working on adding multi-factor authentication to better safeguard your account access.  We have also enhanced the protection of our systems, including by further strengthening our network monitoring, authentication, and system protection.”

You can read the full statement at the link below:

FULL DATA BREACH STATEMENT

Not really much of an update here overall, but encouraging that it is clear that no banking or payment information was breached as it isn’t stored on the site. Also important to point out is that passwords are indeed hashed after 2015. Meaning that at the time of the breach passwords are put through an algorithm leading to a string of characters that cover the actual password. Hackers can indeed in some cases decrypt this, but it is good to know that the passwords weren’t stored in plain text… that’s one thing.

In regards to some of the proposed safeguards they are working on such as multi-factor authentication, should have been implemented years ago. It is a shame it’s taken an event such as this for them only to now to look to  implement it..

Are you satisfied with how this has been handled? Let us know your thoughts.

Today we have an inside look at the controversial Neopets Metaverse “Alpha build”.

The Neopets Metaverse is widely panned across the community and with good reason as there have been a number of sagas surrounding it. However this (although loosely) is still a Neopets themed topic which we are in no way endorsing, however believe we still should share with the Neopets wider community an update so they can be aware of the status of the project.

A user “Josh” who has had access at the Alpha stage has shared images with us of the current build.

The Alpha build is currently at an invite only phase and gives us an insight into what the “game” itself will look like. Currently it is only playable as a web browser game but there has been mention of a mobile app in the future.

In these images we can see the look of a “Neopia Central” which features the Money Tree, The Rainbow Pool and a Games Room at this stage.

(click for larger preview)

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There are also 3 playable games Ultimate Bullseye, Meerca Chase and Turmac Roll which can be accessed via the Games Room.

(Click the below previews for larger views)

The overall style does look very similar to the “art style” of Island Builders cross Playstation 2.
Some of the art styles of things like the Money Tree and we can see greyed out (presuming soon to come) footprints of the National Neopian Bank and a Battledome which look quite far (and scary looking in some instances) from the in game Neopets.com experience. I am quite impressed with the design and style of the Turmac Roll game. Its arguably the best looking element over the whole project…

(click for larger preview)

(click for larger preview)

(click for larger preview)

The below dates have been shared with users who have access as part of an upcoming timeline:

• Sept 2nd –  Users will be able to “interact” with pets (it is assumed that means feed and clothe).
• Sept 9th – Decorating your Neohome
• Sept 16th – Battling against other Neopets

Is the look of the metaverse game what you expected? Did you think it would be worse or better in a visual sense? Let us know your thoughts.

UPDATE 5:17pm: Some users are reporting that clearing your cookies and temporary internet files in your browser appears to be working for some users to re-gain access to Neopets. In most browsers you can do this via the settings / options menu. Be sure to make sure you untick “saved passwords and logins” so any “remember me” settings you have for logins on certain sites aren’t cleared. Are you finding this as a workaround? Let us know in the comments.

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UPDATE 1:05pm: Neopets have provided the below statement on the Neoboards regarding the IP blocking issue. Suggesting that any users banned should lodge a support ticket: 

“Hello, Neopians! We are currently fine-tuning and improving our site security. If you happen to experience a web page that says you’re blocked on our site, then please make a ticket so our Customer Support team can help you out. Please be sure to include that Reference ID you see on that page to better facilitate the process.

We’re receiving a lot of feedback and greatly appreciate the messages. Many apologies for the inconvenience, we hope to get you back into Neopia soon!”shared 

You can lodge a support ticket below via the blue “Create a Ticket” button:

LODGE A SUPPORT TICKET

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Original Post August 24 2:04AM

Another day, another saga surrounding the user experience on Neopets… 🙁

A number of users have reported over the last few hours that they are receiving captcha prompts when refreshing screens, or using multiple browser windows.

Simple tasks like refreshing at the Money Tree, Shop Wizard, battling in the Battledome and even users own shops are prompting the below screens to appear:

Some users have even been IP banned after entering the wrong captcha characters to proceed, thus blocking them from being able to view Neopets on the device that they have been using when this occurred. Even using a different browser on that device still results in being unable to access the site.

This “security” screen appears to have been implemented off the back of the Security Breach earlier this month, which Neopets is still yet to provide any further information on. We however have not had any confirmation from Neopets that the above screens are a response to the recent security vulnerabilities on the site… Though one must wonder why on earth these are activating when play on Neopets does involve “page refreshing” as well as multi window play which dates back to almost the inception of the pet site.

It could be a measure to curb Bots scoring rare Pound Pets, Shop items, Free items to name a few..

Here’s hoping the sensitivity of it is just another site bug?

We suggest if you have this screen appear, be careful to ensure that the characters that you enter match what is on screen. It appears from reports that users aren’t being allowed many chances to get the captcha correct.

Any users that are IP banned as a result, we suggest you submit a ticket to Neopets Support to raise the issue with them. The more that report issues with this, the more it will prompt them to rectify the sensitivities of it.

Have you been one of the unlucky users who has been IP banned from viewing Neopets whilst doing your Neopets daily activities?

We will continue to update you on if there are any further developments on this issue.

Signups for new users who wish to join Moderneo are now open!

Applications will be open today and tomorrow only (15th and the 16th of August) so be quick!

You can apply for an account below:

Apply Here

A friendly reminder that you are allowed one account per person.

-Matt