April Fools' Day - 2006



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The minds at Neopets came up with a practical joke to help combat server strain and reduce inflation in Neopia. For each page load, you had to pay anywhere from 3NP to 75NP! As you browsed the site, an annoying little box floated above the page to inform you of how much you currently owed. NeoCharge was only a prank, which was extremely fortunate for those users who began holding competitions on the Neoboards to see who could amass the highest debts!

Current Fee: No Charge Activity: Page Load

Total Charges: 2,737 NP



What's This?

Here are some of the various charges for loading certain pages around the site:

Petpages - 75NP

Neomail - 15NP

Guild Messages - 12NP

Games - 12NP

Freebies - 10NP

Neoboards - 8NP

Shopping - 6NP

Random Pages - 3NP

Neopets announced this new feature in the news:

New Feature! - Most of you may have already noticed the nifty new window to the right! (If you use a theme, don't worry! It will be available in all themes early next week.) This will help us fight inflation and help reduce stress on our servers, both of which will help make Neopets more fun for everyone. You can click here for more information! If you find any bugs, glitches or problems, please let us know!

The Help Files

To make this "new feature" seem as realistic as possible, TNT put up a series of help pages to explain how the system worked and why it was necessary. Below is a copy of these files, just in case you didn't have a chance to read over them and marvel at TNT's ability to lie through their teeth!







NeoCharge�

Below are all charges you have accumulated. Current charges are added to your bill when you click "Pay Now!" below.

Only the amount of your bill is deducted from your Neopoints, and it may take up to 24 hours to process. (Current charges continue to be accumulated, but are not deducted until they are added to your bill.)



Current charges: 2,853 NP



Current Bill: 0 NP

Your bill may take up to 24 hours to process.





If you choose to pay now, your current charges will be added to any charges waiting to be processed.

How Does NeoCharge� Work?

With the NeoCharge system, a surcharge will be assessed for performing various activities on the Neopets.com website. Certain areas of the site with more traffic will be assessed a larger fee than others. Your charges accumulate until you are ready to pay!

Once you decide you would like to pay, click the "Pay Now!" button in the window to the right. Your charges will be displayed and you can pay from there. Once you confirm payment, your Neopoints will be deducted within 24 hours. This gives you time to earn any Neopoints required to cover all charges.

You will need to pay within a week of your last payment, or before accumulating charges in the amount of 50,000 NP (whichever comes first). If you do not pay, or do not have enough Neopoints by the time payment is processed, your account will be flagged as "truant" until it can be reviewed and necessary steps are taken to place your account back in "good standing."

What is NeoCharge�?

The NeoCharge system is basically a new way of addressing two important problems that have been impacting Neopets and its users.

Firstly, many of you may have noticed the influx of new users to Neopets. This is good! We're happy to have the opportunity to entertain so many people around the world! However, while we have over 200+ servers to handle this load, it seems that's just not enough for the millions of visitors we have every day, and we aren't able to upgrade fast enough to keep up! The NeoCharge system helps make sure that users only load the pages they need to, and don't constantly refresh over and over, using up valuable resources. This should make the site run more smoothly for everyone!

Secondly, with inflation climbing higher every day, we needed to find a way of stabilizing the economy. Before the NeoCharge system, Neopoints entered the Neopian economy at a rate that was approximately 400% greater than the rate at which they left the economy! Any economist will tell you that's not a very good thing. Not only does it greatly unbalance the economy, it causes mass inflation and severely rising prices (among other things). With the NeoCharge system, we can steadily remove Neopoints from the economy at a rate roughly equivalent to the rate of Neopoints entering. This means less inflation, lower prices, and a happier Neopets experience for everyone!

So there you have it - the two major reasons behind NeoCharge. And we're not done with it! We will constantly review the system to make sure it's doing its job. We don't want to take more Neopoints out of the economy than we have to, and we definitely don't want larger, more costly areas of the site to be restricted to only the wealthiest Neopians, so please bear with us while we adjust the numbers early on and into the future.

Thank you for reading, and as always, thank you, thank you, thank you for playing Neopets!

- The Neopets Team

But why aren't my Neopoints deducted right away?

In order to avoid incurring debt that would lead to various account restrictions, you will have the chance to earn the necessary Neopoints to pay off your bill, which will be required to be paid in full one week after your current bill starts or unless your bill accumulates to 50,000 NPs (whichever comes first).

What if I don't or can't pay?

You will need to pay within a week of your last payment, or before accumulating charges in the amount of 50,000 NP (whichever comes first).

If you are unable to pay your bill, your account will be flagged for review and a support staff member will be required to investigate. The support staff must first judge whether your account possesses sufficient assets to cover your accrued debt. If so, the support staff will then take necessary action to compensate for your unpaid debt which could result in one or more of the following:

- Item(s) removed from the account

- Your Neopet(s) put up for adoption

- Access to certain parts of the site being restricted

- Twice as many ads that you have now (if you are a premium member, yes, you will start seeing ads again)

- Any painted Neopets will be returned to a normal colour



So please, be sure to pay on time before any of this happens to you.

Pssst! Want to see what we at Jellyneo did for our prank? Then click here . ;)

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This article was written by: JN Staff