The Void Within: March Livestream
On March 27th 2024, Neopets held a special livestream to cover the upcoming plot: The Void Within! It was hosted by Amanda (theamandafiles, a Neopets YouTuber) and featured several TNT writing team members and TNT Dom. You can view a recording of this livestream on YouTube. This page is a summary recap of this livestream.
WARNING This guide may contain some spoilers for the upcoming plot and we've hidden the appropriate plot-related sections if you don't want to see them.
Livestream Timecodes
For your convenience, here's the imporant parts in the recorded live stream and their respective time codes- Introduction [6:25]
- Plot Writing Team Interview [8:00]
- Shop Keepers [13:40]
- TNT explaining the teaser process [14:45]
- TNT Aesop on characters, basic details on decisions and narratives [19:10]
- TNT Stone on events, narratives [25:10]
- TNT Jewel on their work [26:30]
- Hints and Clues [28:20]
- Narrative team's work and favourite plot elements/moments [31:55]
- Amanda asks details on the Advent Calendar comic cool sword & Orion's Lyre [43:40]
- More sneak peaks (the new protagonist) [47:10]
- Interview with TNT Dom [50:00]
- 1. What is TNT doing to address the cheaters/botters? [53:55]
- 2. Progress on more pet slots, Neomail rework, and updating the weekly quest prize pool? [56:50]
- 3. What are the next NC Pet Styles? [1:00:00]
- 4. Will there ever be changes to the Neopoint limits in the shops or trading post?? [1:01:00]
- 5. With the introduction of NeoPass, will you consider moving NC items between accounts? [1:03:15]
- 6. Will we be able to stay logged in on the same account on multiple devices at the same time? [1:05:13]
- 7. Can fans develop fangames? [1:05:50]
- 8. Are Neohome being brought back into the game? [1:06:35]
- 9. Frozen accounts items appear in shop wizard searches, can they be removed?? [1:07:20]
tl;dr & tl;dw
- TNT is always watching and analyzing what the community writes and their feedback. 👀
- TNT also enjoys the community's conspiracy theories and speculation.
- Tales of Dacardia:
- A revamp of the existing Island Builders
- An April (beta) launch in Canada before a global launch
- NeoPass: Launched on March 27th, 2024, will connect all Neopets games together and can sync rewards.
- In the future will allow you to share NeoCash items easily.
- Fan sites and Community driven games can utilize NeoPass.
- TNT working on addressing cheaters and botters, gaining lots of valuable community tips
- Concerned about botters getting high value items.
- Many accounts stopped and frozen but the issue still persists.
- NeoPass improves security and might make botting harder.
- Recent focus was improving core Neopets components not visible to players (ie: server infrastructure, security, critical bugs, cheating) and will now begin focusing on many quality of life improvements.
- NC Pet Styles will be released in small batches every few months, will be seeking community feedback to prioritze these pets.
- Shops and Trading Post might get some updates and could increase the Neopoint limits in the future.
- Neohomes probably wont be coming back because it could compete against Tales of Dacardia.
WARNING This section may contain some spoilers and vague sneak peaks for the upcoming plot.
- Plot is planned to be long, estimated at least 10 months of content.
- There will be minigames and activities during the event.
- There may be tie-ins with the upcoming Tales of Dacardia.
- Continuations of the story will continue with future events, such as Festival of Neggs and the Altador Cup
- They hinted at there being three villains in this plot: Vira, the shadowed figure she was talking with, and someone else. “Bad things come in threes”
- The new protagonist is named Nyx, and she is the Neopet pictured in the Advent Calendar. Her Faellie (name to be revealed) is alive but in rough shape.
- The grey-coloured shop keepers are "drained out" or "cursed" and cannot be painted back.
- New and old characters are modeled after real-world journeys people frequently encounter and to be relatable.
Interview with the writing team
This segment included these TNT staffers:- TNT Aesop (Narrative and Creative Director)
- TNT Jewel (Narrative Designer: tales of Dacardia), worked on Tales of Dacardia for 5 years
- TNT Fallie (Meepit) social media manager, not part of the writers team, Australian
- TNT Stone (Senior Narrative Designer) originally worked on story for Faerie’s Hope, ran creative contests, editing for Neopian Times, and now running the events
WARNING This section may contain some spoilers and vague sneak peaks for the upcoming plot. If you don't want to see it you can just skip to the Q&A with TNT Dom.
Highlights of this segment:
- Plot has already started - kicked off with Faerie Festival, some shopkeepers are looking pretty Grey
- TNT Aesop: can’t be painted back after being “cursed” with the grey colour (“drained out”)
- TNT Aesop: can’t be painted back after being “cursed” with the grey colour (“drained out”)
- TNT Fallie when teasing the plot:
- Picked which teasers (ie: from advent calendar or from items), TNT Aesop went over the plot with the writing team, constant meetings to plan the plot, and to plan the teasers.
- They enjoy reading the community’s fan/conspiracy theories and love people finding tiny details
- Inspired by many things they loved in past plots
- Inspiration behind character being trapped inside the void (with TNT Aesop):
- The team wanted to mirror a journey that many people encountered throughout their lives and the real world pulling you from “this escape” (Neopets and taking care of your pets)
- Wanted to focus on the feeling of returning back to Neopets after a long time, and people seeing the new characters and lands that they didn’t see since the last time they played
- Community involvement - things like the Beauty Contest, Neopian Times, Art Gallery, Poetry Gallery, etc are big parts of the Neopets community, and they wanted to try to tap into the creative energy
- TNT Aesop discussing some behind the scenes and teasers:
- Plot is a shared effort among all the writers. There are big Neopets fans on staff who care a lot about the world and the lore.
- Writing the plot was a lengthy process because they wanted to take the time connecting and fill in missing pieces of lore, so they took time looking through canon and finding those gaps (ex: characters who were never given real full names).
- Writer’s room style process: 4 writers who cycle through the process.
- There will be minigames and activities during the plot.
- The plot’s content is expected to be spread out over 10+ months
- Set within realm of Neopia, so not entirely grounded in reality in setting, but hoping people will be able to connect and relate to the new and old characters and their dynamics.
- Excited to finally add new lore to Neopia!
- TNT Stone:
- Works closely with the writers (and other team members) to create the overall plot, mostly working on copy and the chapters of the plot (spread around).
- Teasers they worked on: Reginald gathering scary stories during Trick or Treat event, and the Reina and Orion story from the Advent Calendar’s comics.
- Felt very honoured to be able to add on top of 25 years of Neopian lore.
- Created new characters and seeing them grow and enjoying the community’s reaction (ie: Orion from the Festival of Neggs & Advent Calendar)
- TNT is always watching and analyzing what you write and your feedback. 👀
- TNT Jewel:
- Behind the scenes giving feedback on some of the teasers, helped with minigames
- Mostly focused on Tales of Dacardia, but has been able to contribute to the plot in some way
- There will be some connection between the plot of Tales of Dacardia and the plot, so some teasers on that front may also be coming
- Character moments, small emotional moments between characters, big emotional moments where characters let themselves free - really enjoys digging into the character dynamics.
- One chapter has two characters talking and opening up with each other but not too much - really enjoyed writing the scene.
- TNT Fallie (fanfic writer):
- Favourite elements of the plot: always about character moments, very tangible and emotional and gets attached to the characters (felt emotional when TNT went through the plot)
- There will be emotional moments in this plot!
Hints, Clues and Other Sneak Peaks
- Planning to incorporate continuations of the current stories into future events. Make sure to log in for future events such as Festival of Neggs and Altador Cup
- Faerie Festival Comics
- Vira plotting with some friend, and coming back to the plot, with some co-conspirator, not entirely alone
- “Bad things come in threes”
- New protagonist: Nyx (the same as a greek goddess of the night)
- First seen during Advent Calendar (the blue Aisha) with their trusty Petpet mechanic, trying to survive the night.
- The Petpet’s name will be revealed later, but they are still alive but in rough shape
- Amanda asked about the "cool looking sword" and Orion's Lyre from the Advent Calendar comics:
- “Whatever happened to the wielder of the sword you could surmise that they are trapped in that strange place that our characters were surviving in” - TNT Aesop
- Queen Fyora doesn't know much about Orion's Lyre.
- Orion had the strongest visions during the events of the Advent Calendar.
- There have been some more visions since but not as strong, but that may be changing soon.
Highlights with TNT Dom
- NeoPass:
- Launched on March 27th, 2024
- Connects different Neopets games together, including Tales of Dacardia
- GDC (Game Developers Conference):
- First time the team has gone (all together) in about a decade
- Allowed the team to learn from experts and see what the gaming industry is doing
- Tales of Dacardia:
- Revamp of existing Island Builders
- April (beta) launch in Canada before launching globally
- Some teaser pictures:
Q&A with TNT Dom
1. What is TNT doing to address the cheaters/botters? [53:55]
- Can’t give much information about specific users
- Receive a lot of tips from ambassadors and user tickets, will be investigating these claims
- There's some concern around botters getting high value items
- For some of the high profile botters, they have stopped the main accounts, but the problem still remains.
- TNT is trying to figure out how to improve gameplay and make botting harder to do.
- Neopass is also trying to improve security on the site that will make botting harder in the future.
- The team has frozen botters, but will continue to update as they come up with more solutions.
- 100 items are being tracked (in the quests prize pool to track for inflation), lots of new feature launches and updates recently, hoping to focus on more gameplay issues in the near future
- A lot of updates may not be visible to players.
- A lot of recent improvements related to dealing with bots, cheating, security, server infrastructure, updating payment systems, and other important core issues.
- Will have more surveys to gain feedback, or you can talk to an ambassador
- Plushie, Jelly, Baby, and Maraquan have been launched as of March 27th, 2024
- More NC Pet Styles will be launched in small batches every couple of months.
- They will be looking for user feedback to determine the styles they will prioritize next
- A lot of people don’t know how to use the trading post, and these systems don’t work well with high-valued items, or items affected by inflation.
- NeoPass will make it easier to move Neocash items to your accounts, without using the old mechanic of using a gift box, in the future.
- The Auctions/TP/etc are not very intuitive, so the team is looking into changing some things to make it easier to use (such as raising limits) and fully testing these new features and changes.
- (TNT Dom briefly mentioned this in the previous question)
- NeoPass allows you to receive rewards from other Neopets games (Tales of Dacardia) and bring them into the main/classic game.
- New features can built ontop of NeoPass.
- Rather than fixing the old (classic site) login system, it was better to do a complete revamp of the account system, rather than dealing with a 25-year old system (to be more intuitive.)
- "This should be possible through the classic site, I'm not sure what the issue right now, but it should be possible to fix"
- Part of the NeoPass vision
- Community driven games can utilize NeoPass
- Fan-sites like Dress to Impress (DTI) and SunnyNeo will be utilizing NeoPass.
- Tales of Dacardia will have some aspects of building/decorating homes
- Debating on whether or not Neohomes should be brought back into the classic sites, but don’t want to develop competing game features/mechanics across different games, such as Tales of Dacaradia.
- It’s on the list of things they are working on
Live Giveaway Code
As a reminder, you may only use this on your main account as its only one redemption per player. It will expire March 29th at 5PM NST. You can redeem this at the Grundo Warehouse.
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